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  • WE ARE MAMA RO!

    Chistye Prudy Chronicle
    Every day, the project’s audience interacts with the products of Mama Ro: through the platforms, website and the studios themselves. Including the interior design studio and furniture workshop. However, few people imagine that behind all of this is the hard work and talent of many people, including artists, engineers, designers, architects, cleaners, managers, poets, visionaries, stonecutters, woodworkers, electronic engineers, enthusiasts with even lazy guys and many, many others. Read about all these people in the new material by Mama Ro.
    FOREWORD

    We are Mama Ro!

    FOREWORD

    We are
    Mama Ro!

    This chronicle appeared by chance. At the beginning, we just wanted to gather everyone in a common photo with an oak. But time passed, and the number of iconic people for the project exceeded fifty. Plus, given the fact that all the people are dispersed throughout different cities and countries, the idea of getting together on a clear summer day to be photographed on the branches of a century-old oak turned out to be an impossible task.

    Then we divided the idea into two parts. We decided to get the entire actual staff in the photo and to talk about those without whom Mama Ro wouldn’t be Mama Ro in the classical way: portraits and descriptions. This actually turned out to be incredibly boring...

    So, began the laborious work on the chronicle: selection of photos, interviews with participants, search and clarification of dates. The collection of material began to create a valuable portrait of the era. And this chronicle was born.

    Today we talk about the most interesting in our project: the synergy of characters and talents, friendship and mutual assistance, coincidences and chance encounters, fooling around and prophetic dreams. In one word, describing the people who create Mama Ro.

    INDEX

    Heroes

    This index performs two tasks: Everyone who is interested in Mama Ro's project sees its heroes and visualises the heroes of the chronicle where many of which have the same name. The latter also makes it easier to navigate the text: look at a few tips on the left on how you can conveniently use the index while reading.

    Among the heroes of the index, there are also three founders of the project. Not that they claimed a place in this pantheon, but are there for the same navigation convenience. At the same time, there are three other important heroes (we could not add them into history because of the confidentiality of their service). Let them be mentioned at least here anonymously.

    And the last one. When we remembered everyone, who is dear to Mama Ro, we realized that there are still a great number of people who, even though went through the project on a tangent, also made their modest contribution to it. Some will be mentioned in the chronicles on occasion. And at the end, we will try to remember and thank everyone by name.

    Tips
    Click on the index to read about the character you want who are in the chronicles.
    Click on the verse to the left of the paragraph to see its characters and where else they are mentioned.
    Click on the hero’s icon to read more about him or her in the Heroes section.
    Click to return. Here you can find the history of your three previous clicks.
    «So that human events may not be effaced by time, and the great and marvelous deeds». Herodotus
    INTRODUCTION

    At Roxana’s Mother’s

    pring 2011, Yulia finishes the construction work in a rented room on the Vodootvodny channel. Torn wallpaper, newly plastered walls, a sculpted and dark varnished parquet. A dilapidated window patched by a plane tool. Everything is done carefully, with her own hands. And a minimum of furniture: a bed, a table, a chair, a working iMac, and around it all, a pencil box of clean, white, three-meter-long walls stretching to the ceiling. With a window looking out into spring sky and old-brick Moscow. On the street and around the corner the Moscow Kremlin is seen across the bridge.
    Heroes
    Time will pass, the guys will recall Yulia’s work frequently while working on the project. The small forty cubes of space snatched from the Zamoskvorechye used to be the walls of the warehouse of the Supplier of His Imperial Majesty P. Smirnov. In the 20th century it would be used as communal apartments and just like the creation of the world, the project’s history will start to grow from here. In the eyes of the founding fathers of the project, Yulia's work is a proto-construction and it opens up a whole series of events leading to the birth of Mama Ro.
    Heroes
    April 12, 2011, Dolgoprudny. Dima while listening to the songs of Milana is completing the development of an identity for Coltmedia, a company invented by Tolya and Denis. Tolya and Denis rent a workshop on Armenian Lane from the artist Sasha Povzner and work all day in Kitay-Gorod. They conduct focus groups on how to sell the online conference to Heineken. On the same day, the day of cosmonautics is celebrated in Russia, and Yulia invites her former classmate Anton, who helped her, among others, with the construction, to see the exposition in the Polytechnic Museum in Kitay-Gorod.
    Heroes
    Dima finishes the layout and comes to Tolya and Denis to present the business cards and a logo. He recommends the guys to do a short promotional cartoon for Heineken instead of a “boring presentation”, following the example of Red Bull or Reach Access Plus toothbrush. Tolya recalls that his classmate Anton made a cartoon with his friend when they were at school. He sends him a short message on a social network platform and, together with Denis, leaves the Armenian Lane to have lunch in cheburechnaya on Pokrovka. In the same moment, after leaving the Polytechnic Museum, Julia and Anton come to the cheburechnaya on Pokrovka for lunch.
