GIRLS WILL BUILD CITIES

Our guest today is Tatyana Khaiman, the creator and current director of Arts School #6, Children’s Architecture and Design Alternative (DA-DA) which celebrated its tenth anniversary last year.

- Tatyana, what were the beginnings of DA-DA? Who were its first instructors and students?

- The idea of creating a School of Architecture and Design was conceived about 12 years ago, and then just an ordinary occasion gave us an impetus to try and put it into practice: my husband, Vadim Khaiman, returned home from an International Symposium of Designers and brought our children a wonderful set of colored building blocks. They were delighted building “fantastic cities”, but what they finally had was dull white boxes all looking very much like those dull white boxes that all our children have to see in our city. But there is world architecture by Gaudi and Schehtel, Tatlin and Lisetsky, so we were anxious to introduce the children of our city to these amazing pieces of world culture.

After we gave an announcement, 45 children of 7 to 9 and a few career architects, artists and designers inspired by our idea came to the House of Architects. Now we have 265 students (children and teenagers) and the teaching staff that has raised to 13.

- How does your school differ from the other arts school in the city?

- I wouldn’t like to compare DA-DA with the other arts schools in the city, as they all engage in so much needed, noble activities. What we are trying to do is form a specific thinking pattern that combines artistic and design components. We are trying to provide children and teenagers with not just some fixed subject knowledge but rather with a capacity for creative change and new patterns of professional behavior in unusual situations.

So our graduates do not really have to continue their education in art colleges, as only those choose to become career architects or designers who just can’t help it. What’s more important is that in whatever area they will work in future they will be creators rather than just performers.

- Your students’ works have been displayed at exhibitions held in many large cities. What did experts say about them?

- Our work cannot be compared with that of teachers at similar schools in such cities as Nizhny Novgorod, St.Petersburg, or Moscow with their wealth of architectural monuments which children can see and touch. But we are trying to fill this gap with the help of books, video films, slides, and, of course, our highly skilled, enthusiastic teachers. As for diplomas, we’ve got plenty, received both at national and city exhibitions. Children are incredibly talented. We have long-standing links with Russia’s Union of Architects and Union of Designers, and some art colleges.

- Both girls and boys go to DA-DA school. Who do you think does better?

- We have 54 percent of girls and 46 percent of boys. I can say for sure that the girls do better. They are more flexible, active thinkers. They have more awards than the boys. However, if we look at the most renowned, successful architects and designers we’ll see very few females there. Why is it so?

I won’t break new ground here if I say that any woman is, above all, a mother and a home fires keeper, and unless nature invents something different, women will always face the hard choice between their career and family, thus helping men advance creatively.

Such are the facts, but it’s obvious that more and more women are now getting empowered. And probably, in the years to

come more women, including our graduates, will become celebrity architects and designers.

- Tatyana, what is your most cherished dream?

- To raise my grandchildren! I want them to be good and honest, and I want to help them realize their life ambitions. My other, professional dream is to set up an Institute of Architecture and Design.

Inna Beltsova

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