Nikita Shangin

There are architects who invent art projects. The value of such projects is similar to that of posters. They can be beautiful, but they're not deep. There are architects who forms the core of the profession. They build. Everything that Belov and I have contrived for the Bolshoy Theatre is so far only posters. Well, perhaps not everything. Or everything I've invented, maybe. As for actual development of the project, that's in the hands of Nikita Shangin. In our office he is the main architect for the project for the reconstruction of the Bolshoy Theatre.

He started to work as a restorer. He took part in the working-out of the first object to be restored and reconstructed in Moscow - the restoration of the complex of Shkol'naya Street. That was a unique job, involving restoration, reconstruction, and town planning.

In Shangin - an architect who is sincere, inventive, conscientious - you won't find the narrow specialisation, conservatism, and helplessness when it comes to working with new forms - that is so typical for the most of restorers. He solves wittly and delicately the most complicated problems of town planning arising from the coexistence of old and modern buildings or involving the complex reconstruction of the existing quaters. For the Bolshoy project this experience is of immense importance. Nikita is one of those architects who is capable of guiding a project from the first sketches to a complete building with minimal losses while preserving the freedom and energy of the first spatial ideas.

Today Shangin is a project manager for the Bolshoy Theatre project.

In the midst of complicated, dissonant, and sometimes scandalous clashes of interests, his job is to find measured solutions. And he finds them.

Mikhail Khazanov