    Heroes
    Six months later, on the night of October 3, 2011, a fire devastates a local bathhouse in Anton’s village, It burns in front of his eyes and four hours later it burns down completely. It turned out that it was an issue of an overheated stove. The bathhouse belonged to a friend of his father, and upon returning to Moscow, Anton writes a post about the intention to temporarily rent his workshop in Kitay-Gorod. It was imperative to get the rental money in order to collect and pay 250,000 rubles to the owner of the bathhouse.
    The workshop on Kitay-Gorod, announced by Anton as a sublease, is located in Maliy Ivanovsky Lane in a pre-revolutionary building near Khitrovskaya Square. Half a year ago, when by some chance the cheburechnaya on Pokrovka united the guys together, the basement floor was empty in this building. During the work on the promotional cartoon for Coltmedia, Anton, Tolya, Masha, Yulya, and Zlata begin to be friends and, inspired by Yulia’s work, they rent and equip their own creative space. During the fire at the bathhouse these, friends have already rented the entire floor.
    Heroes
    October 12, 2011, right here, in Maly Ivanovsky Lane, Anton, Yulia, Roxana, Tolya and Masha drink tea in Zlata’s workshop and talk about the movie “Rain Man” in relation to the idea of starting their own business and selling “at least cars”, as did the Tom Cruise’s character. “Aram opened a hostel in Seoul today!” - Anton suddenly recalls the morning post of a common friend from South Korea. “Exactly, let's open the hostel too!” says a voice that the group picks up. “Yeah, and let's call him ‘At Mother Roxanne’. The participants of the conversation don’t remember who exactly said this but the highest probability indicates it was most likely Zlata. Everybody laughs.
    Heroes
    Ro appeared at the origins of the project as imperceptibly as one day she appeared living in New York. With the organic nature of Roxanne, this was no surprise to anyone. As the rain doesn’t ask when to start and stop, and the sun to look out or hide, Ro just appeared on the threshold of the boiling construction site of Anton and Tolya who were covered with a thick layer of construction dust. She was laughing, chirping stories and disappeared again in the summer day.
    Heroes
    On one of these days, when Anton, Yulia and Tolya were just finishing up equipping a workshop, Ro brings to the Maly Ivanovsky her mother. Her mother was a practicing psychologist in finding new space for her work, and Anton and Tolya helped her rent the last remaining room on the floor. Roxana's mom and the guys become neighbors.
    Heroes
    Meanwhile, in between these dates when Anton watches the bathhouse burn down and returns to Moscow, and Zlata who for the first time, pronounces the name of the future project over a cup of tea, a week passes. Anton’s post about the sublet of the workshop space was in great demand, was selected as one of the recommended posts of the VK (VKontakte – a Russian social network) and pops up in the Volodya’s iPhone somewhere in the Nikolskaya street. Volodya is not yet familiar with these guys. They have no common friends in the social network platform.
    Heroes
    At the same time, Tolya, inspired by the very high conversion of the post about renting a workshop, says to the guys right away, “jokes aside, right on the knee…” and he takes out a calculator and using the time span of a summer construction, estimates the possible costs and profits of a “At Roxana’s Mother’s” hostel. Anton and Zlata develop the idea of the name and are already coming up with a place where to hand a doorbell at “Roxana’s Mother’s”. Everyone laughs because the nominal name of Roxana's mom who rarely appears on Maly Ivanovsky. She has imperceptibly settled in everyone’s mind and turned into a muse of the place. The friends discover a workable economic solution on Tolya’s calculator.
    Heroes
    Four months later after drinking tea at Zlata’s three giant icebergs broke off from a glacier somewhere in Antarctica and melted down. One was the size of Greenland, the second – of New York, and the largest – Chistye Prudy. It’s February in Moscow and the streets are nasty. Anton, Volodya and Tolya are already good friends. It was Volodya who became the tenant later. They come to the studio to warm up and for the first time they discuss the presentation of the project “At Roxana’s Mother”. The idea the came as a joke while drinking tea in the fall, then matured and took a firm place in the minds of the three friends. The project gets its first breath. In the same evening, its name becomes a laconic "Mama Ro".
    Heroes
    Young group of friends in full force. Along with Ro. From left to right: Volodya Nizovtsev, Anton Kozlov, Roxana Kadyrova, Masha and Tolya Smirnov.
    March 23, 2012, Vodootvodny channel. In Yulia’s room, the guys prepare the first illustrations drawn by Uncle Pasha, Anton's father. He helps son to find an artistic solution for the future presentation of Mama Ro. At the same time, Uncle Pasha is in the last stages of his life due to his cancer. As always, he manages to continue jogging and do sports, to joke and to laugh, furthermore, he helps his son and wishes the guys success. Later, during the exhausting construction works, the great strength of spirit of Uncle Pasha will be remembered more than once and will serve as an example to these friends.
    Heroes
    INTRODUCTION

