The Russian architect Sergei Tchoban’s triptych is an architectural fantasy on themes relating to architecture and architectural drawing of the Russian Avantgarde period. Tchoban is well-known for his fantasy drawings and has exhibited widely, including at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. He is also one of the world’s most important private collectors of architectural drawings and has designed and built a museum in Berlin to exhibit them.

The Architect
Sergei Tchoban was born in St Petersburg where he studied architecture at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1991 he moved to Berlin where he eventually became a principal of the firm nps tchoban voss, and in 2006 opened a Russian architectural offices based in Moscow called SPEECH; both are large and successful practices. In 2010, Tchoban was curator of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Tchoban is interested in architectural drawing as both a practitioner and collector. As an architectural draughtsman-artist, he specialises in mainly fantasy drawings, often portrayed in his favourite medium of charcoal. The theme of the drawings often are linked to his Russian background in terms of historical association, politics and style. In 2001, he began to seriously collect historic architectural drawings and has since built up a major collection, many pieces of great importance especially in the area of Russian post-1917 Avantgarde and Leninist periods. In 2013, he opened the Museum of Architectural Drawing in Berlin, a small but very fine five-storey building which he designed to display his collection and hold exhibitions of architectural drawing.

The Drawing
Architect’s workshop, triptych is a work consisting of three sheets drawn in charcoal. The sheets are arranged to make a triptych not in the typical altar formation, but irregularly, with elements moving between all three sheets to make a ‘join’. Sergei Tchoban, in a letter (28 April 2016), explained the drawing:
‘The idea of this drawing came from different directions. Here is the first one: I’m convinced that the modern architecture unfolds its effect most clearly by the contrast to the built surrounding from the past. Every architectural time period leaves its mark that way: layers stacked one above the other – like the ultra-modern horizontal skyscrapers in Lissitzky style over the typical buildings of the Stalin era on my drawing. The second one: it’s the working atmosphere of an architect’s studio portrayed here, where projects, models and built reality, which one can see through the window, are mixed as they are visionary mixed in the architect’s mind. And finally the third one: according to a legend there was a plan to built [sic] a pantheon-like congress hall in the head of the Lenin statue, which had to top the Palace of the Soviets (the project has never been realised). The drawing unites models like this, in the same way as in Moscow the constructivist past and the neoclassical past intermingle reflecting in the architect’s mind.’