14 Fast Questions to Dmitry Sivak

Architect and designer Dmitry Sivak almost every day tells on his Facebook* page how not to design interiors, publishing photos of interiors with paper dinosaurs as decoration and bathrooms in the most unexpected places.

We decided to learn more about Dmitry's approach to work and views on a good interior, so we offered him to answer our questions. By the way, we learned a lot of interesting things.

Is there a recipe for the perfect interior?

There are no bad or perfect layouts and interiors. For different clients, there will be a different ideal layout solving their specific tasks in the same initial apartment. Each perfect interior is an interior that solves the specific client's tasks. We can only judge and criticize the external appearance if we don't know all of a person's wishes. An interior can be visually terrible, but the person lives well there because it was made for him.

How to distinguish a good interior from a bad one?

There are two ways. First: cut out this little house shape, walk with it extended in your hand and squinting. If the little house fits into the interior, then the interior is bad.

Second: spend several years on Pinterest — and let every interior be commented by someone who has taste. Over time, when reviewing gigabytes of photos, you will begin to understand what is original and what is often reused and not worth the effort to invent. If there's little of your own taste, a mentor is important — with him, you'll learn faster.

Trends in design that particularly inspire you?

Magazine collections of fresh trends — this is a list of techniques that a good designer tries to forget for the near future. Trends are picked up by all designers at once, and an original initial technique becomes so popular that it doesn't improve but rather homogenizes the interior. If you see that a technique appears in two projects, no matter how much you want to apply it, you must show strength of character and not use it in your own work.

No one would dare to do a filling or remove an appendix themselves, but with designers everyone is ready to argue and point out. Designer / architect / decoration idol?

In our totalitarian sect, we are forbidden from creating idols for ourselves. The judgment day is coming. Anyone can sometimes make a mistake or do weak work. When you create an idol for yourself, you start perceiving any of their actions as a significant milestone in the author's development. I like many people, but I try not to 'cling' so that I can assess new works with a detached perspective.

Design: Sivak + partners

Techniques in design that we should forget about for a long time?

We should stop making interiors 'as if.' As if an old Italian restaurant, as if a real loft, as if retro 50s. Theatricality and stagecraft accompany most interiors in the CIS.

How do you find so many photos of strange interiors you post on your Facebook?

My kind, gentle, trembling heart is open to the breath of beauty.

Which interior has terrified you most recently?

This one. I didn't know where to post it for a long time, but now I've found.

What inspires you?

I will quote myself from an article eight years old.

There is no inspiration. It's much easier to come up with and design when you know or at least believe that you can do it at any moment. You need to be able to come up with ideas anytime and under any conditions, but it's hard to learn this for those who are infected by the myth of 'inspiration.' Forget about it. You were deceived throughout your previous life. Inspiration does not exist. It's very hard to start a project if you think that first the heavens must open up, and from there Muse in the form of Zaha Hadid must place a golden tool — a pencil — into your bright palm. Forget about these hidden fantasies.

You were deceived throughout your previous life. Inspiration does not exist.

You can come up with ideas everywhere and always. Don't wait for inspiration or some special mental state or just a mood. It may not fit with your idea of refined and elevated creative process, but the less you associate yourself with a creative nature in a hat like an artist, the easier it will be for you to come up with and design.

3 items that must be in any interior?

I heard that a floor lamp always adds comfort. See, how it became cozy right here? And the business conversation took on a different tone.

And here there is no floor lamp, and almost nothing else. Which interior do you like more? Of course, this is an exaggeration, but there are no three items that must be inserted everywhere.

How can you quickly transform an interior?

The first answer on the language of circles — repaint. But this doesn't necessarily make the interior better.

Honestly, I almost never refine others' interiors. And it's not snobbery — not because I don't want to improve someone else's project with their philosophy (though that is also true), but simply because people today often don't want to change anything in parts, but instead create a new interior all at once.

You wake up in a hundred years, and all around are interiors with cornices. The same technique, but the meaning will be different.

This is also helped by modern design, which, unlike classic design, does not invite people to fill it and add items year by year. Of course, our countries are still poor, but people often move to a new place or are already so bored with everything that they want to change everything, not gradually transform it.

But if you must answer your question, the answer will be very boring: buy some decor, change a couple of side tables, print new posters, make a human out of chestnuts.

via GIPHY

And the most reliable way to ruin it?

Design the interior yourself. No one would dare to do a filling or remove an appendix themselves, but with designers everyone is ready to argue and point out, and it doesn't depend on the client's budget. Both poor and rich people like to design something for themselves.

What techniques are taboo for you?

Design is communication. Through it, the designer, either his client, or all together communicate with the world. Techniques can be seen as words. Prohibiting techniques is equal to banning some words. I hate cornices on curtains. But this interior is not bad because cornices are bad, but because of what they want to say with this interior.

In a hundred years, a hipster from the future will take these curtains as a joke, quote, sarcasm or reflection in geometry. His example will be taken up by other hipsters. And you wake up in a hundred years, and all around are interiors with such curtains. The same technique, but the meaning will be different.

Your main principle in work?

I must remember this day and this work three years from now and not feel like I wasted time in my only life. Today everything may seem important, urgent and significant. But three years or ten years from now, will this product and this routine still carry the same value for me? If not, then don't do it.

Design: Sivak + partners

3 tips for a beginner designer?

Don't go to a studio with bad work, hoping that any experience is good. Start making a quality portfolio already from the first course.

Don't think that the time in academy doesn't count and good work must be done later.

Study and develop yourself like a madman, from 20 to 30 years old.

After that, it's almost useless. It's not acceptable and uncomfortable for many to say this, but the strength of your brain will gradually and imperceptibly decline after 25.

*Meta Platforms, Facebook and Instagram are recognized by the Russian court as extremist organizations, the activities of which are prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.