    At Roxana’s Mother’s

    pring 2011, Yulia finishes the construction work in a rented room on the Vodootvodny channel. Torn wallpaper, newly plastered walls, a sculpted and dark varnished parquet. A dilapidated window patched by a plane tool. Everything is done carefully, with her own hands. And a minimum of furniture: a bed, a table, a chair, a working iMac, and around it all, a pencil box of clean, white, three-meter-long walls stretching to the ceiling. With a window looking out into spring sky and old-brick Moscow. On the street and around the corner the Moscow Kremlin is seen across the bridge.
    Heroes
    Time will pass, the guys will recall Yulia’s work frequently while working on the project. The small forty cubes of space snatched from the Zamoskvorechye used to be the walls of the warehouse of the Supplier of His Imperial Majesty P. Smirnov. In the 20th century it would be used as communal apartments and just like the creation of the world, the project’s history will start to grow from here. In the eyes of the founding fathers of the project, Yulia's work is a proto-construction and it opens up a whole series of events leading to the birth of Mama Ro.
    Heroes
    April 12, 2011, Dolgoprudny. Dima while listening to the songs of Milana is completing the development of an identity for Coltmedia, a company invented by Tolya and Denis. Tolya and Denis rent a workshop on Armenian Lane from the artist Sasha Povzner and work all day in Kitay-Gorod. They conduct focus groups on how to sell the online conference to Heineken. On the same day, the day of cosmonautics is celebrated in Russia, and Yulia invites her former classmate Anton, who helped her, among others, with the construction, to see the exposition in the Polytechnic Museum in Kitay-Gorod.
    Heroes
    Dima finishes the layout and comes to Tolya and Denis to present the business cards and a logo. He recommends the guys to do a short promotional cartoon for Heineken instead of a “boring presentation”, following the example of Red Bull or Reach Access Plus toothbrush. Tolya recalls that his classmate Anton made a cartoon with his friend when they were at school. He sends him a short message on a social network platform and, together with Denis, leaves the Armenian Lane to have lunch in cheburechnaya on Pokrovka. In the same moment, after leaving the Polytechnic Museum, Julia and Anton come to the cheburechnaya on Pokrovka for lunch.
    Heroes
    Six months later, on the night of October 3, 2011, a fire devastates a local bathhouse in Anton’s village, It burns in front of his eyes and four hours later it burns down completely. It turned out that it was an issue of an overheated stove. The bathhouse belonged to a friend of his father, and upon returning to Moscow, Anton writes a post about the intention to temporarily rent his workshop in Kitay-Gorod. It was imperative to get the rental money in order to collect and pay 250,000 rubles to the owner of the bathhouse.
    The workshop on Kitay-Gorod, announced by Anton as a sublease, is located in Maliy Ivanovsky Lane in a pre-revolutionary building near Khitrovskaya Square. Half a year ago, when by some chance the cheburechnaya on Pokrovka united the guys together, the basement floor was empty in this building. During the work on the promotional cartoon for Coltmedia, Anton, Tolya, Masha, Yulya, and Zlata begin to be friends and, inspired by Yulia’s work, they rent and equip their own creative space. During the fire at the bathhouse these, friends have already rented the entire floor.
    Heroes
    October 12, 2011, right here, in Maly Ivanovsky Lane, Anton, Yulia, Roxana, Tolya and Masha drink tea in Zlata’s workshop and talk about the movie “Rain Man” in relation to the idea of starting their own business and selling “at least cars”, as did the Tom Cruise’s character. “Aram opened a hostel in Seoul today!” - Anton suddenly recalls the morning post of a common friend from South Korea. “Exactly, let's open the hostel too!” says a voice that the group picks up. “Yeah, and let's call him ‘At Mother Roxanne’. The participants of the conversation don’t remember who exactly said this but the highest probability indicates it was most likely Zlata. Everybody laughs.
    Heroes
    Ro appeared at the origins of the project as imperceptibly as one day she appeared living in New York. With the organic nature of Roxanne, this was no surprise to anyone. As the rain doesn’t ask when to start and stop, and the sun to look out or hide, Ro just appeared on the threshold of the boiling construction site of Anton and Tolya who were covered with a thick layer of construction dust. She was laughing, chirping stories and disappeared again in the summer day.
    Heroes
    On one of these days, when Anton, Yulia and Tolya were just finishing up equipping a workshop, Ro brings to the Maly Ivanovsky her mother. Her mother was a practicing psychologist in finding new space for her work, and Anton and Tolya helped her rent the last remaining room on the floor. Roxana's mom and the guys become neighbors.
    Heroes
    Meanwhile, in between these dates when Anton watches the bathhouse burn down and returns to Moscow, and Zlata who for the first time, pronounces the name of the future project over a cup of tea, a week passes. Anton’s post about the sublet of the workshop space was in great demand, was selected as one of the recommended posts of the VK (VKontakte – a Russian social network) and pops up in the Volodya’s iPhone somewhere in the Nikolskaya street. Volodya is not yet familiar with these guys. They have no common friends in the social network platform.
    Heroes
    At the same time, Tolya, inspired by the very high conversion of the post about renting a workshop, says to the guys right away, “jokes aside, right on the knee…” and he takes out a calculator and using the time span of a summer construction, estimates the possible costs and profits of a “At Roxana’s Mother’s” hostel. Anton and Zlata develop the idea of the name and are already coming up with a place where to hand a doorbell at “Roxana’s Mother’s”. Everyone laughs because the nominal name of Roxana's mom who rarely appears on Maly Ivanovsky. She has imperceptibly settled in everyone’s mind and turned into a muse of the place. The friends discover a workable economic solution on Tolya’s calculator.
    Heroes
    Four months later after drinking tea at Zlata’s three giant icebergs broke off from a glacier somewhere in Antarctica and melted down. One was the size of Greenland, the second – of New York, and the largest – Chistye Prudy. It’s February in Moscow and the streets are nasty. Anton, Volodya and Tolya are already good friends. It was Volodya who became the tenant later. They come to the studio to warm up and for the first time they discuss the presentation of the project “At Roxana’s Mother”. The idea the came as a joke while drinking tea in the fall, then matured and took a firm place in the minds of the three friends. The project gets its first breath. In the same evening, its name becomes a laconic "Mama Ro".
    Heroes
    Young group of friends in full force. Along with Ro. From left to right: Volodya Nizovtsev, Anton Kozlov, Roxana Kadyrova, Masha and Tolya Smirnov.
    March 23, 2012, Vodootvodny channel. In Yulia’s room, the guys prepare the first illustrations drawn by Uncle Pasha, Anton's father. He helps son to find an artistic solution for the future presentation of Mama Ro. At the same time, Uncle Pasha is in the last stages of his life due to his cancer. As always, he manages to continue jogging and do sports, to joke and to laugh, furthermore, he helps his son and wishes the guys success. Later, during the exhausting construction works, the great strength of spirit of Uncle Pasha will be remembered more than once and will serve as an example to these friends.
    Heroes
    FIRST PART

