AB CHVOYA

Architectural bureau "CHVOYA" is a well tempered studio for subtle architectural design. Three of us founded it in 2015, having already been doing stuff together for a decade or so in http://www.quiet-time.ru/ . We love our office. A room in which an architectural bureau resides influences its product in many ways. Scale is one such. We like being small. We like the simple relations that emerge between few architects, with design process as comfortable and unimpeded as a hobby. We enjoy this simplicity. We believe in form. Sometimes form follows function. Sometimes form guides function and everything else, us included. Sometimes form gives you more than you are capable of comprehending. We like feeling a certain uncertain about it, not to get to the ultimate bottom of things at once, to leave some for later. We venerate function and life's everyday routine. But what really fills us with awe is a set of functional necessities that sublimates into a human institution. Hence designing rituals is what we like the most. We are attentive to context. We give heed to ancestors, we revere nature, we search for links and clues to know things as they are. Architecture may dissolve in the context, become invisible. We appreciate being invisible. We appeciate changing the surroundings completely as well. It depends. We like a client to be our fellow traveller. Sometimes our clients become our friends. Sometimes our friends become our clients. We prefer human relations, not professional ones. And sometimes we need no clients at all. Just do what we like. Have a bit of free time. Keep small. We never were particularly business-like anyway.