Mutual influence and the results.
A modern city is very densely inhabitated by a large number of people. The life quality depends on the process structure in this conglomerate. The city demands close attention of professionals and their ability to immediately react to the changes in the society’s vital activity. The urban matrix is the city’s habitants, their thoughts, actions, the degree of their willingness to help, the level of the sensitivity or aggression. The city is, in fact, capable of having an impact on its dwellers, just like the dwellers can influence the city, it is a mutual process. That’s why I try to perceive the city as a single entity with different levels of mutual interaction. I’m comfortable both in large cities and small ones, size is not a determining factor. I just need to feel the City’s concern. To work and to relax is equally pleasant if you are taken care of. 
The image-making elements.
The city’s image is what its guests feel and see while spending a short time in it. Either it arouses rejection or affection from the very first day and the desire to return over and over again. It is all very subjective, of course, you can hear numerous contradictory opinions about the same place. But on whole we have similar feelings on hearing the names of such cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Tokyo, New York, St. Petersburg… And it’s not mere chance; after all, the images of these cities had been forming for centuries. But modern times put forward new demands, so the development of the city’s image became a topical question. I would be very pleased to participate in any similar project and as I don’t have any special preferences, there will always be challenging problems for me. The city’s image directly depends on the quality of decisions in the spheres of architecture, transport, public facilities and the places of interest. Only considerate, balanced approach, based upon all the modern tendencies and demands, can make the city comfortable and, as a result, attractive. The opposite situation occurs in cities with chaotic structures and processes, such units force the people out, reject them. The city-dwellers give a lot of energy away to resist these powers. Handling the apparent problems should be first and foremost in this situation (the homeless, stray pets, traffic-jams, garbage). Seeing stray dogs near the metro makes it very difficult to discuss fashionable interiors. But the resolution of these issues does not depend on the designers or architects. On the other hand, life in a comfortable and picture-postcard city gives designers and architects motivation to search for solutions that will bring the already existing inventions to perfection. New energy commodities, environmentally appropriate technologies, cybernation, new methods of communication and many other directions of research reveal great opportunities before industrial designers. The evolution of modern cities “beyond Stone Age” demands their active participation and, in turn, has great impact on the style, the morphogenesis and the engineering solutions.
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Problems and their solutions.
Transport is the main problem of a city. The appearance of cars brought on new challenges. At the very beginning they interfered with the movement of carriages and pedestrians, creating disturbance situations because of the lack of road regulations. Later, ecological problems and traffic jams occurred. The near future is preparing a pressing conflict between humans and clever machines. But the car as an item of everyday use became the accumulator of all the modern achievements in the provinces of science and technology. With the help of cars we can erase the boundaries between work, home and places of entertainment. Modern cars have already become a microhabitat, as the driver spends an enormous amount of time at the wheel. The improvement of car-interior is the main concern of designers. Film theaters, music systems, computers, global positioning systems, comfortable passenger compartments, suitable for both long and short journeys, apart from many other issues, are the matters of primary concern to modern industrial designers. These are the subject-matters of the interior. But the challenges connected with the exterior of these processes can’t be denied. The city and the transport exist in close interaction and this produces plenty of issues as, for example, parking space, excessive amount of traffic, ecology… Moreover, the city’s car-owners are offered special entertainment such as drive-in cinemas, restaurants, street racing at night, which just proves that the car took the honorable leadership in the list of modern life’s essential apanages.
In my opinion, the main problem of cities is their rapid growth. The centripetal force makes millions of people desert their home towns in search of new opportunities, as a result, the flow of migrants grows with such speed, that the cities don’t have time to react to these changes. The popularity increases and, in turn, disrupts all processes; prices rise which is followed by the stratification of society. This is characteristic of countries with a pronounced vertical power structure, with only one predominant center (like, for example, in Mexico City, Moscow, Tokyo etc). As it strikes me, a good illustration of an intelligent solution of this problem is the town-planning strategy of Germany. For example, Cologne, Bonn and Dusseldorf are three autonomous cities with a population ranging from 300 thousand (Bonn) to two million (Cologne) and a great number of surrounding small towns. The journey from one town to another may take 20 minutes which makes the symbiosis convenient and reasonable. And the decentralization creates suitable environment for each of the towns to expand independently so they are free from the overflow of population, therefore, have small need to restructure their system. 
for SALON Magazine, Feb 2007
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