    Construction Era

    n May 12, 2012, after several unsuccessful attempts to attract an investor, Tolya, Anton and Volodya, put aside the completed presentation and start the Mama Ro project on their own. They rent a small space at Spiridonovskaya, buy plaster, tools and start the very first construction in Mama Ro’s history. Just like Yulia at the very beginning, and then in Maly Ivanovsky, with their own hands. The guys have almost no money, they have to scrape and borrow. Dima Trusov, Aydar, Zlata, Yulia and Lena help out. The project only needs to define a studio format which will be born in the construction process.
    May 20, 2012, 2:09AM, immediately after the demolition of the walls. The next day, it would be decided to leave everything as it is: two spacious studios instead of rooms. At that moment, all subsequent Mama Ro studios were born.
    .
    Heroes
    May 27, 2012, there is a festive table set in the space of the future Studio 1: stacked bags of plaster laid over each other. There is a navy-style pasta (Russian dish made of cooked pasta mixed with stuffing made of stewed ground meat), a rice salad with onions, shrimp and eggs, bread and three different ice cream flavors on the "table". Volodya’s mom, Nadejda Alekseevna, doesn’t allow the comrades to die of hunger. The guys go out for Coke and forget to buy disposable cutlery, so they will have to improvise with a grinder’s key. It’s Volodya's birthday.
    Heroes
    The end of June. Sun rays creep along the newly laid, varnished floor of solid pine. Having climbed onto the window sill, Ro jumps into the space of the future Studio 1. There is a pleasant coolness inside and a summer afternoon outside. Ro finds a cut-off bottom of a plastic bottle, kneads a viscous white paste in it and proceeds to do slow and crazy work: a careful chiseling out of the joints in a large wall of glass blocks.
    Heroes
    After lunch, Alina comes in through the door and takes the baton from Ro. The day is drawing to a close. Masha comes from work and sets a dinner for the guys right there on the floor. It’s the first meal of the day. Ro, Alina, Anton, Volodya and Tolya take a break from work and gather at the “table”. Eating from a floor that is laid with your own hands seems much tastier. Days are running by fast. Yulia, Masha, Roxana, Zlata, Alina, sometimes together, or replace each other, appear, support, and help friends. The struggle for the result acquires a special meaning.
    Heroes
    The support of Yulia, Masha, Zlata, Alina, Roxana holds a lot of meaning for the friends. As Anton recalls, “They worked like hell from morning ‘till night, from bell to bell, non-stop and without days off... and all the work is difficult, in the morning you have to work on your body, otherwise it’s not possible to turn the arm or leg, it hurts everywhere…the second week, everyone felt it at the same time. I weighed 76 kg before the construction work, after it - 67! And the guys lost 10 kg each. Well, this five-year plan fit into 60 days was only possible because the girls saved the men. They would feed us, and since we had no money left at the end, they would then come and help. And we don’t even ask them for help, somehow we do it all by ourselves. At that time, I absolutely admired this sensitivity to our needs, and for the first time I realized what heroism is; when a soul is able to lift and grind everything in its path in spite of any fatigue. With the support of the girls, we felt like real heroes.”
    Heroes
    July 17, 2012, Volodya, Yulia and Anton come to the studios before anyone else. Vartan, who responded to Volodya’s request to help take photos of the studio, comes next. The interior shooting is scheduled for the evening. The cleaning and preparation begin. It’s a warm July rain outside. Shooting is the final step in the construction process, the moment of alienation of the work from the author. In a few hours, the very first two studios of the project will begin an independent life. Two days later and 69 days from the start of construction, on July 19, 2012, the Mama Ro project opens its doors for the first time for guests.
    Heroes
    On the night of July 24, 2012, Alikhan arrives at Kazansky Railway Station at the high-speed train Vladikavkaz-Moscow. There are poems and songs in a green suitcase. House Keys, Zippo, Lucky Strike. Alikhan spent about two years in his small homeland, walking to Massive Attack and Skreamin’ Jay Hawkins across the foothills of Caucasus, tearing wild flowers and scratching a wind song with a pencil until one day he found himself on the steps of the train leaving for the plains. The moon has risen. Night came on Earth. Alikhan lowered the flap putting his face to the stars, lit a cigarette and scooped up a handful of new ideas from the Universe. The train delivered all its rhythms, squeaked loudly and Alikhan found himself in a Moscow night.
    Heroes
    Alikhan calls his friends. He needs to find a place for the night. Anton is on duty at Mama Ro and is occupied with postponed businesses. Studio 1 is empty tonight. The comrades meet at the Patriarch Pond and walk 84 squares
    Here is not the figure of speech, but the figure of the pond itself: the Patriarch Pond in Moscow is really square in shape.
    around the shore, talking life about this and that. It will take another year before their communication can continue again, but for now Anton leaves Alikhan in the studio and runs off on the last train in the metro.
    Heroes
    Night on Earth. Alikhan over Nazran on the eve of his return to Moscow.
    August 5, 2013, Anton Voltman and Nastya Paskute come to Mama Ro at Spiridonovka. Volodya and Anton complete the cleaning in Studio 2. The three of them alternate in pairs to do the cleaning themselves in the newly opened studios and today it was their turn. After finishing with the cleaning, the friends gather together and go from Spiridonovka to the Boulevard Ring, take Yulia with them and head off towards Arbat.
    Heroes
    The starting point for Volodya’s friendship with Anton Voltman and Nastya Paskute, as well as with the guys, was the workshop. Here, even before the start of construction of the first studios, the friends didn’t manage to build a shower room for a long time. In addition, In the spring of 2012, Volodya rents a room in Milyutinsky Lane to spend the nights here, unexpectedly, his neighbor, living in the communal apartments, turns out to be Nastya Paskute. Volodya knows Nastya from school.
    Heroes
    The guys become friends and Nastya introduces Volodya to Anton Voltman. One evening, Volodya recalls, when entering the house on Milyutinsky, “there was an incredibly loud and very infectious laugh in the building... after a moment I see a funny picture: Nastya looks apologetically at me and then at some curly red-haired and very skinny guy holding a garbage bag. Considering its size, it was a little less by weight than the guy himself... Nastya says: Volodya, this is Anton, Anton this is Volodya, my neighbour. The red-haired dude nods in my direction and, having slightly stumbled, very ridiculously jumps down the stairs hugging a bag... being already downstairs he fell down but jumped up cheerfully assuring us that he was ok and disappeared in the doorway...”. It turned out that Anton had deliberately escaped from the party in order to come and help Nastya take out the construction debris.
    Heroes
    Anton Voltman lives in the neighboring Bobrov Lane that is perpendicular to Milyutinsky and the guys become friends. It turns out that Anton and Volodya are united by a common passion in art: in his room in Bobrov Lane, Anton creates large abstract panels on the walls in the spirit of the Russian avant-garde. Volodya’s favorite since childhood El Lissitzky and also Tatlin, Malevich, Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, Konstantin Melnikov in Architecture and Dziga Vertov in Cinematography… In stormy discussions, the friends even start thinking about creating the podcast “Evening Art Talks with Voltman and Nizovtsev ". And after a while, Volodya learns that Anton is friends with a guy named Egor Egorychev who is writing a book about the Melnikov’s house
    The “The House of the Melnikovs: Konstantin and Victor” book, author Egorychev Egor. The publication is supported by the “Moscow that doesn’t exist” project, 2012.
