Dr. Crisis, or How We Learn to Stop Faking and Kill the Microrayon

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Dr. Crisis or: How We Learn to Stop Faking and Kill the Microrayon

Nat Chamayeva Olga Sarapulova

Dr. Crisis or: How We Learn to Stop Faking and Kill the Microrayon

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them” Albert Einstein theoretical physicist

In the beginning of our research, the interim purpose of our studio was to define a win-win model for low-cost housing in Moscow. So, we started with a study of the Microrayon, the existing model for mass housing in Moscow, by looking at the preconditions for its emergence long before prefabricated panels became its flesh. After learning about Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev’s housing reform and the first Microrayons, we moved on to more recent developments, until we found ourselves in the present filled with the same Microrayons with a slightly fancier façade. Having taken that journey, we were left with nothing. Microrayon appeared to be the best shot on the market, and sales figures implied that customers were happy with it. Still, something was terribly wrong about it, and it had something to do with the quality of life embedded in it. So, we decided to go deeper, changed the purpose of our studio to promotion of sustainable quality of life (of which affordable housing is only part) and started from scratch. First, we examined the systemic restructuring of Russian society after the Soviet era, and what it did to mass housing. There we discovered a chaotic interpolation of trends, which seemed contradictory on the surface, but turned to have logic inside. Gradually, a broader picture of mass housing crisis and its systemic causes distilled in our minds. (Part 1. Stripping the Microrayon. Tractatus Logico-Vitalis) From there we left with a question: How does this ongoing crisis affect the quality of citizens’ lives and their cost of living? We had to find a way to make invisible things visible. So, the next step was to forecast what would happen to the mass housing system if all its major trends and controversies remained perfectly intact for the next

10-15 years. We identified key trends and projected their trajectory in the near future. The result was a sharp and powerful picture of an “Inertial Future” waiting around the corner unless something big happened. What could that be? (Part 2. Existing Trends and the Inertial Future) Our next move was to take a powerful factor affecting many layers in the existing context and see what would happen if it was removed from the picture. We modeled a scenario for mass housing, in which the absence of such a factor caused another crisis, and discovered that it would result in an “Alternative Future” with completely different features. But how would we get there without the pain of going through another crisis? (Part 3. An Alternative Future and How to Get There) When we more closely examined the interim steps of an Alternative Future scenario, we discovered that some of them already have prototypes in the existing system of mass housing in Russia. And the ones that are (yet) missing belong to emerging and potential market spaces. These are all promising seeds of development that are tentative and vulnerable at present, but may be exactly what is needed to make a more sustainable quality of life possible. Promoting, connecting, enhancing and accelerating them will drive a fundamental change of the housing system and set a new benchmark for the quality of life in Moscow. In the long run, this is the death of the Microrayon. No need to call on Dr. Crisis ever again. (Part 4. Skipping the Crisis. Design of Public Awareness). So in the end, the final goal of our research was to start a public awareness campaign delivering the results of our research, of which this publication is already a start.

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