    . Anton promises to introduce Volodya to Egor eventually.
    Heroes
    Friends come up to Arbat where they are met by a tall thin guy with short hair. He’s in a black t-shirt and jeans, as everyone will note and remember, and looks kind of similar to the young Tsoi. He firmly shakes everyone's hand, presents his companion Zhenya and, after lighting a cigarette, invites them into the labyrinth of Arbat lanes. The guys finally get to know Egor.
    Heroes
    The house of the architect Konstantin Melnikov on Krivoarbatsky Lane is a monument of avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century. To get to this house, in August 2012, is not easy as there is a legal dispute between the descendants of the architect and the state. In the eyes of his friends, Egor seems almost like Stalker (a popular Russian character in Russian cinematography) in a world full of the avant-garde. He approaches the dilapidated gate, opens it, and lets them into the courtyard. Ekaterina Viktorovna comes out of the house towards them and greets everyone. She is the granddaughter of Konstantin Melnikov. Egor helps her and supports her in conflict with the authorities. After a short introduction, Ekaterina Viktorovna invites everyone to the house so that Egor can give them a tour and make some tea.
    Heroes
    Melnikov's house consists of two cylinders cut into each other: the first one consists of two floors and the second one of three. It takes some time to walk through it but the way Egor tells the story of the house, as well as his excitement about it, stops time outside the house and launches them into a special, big world where they freely embrace and travel between eras.
    Heroes
    The waste-free production, invented by Melnikov, is the process where not a single construction waste truck was taken out of the house and construction site. There are no additional supporting walls or columns inside the cylinders. According to the architect's design, the floors, in nine-meter round spans, were assembled in the form of a membrane from boards which are set on their ends. There are cozy warming details in the architecture such as, an octagonal window on the west wall which was left by Melnikov due to a slanting beam that penetrated inside the future living room. There is a huge folding window of two and a half meters in height turns the living room into a covered terrace in summer. A heater that heats the house through a system of air ducts hidden within the walls is installed in the foundation of the old building preserved by the architect who lives in the basement. And from a bird’s eye view, the shape of the house forms an infinity sign (or a solar eclipse). All these elements together give them a sense of the time, a relativeness, after visiting the house built in 1929. Thus, begins their friendship with Egor and Zhenya.
    Heroes
    Four months later since August 2012, before the construction of the next studios for Mama Ro. Everything is done for the first time and takes time including paperwork, contracts with agencies, and registration in reservation systems. List: to learn to sell two freshly built studios, to advertise in the devilish interfaces of Yandex Direct and Google AdWords, to resolve failures: with guests, with services, with agents, and even with gangsters. The latter, as it turned out, also rent studios. And the main objective is to pay back the debts to the people who believed in the project: Dima, Aydar, Zlata, Yulia, and Lena. When all of this would be in the past, the next step is to find a place for new studios.
    Heroes
    The place that Tolya and Anton found in mid-November 2012 driving around with a pack of agency offers on the side streets of Moscow. It was a former apartment building built in 1896 at the corner of Ogorodnaya Sloboda and Gusyatnikov lane, near Chistye Prudy. It was built in the nineteenth century! During the 20th century, as in other parts of the USSR, there existed communal apartments (an apartment shared between several unknown people or families). At the beginning of the 21st century there were many communal apartments that were in awful states. Leaking roofs, rotten floors, exposed walls under crumbling plaster shingles. And three-meter tall ceilings. The friends meet the property agent, climb the wide flights of stairs to the third floor and roam enchantedly under the pre-revolutionary stucco molding that has been preserved in some places. This place is something they couldn’t have even dreamed of.
    Heroes
    A week later, it turns out that the place has been sold. A certain merchant bought the queue and made an advance payment for the first month. That was something that the friends couldn’t do as they were collecting the required amount all week. In short, they didn’t make it in time. The planet will take another 31 revolutions around its axis before the unoccupied mansion of the 19th century somewhere in Moscow suddenly returns to the friends. During this time, the guys ride around the city, visit new places, choose and draw layouts, and get agreements on loans. Until one day, it turns out, that the certain merchant doesn’t pay the rent.
    Heroes
    The toponym "Chistye Prudy" (“Clean Ponds”), applied to this part of historical Moscow, does not officially exist. However, this name following the example of “Mama Ro at Patriarch's Ponds” is included in the name of the new Mama Ro, and later in the internal folklore of the project. It is also interesting to notice that there is only one pond at the Patriarch's as well as at Chistye Prudy.
    January 13, 2013, the mansion in Gusyatnikov lane. This is the start of the second construction. It’s winter. It’s cold and it’s snowing. Tolya, with a perforator, lies on the edge of the roof with his feet resting against the base of the almost completely disassembled (by him) chimney. There is a demolition of emergency furnaces currently going on. Downstairs we see someone's car and next to it a building of three floors. The mortar in the pipe is old and the bricks can be removed with a kick. If you accidentally walk out on such a surface, in this case, even a fence at the edge of the slope will not help, as someone took it off for an unknown reason. “It's time to get down” - Tolya decides to make a safety harness, when suddenly someone passes a hand under his back. Pasha, looking out of the dormer window, grabbed Tolya by the belt. Pasha's height (under two meters) and the scope of his arms are just long enough to secure Tolya as he finishes with the chimney.
    Heroes
    It’s hard not to notice Pasha at the construction site. Pasha is the tallest one among the workers, who on January 3, 2013 were brought by a foreman recommended by Zlata, to the construction site at Gusyatnikov. In fact, the acquaintance begins at the very beginning of the construction at two o’clock in the morning. A 10-ton MAZ car loaded with foam blocks just arrived in the yard. Tolya has to wake up the hard workers to go unload the car. There are no conveniences at the construction site, the guys are sleeping right on the floor close to the heater. It’s frosty outside.
    Heroes
    “And so,” Tolya recalls, “you go up, open the door and you see this picture: it's dark, everyone is more or less settled down, sleeping. And only Pasha, with his height, when pulls the blanket up to his head – his legs become exposed. And when he pulls it down – vice versa. The poor fellow isn’t sleeping. But there is nothing to do, get up, guys, - you say - the MAZ has come! Let’s go to unload... and there is silence in response! And only the cheerful voice of Pasha in the dark: ‘Well, hello to you, dear’”. Ironically as the construction goes on, Tolya would repeatedly pay attention and appreciate his permanent involvement in all processes and would become a good companion to Pasha.
    Heroes
    January is coming to an end. The construction of the six new studios is in full swing. Volodya, Tolya, Anton, in pairs, clean and take turns in settling guests in the first two studios. It’s the low season, winter, and, in particular, the hardest selling month of the year which makes the friends fight for each and every client. Either way, the project results in 100% occupancy for January as the studios are built with enthusiasm and love, and guests pay back with their positive reviews. The ideas that hang in the air stayed in their memory was left in the studio by the guys during the first construction. The inspiration from the visit of the Melnikov House and meeting the talented workers: all these give a birth to a new leitmotif to the development of the Mama Ro studio format. Next.
    Heroes
    Valery Fedorovich takes up work on the log bridge
    The internal name of the multimedia center and dock stations is in the 3rd-8th studios.
    at the behest of the heart. This is how he would respond to the request of Yulia to realize their idea: "This is the real work - for the heart." It would take some time to convince Valery Fedorovich to take payment for the work done. A wood master, a geologist and a poet, he believes that working with wood is not a craft but a way to bring the warm, tactile sensations of interaction with natural material to the world’s big cities. Anton asks Yulia to introduce them to Valery Fedorovich who teaches children sculptural carving in an orphanage where Julia works as a volunteer. And already on February 14, 2013, somewhere in the snowy woods in the Mikhnevo village near Moscow, Valery Fedorovich, Yulia and Anton, after eating boiled pearl barley, cut a dry pine using a two-handed saw.
    Heroes
    Start of work on the log bridges. Valery Fedorovich approaches the process without unnecessary preludes, “If we need to do it, then we take a saw and go into the forest.”
    Valery Fyodorovich explains that the brick of 1896, revealed and sandblasted
    Sandblasting is a method of cleaning the surface of paint, old plaster, etc. by supplying a jet of air with sand under high pressure.
    in the new studios, was like swinging the pendulum back to the 20th century. Since people who live in cities gradually evade interaction with nature, they now unconsciously seek to get it back: if not a crust of Borodinsky bread
    A variety of rye bread with caraway seeds that is widespread in Russia.
    , the texture of the baked clay in the picturesque cracks on the old brick, then the brick reminds one of the clay utensils in an ancient dwelling. Hence the global trend of people in large cities creating lofts in former factories.
    Heroes
    The idea of the log bridge also came from the same source: the delight of the combination of two natural textures, wood and baked clay, originates from the workshop in Maliy Ivanovsky lane where even before the project was born, Anton and Volodya, having purchased a pine timber for the rack, invented the second level in their workshop with a non-cylindrical log
    A log that hasn’t undergone factory processing with a milling cutter in order to obtain the same diameter along the entire length.
    . Later on, after meeting Valery Fedorovich, for Anton, this line would result in the creation of the “Moscow” studio and then the “Pine” studio, so Volodya’s acquaintance with Anton Voltman would one day lead to the creation of the “Suprematist” and then the “Melnikov” studio. Ideas wait for their masters.
    Heroes
    Log bridge is a docking station and multimedia center for six new Mama Ro studios.
    Working on a log bridge together with a bark beetle is part of Valery Fedorovich's aesthetic vision. According to him, what nature always offers is best. The result: a bizarre pattern “drawn” by a bark beetle that had spent winter on a dead pine tree, and was left untouched on all the log bridges.
    The search does not last long; Valery Fedorovich calls the forest his second home and easily navigates it. They found what they were looking for, sharpened it with a saw, and a dead pine tree crashed into the frosty snow. There are several months of handmade work ahead.
    In early February, Anton and Yulia arrive by train in the city of Maloyaroslavets, 120 kilometers from Moscow. The blue sky, February arrives, and two jackdaws sit on the statue of the hero who fought the war with Napoleon. Having strayed a little, the friends finally find themselves in front of the gates of the St. Nicholas Chernoostrovsky monastery. Sister Rafaila meets them and takes them for a small tour of the monastery; It was only yesterday that they didn’t know each other. For the creation of a Byzantine mosaic, Volodya had recommended Anton a store with stained glass at the Botanical Garden and here Julia met sister Rafaila.
    Heroes
    It turned out that the nuns who were choosing the glass in the store had already worked out the technology invented by the guys, and instead of smalt
    Deep blue coloured glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Used for making mosaics.
    they were already using colored glass in the mosaic somewhere in the Moscow region. Suddenly, sister Rafaila stops the guys and whispers to them the story of the mother who had just passed by the temple: the mother had stopped walking due to cancer, when suddenly, to the surprise of the doctors, the cancer unexpectedly passed in its final stages.
    Heroes
    Finally, the friends are invited to the workshop and the nuns show them how the mosaics are made with the stained glass. This technology saves money, but Anton is not sure that it is aesthetically justified, so the acquaintance with sister Rafaela seems to be a kind of miracle too: they were at the right time and in the right place, and without starting the complicated expensive process got an opportunity to see how to achieve their desired results. For this, Anton and Julia have come to the monastery.
    Heroes
    The idea to inlay a Byzantine mosaic on brick had also come from a workshop in Maly Ivanovsky. Like the idea of clearing brick walls from plaster, proposed by Yulia in June 2011. The friends partially beat off the brick from the plaster and were fascinated by the aesthetics of the fragments of stucco moulding that had survived under the ceiling: “It would be great to leave it here under the lacquer”. “And also to intersperse it with a couple of fragments of a torn mosaic, like a relic of a bygone era. Just like the mosaic in Hagia Sophia which survived under the Ottoman plaster.” The only difference this time would be that the guys would have to realize the idea themselves.
    Heroes
    The friends return to Moscow, buy a test piece of the stained glass and take it to the glass workshop to try to reduce the gloss with the help of a sandblasting tool. The sisters' mosaic is perfect except the glossy, “glassy” glitter that gives off the imitation. In the meantime, as a replacement for the golden smalt, Volodya has the idea of covering the glass with a metal leaf. The friends make the first test, then take the sandblasted fragment from the glass workshop and get a fully formed puzzle - a real mosaic: the “golden” smalt is different only by using the metal leaf, while the sandblasted colored glass is almost identical to the real smalt by its texture. The friends share the advanced technology with the sisters of St. Nicholas Monastery.
    Heroes
    In the beginning of April 2013, two months later, the last fragment of a seven-meter panel takes its place on the studio wall: Anton, Yulia, Elnura, Elaman, Marcel, Sharif, Turdibek and others gently lift up the plate of the Byzantine mosaic, slowly as not to break it, turn it over on its’ edge and put it in glue. The two months of work are over. Turdibek, the only master of fine jewelry on the team, would need about a week to finish everything, namely, to patch up the crumbling areas and to combine the alternately applied fragments into a single mosaic panel. At the same time, in the future “Suprematist” studio, Anton Voltman completes the work on the avant-garde wall composition while Valery Fedorovich finishes the production of a log-TV
    The internal name of the projection screen in the Old Moscow studio (formerly “Moscow”). More information about it in the studio legend.
    in the interior that would later become the “Moscow” studio.
    Heroes
    Comparison of similarities during the mosaic assembly. The mosaic is conceived as "neopastoral" which is a poetic representation of the Golden Age of Mama Ro, formed in the project during the construction of the first two studios. The guys "plough" (in the literal pastoral and figurative senses), the girls bring comfort. In the photos from left to right: Yulia (she’s cooking on the mosaic), Roxana (playing the shepherd's flute), Zlata (seeing the guys off to the work), Masha (in charge of sea navigation), Volodya, Tolya, Anton are in several scenes at the same time.
    Kostya appears on the threshold of the construction site during its final chords. Tolya turns to Denis and Denis recommends this woodworker named Kostya. In the process of the construction, one of the workers accidentally sandblasted the old door revealing the beauty of the wooden texture
    When treating wood with an air jet with sand under high pressure, the soft fibers of the wood are squeezed out, emphasizing the texture of the tree rings.
    under the layers of paint. And the friends decided to keep all the doors for the time being removing from each the paint in exactly the same way. The time comes either to throw them away or to find a master capable to make a worker's mistake into a work of art.
    Heroes
    Kostya agrees to take up the challenge together with his friend. One day, they come up with an idea to use brass as a decorative element that would complement the texture of the wood and mask any of the flaws such as the holes from the squeezed out knots from sandblasting and the old tie-ins from the locks. The work starts to pick up momentum. The woodworker and restorer in great form, Kostya turns out to be a real artist and a talented actor. "I was amazed by the incredible theatricality of Kostya’s actions... a moving picture in the French studio: materials flying across the entire room - sparks, smoke - combined with the rays of the sun cutting diagonals of volume and resting against freshly plastered walls that resemble an ancient temple, and two titans taming a strange golden beast…," Volodya recalls the work of the guys with brass. Later, when Volodya would propose Kostya to create the original furniture for the Bauhaus studio, Kostya’s talent to turn any craft into a show will surprise the friends on many more occasions.
    Heroes
    The second construction is coming to an end. The woodworkers put the studio doors on hinges, Anton throws out all the unnecessary things in the trash container from the window of the third floor, and Tolya, cursing, runs to get back everything he needs. Sasha Povzner, Denis' friend, gives Tolya the contact information of Aidzharkyn for studio cleaning. Throughout the time span of August 2012 to April 2013 the friends still go to Spiridonovka to clean the first two studios on their own, and Tolya, looking at the thrill with which Anton and Volodya straighten the wrinkles when making the bed is worried that with the growth of the company and delegation of duties all this would be neglected. Aidzharkyn first comes to the construction site with his sister Mahabat and the guys realize that Tolya's fears were not justified. The long work process begins and so does the new friendship of Aidzharkyn and Makhabat with the guys.
    Heroes
    April 26, 2013, the six new studios of Mama Ro open their doors. Anton and Tolya shave off their four-month grown beards. Volodya asks Vartan for his help again with a photo session of the interiors. The studios, starting from the third to the eighth, receive their unique names (the creation of the Byzantine mosaic influenced the development of this project). During the construction, the “Studio-Legend” format was born for the first time in Mama Ro: the thematic studios and their stories - the legend. The initial plan of the mosaic assumed only the mythologization of the project. Following the mosaic (and more precisely the “Byzantine” studio), the other studios receive their names as well such as “Chinese”, “French”, “Suprematist”, and “Moscow”.
    Heroes
    Together with two months of work (to manage 10 to 20 people work on the mosaic at the same time requires managerial and organizational skills) the format of a creative workshop is born for the first time in the project. Subsequently, this experience will lead to the creation of more complex Mama Ro original studios, such as “Pine”, “Stone” and “Bauhaus”. Studio 7 only remains as the one without a unique name for the time being. The friends calculate the serial number through the Coriolis force
    Fictitious force (inertia) due to the rotation of the Earth, under the influence of which the air flows in the Northern Hemisphere spin counterclockwise.
    for the Northern Hemisphere and by having drawn a spiral counterclockwise between studios in Moscow.
    Heroes
    Spring. Chistye Prudy. The very first Mama Ro’s managers’ room is on the third floor. For the time being, the wooden, freshly painted doors are wide open on April 27, 2013 - it is no longer cold and you can keep them open even for a whole day. Inside the room are the first guests of the newly opened studios. “They chose the ‘French’ one,” Tolya says, “Nastya, do you need help?” Nastya had already taken the guests to the studio after having them sign the contract with her. And she replies, echoing from somewhere in the corridor, “No, no, I want to do it myself, I can manage,” and disappears again in a whirlwind to the “French" studio.
    Heroes
    Tolya is familiar with Nastya thanks to his mother’s drama studio where he worked from the age of twelve and believes that you will not find a more sensitive and involved person. This whole year before the opening of the new studios Anton has been responding to letters from guests, polishing the booking grid and has been skeptical about the transfer of duties between them. “In our project, at the first construction site, Tolya came up with the nicknames of the whole trinity: he is a socialist, Volodya is a capitalist, and I am an autist. I leave with my head stuck in some process and I don’t see the light until I bring order there. So, the same happened with Nastya: the system didn’t have time to settle down due to the face that our project had, not just two, but eight studios. It’s very hard to delegate something imperfect. But everyone understood that it was time for the team to grow.”
    Heroes
    The client is not always right. But the client can always be “non-guilty” as we say in Russia. The matter obviously depends on the depth and wisdom of the observer. A guest quarreled with someone one minute, couldn’t find their way to Mama Ro the first time, had a large request or a very heavy suitcase; and there is no dogma in the world that could help solve these problems, especially since the three project founders are socialist, autist, and (even!) capitalist. Nastya begins to work with the guys, going into everything easily and playfully and brings the project a special gift that not only the clients didn’t have, but also the guys themselves – wisdom.
    Heroes
    With the expansion of the project, there is a young star that begins its ascent in Mama Ro’s sky. Nastya joins the project.
    May 23, 2013, Pasha gets behind the wheel of a Rover, sets out and drives off without a rear window: a huge stump in the trunk smashes the window on the asphalt from acceleration. Tolya found this stump beautiful and could not pass it by. Pasha continues to work with the guys: they adapted an old seven-seater Rover, bought in January for the construction and for transfers to the airport. Guests would have to ride with the wind for some time.
    Heroes
    On June 18, 2013, somewhere in the hinterland village, Sasha finalizes sixteen sample letters for Mama Ro in HTML format, compresses them into a zip-file and sends them thousands of kilometers to Chistye Prudy. Yulia found Sasha's contact information from someone her friends knew at the Big Cartoon Festival. No one really knows where Sasha works from but they say that it’s somewhere in Siberia - a hermit programmer living in a hut. He’s kind, polite, intelligent. The guys first meet Sasha and ask for help with the layout of the typical HTML-letters for Mama Ro's guests.
    Heroes
    June 30, 2013, Nastya, Anton and Alikhan go up to the smoking room, taking with them a pack of Hergé’s comics about Tintin. “The Adventures of Tintin” is Alikhan’s favorite childhood comic book. After the opening of the new studios it had become mandatory in Mama Ro to say the Mama Ro studio library is a collection of wonderful books "from Hergé to Abba Dorotheus" due to the fact that the guys collected the books from their own libraries for first two studios. Thankfully, the courier has finally delivered a batch of comics from Paris for the English-speaking clients of Mama Ro.
    Heroes
    Alikhan is looking through the comics one by one with pleasure, the guys are telling him about the new saying, and Alikhan's imagination immediately begins forming an idea of how to illustrate this. The bright spot scattered on the table here would form the base. Alikhan is taking the panorama of the “Chinese” studio with him and disappears again for several months.
    Heroes
    July 19, 2013, Volodya, Tolya, Anton, Nastya, Yulia and Pasha approach the Kremlin walls and set up a picnic under the Nabatnaya Tower. They do it on the same hill as one year ago right after the end of the first construction. That day Yulia brought cheese, fruit and half a bottle of rum to the studios at Spiridonovka street, and the guys went to celebrate its opening on Red Square. They spontaneously chose the hill with the best view of St. Basil's Cathedral. While the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) is sleeping, the picnic at the base of the Nabatnaya Tower becomes tradition. Mama Ro is now one year old.
    Heroes
    July 23, 2013 Dima arrives at 3:40PM (15:40) at Chistye Prudy. The friends bought bikes for Mama Ro and want to develop their own cycling routes for guests. Yulia doesn’t have time to help with the layout and Anton decides to ask for help from the founder of the Kompot design studio, the same person who developed the identity for Coltmedia two years ago, Dima. The negotiation is ahead: the first two Mama Ro studios have been operating for a year and four days and, since January, they have started making a small profit, but even with Anton’s personal money it is barely enough to finally cover the costs of the burnt bathhouse. Up to this point everything was done in a traditional manner with help and mutual assistance of others.
    Heroes
    At this moment Zlata comes to the managers room to have some tea. Together the guys take a small tour of Mama Ro and show Dima the free "French" and "Moscow" studios. In the beginning, when creating the workshops in the Maly Ivanovsky, Dima managed to make his own contribution by puttying the walls and now, in contrast with the how he left the studio, he notes a qualitative growth. “Dima’s opinion at this meeting is of great importance for me,” says Anton, “Dima is talented and still has a designer’s halo around him...”.
    Heroes
    The friends agree on a rough layout for the future cycling routes and Dima thinks about the price. “I don't know,” Anton recalls, “why he agreed but I really wanted him to take it. Even if he would ask for an exorbitant price.” Finally, having agreed on a nominal fee under the unexpected Zlata’s "tha-a-at’s expensive" remark, Anton and Dima shake hands and the project begins to generate its own graphic design for the first time. Over time, the relationship with Dima would lead to the beginning of the development of Mama Ro’s own website.
    Heroes
    On September 10, 2013, Tolya, Volodya and Anton come out by the side streets to New Arbat and, heading towards the Kremlin, discuss the meeting that just took place. The owner of the mansion, having visited Mama Ro studios incognito, was impressed and wanted to meet the guys. As a result of the meeting, it becomes clear that starting from the new year they could rent the entire building. The new third construction is now ahead.
    Heroes
    September 14, 2013, bits and bytes from North Palmyra come via the fiber optic cable to Chistye Prudy: a low-res graphic route from the metro to Mama Ro. Before sending the image in high resolution the artist Nastya Timofeyeva, who drew the picture, asks to transfer the second part of the payment. Payment bits and bytes go back. Nastya is as old as the guys but the acquaintance begins with the respectful Russian formal tense of “You” and want to be reinsured with the payment that the work done isn’t done in vain. Again, bits and bytes come from Petersburg but this time with the high-resolution image which is immediately redirected (either to Siberia or to the ends of the earth) to Sasha’s hut for the lay-out work. Nastya finishes drawing a route for the HTML letters.
    Heroes
    Nastya, who has never been to Moscow, begins the work (that has already been done before her) from scratch: the guys got this contact from the previous artist (and Mama Ro guest) who did not have time to complete the work on the route. As it turned out it was a happy occasion: the first result that comes from St. Petersburg is perfect. Over time the guys would realize more than one project together with Nastya: Nastya would visit Moscow for the first time and then later many more times, becoming a good friend with the guys. It would become an easy matter to take “Sapsan” train for a Sunday party at Mama Ro or Nastya’s exhibition in Saint Petersburg. But for now, that’s all in the future.
    Heroes
    On November 18, 2013, in the small wing of the second floor, Tolya and Pasha set up headquarters. They stretch a sheet on top of the Soviet wallpaper of the old communal apartment, set up the projector, shift the tables and lay out the mansion’s drawings. The small wing is empty; the previous owners have just moved out and the guys get the opportunity to start earlier. They display the estimate of the upcoming construction. The start date is December 1, 2013.
    Heroes
    The end of 2013. Anton, Dima and Nastya come out of the cinema, get in the Rover and ride around Moscow listening to the music of Milana. The third construction has already been underway for a month but Alikhan and Dima still haven’t met each other due to the fact that while the old partitions are being scrapped, Alikhan rarely appears at Chistye Prudy. Dima is starting to work on a project magazine, Alikhan, shortly before this, agrees to come up with a video for Mama Ro about the creation of the new studios. The song “Dance” begins to play in the salon, it’s Dima's favorite track of Milana: “When I first heard this song in 2010, I asked myself: What is this passion, what would this performer be like in a live performance, and if I meet him what would he say to me?" The song is sung by the voice of Alikhan, the author of the text and the founder of the Milana band.
    Heroes
    In 2007, a high school graduate Alikhan Albakov, together with four classmates, conceives the rock group called Milana. The band quickly becomes popular on social networks. Thanks to the first tracks, the guys find themselves on the stages of the cult clubs of the capital. In its second year of live performances, Milana gets contacted by a major music label. But suddenly the group breaks up. Alikhan goes offline and for several years leaves to his small homeland, leaving a large audience with a discography of twenty tracks... among whose listeners are Dima and Anton who are not yet familiar with each other. They both like the same Milana songs. Both first learned about the group through the "Dance" track. The only difference is that Anton, having learned the name of the singer, was amazed to find that they had known each other from school.
    More tracks Here
    On January 2, 2014, Tolya and Pasha pour out the concrete from MAZ car that arrived under the windows of Mama Ro. The work on the reinforcement of the building begins. Just before the start of construction of the six new studios, MoszhilNIIproekt (an organization that specializes on the building layouts, reconstructions) examined the floors of the house and concluded that in Moscow “at the intersection of Gusyatnikov lane and Ogorodnaya sloboda, there was a fossilized Leviathan skeleton”. For almost 120 years of existence, steel beams in the ceilings of the mansion took on the shape of a whale’s ribs. Four formwork molds are waiting for their filling in the basement to become the new reinforced columns.
    Heroes
    The concrete M-300 with granite rubble sets for about 40 minutes. During this time, Tolya and Pasha need to pour it on all in the formwork molds while fixing them on top of it the steel platforms (before they stop sinking in the solution). The weight of one platform, with the size of thirty by thirty and a thickness of two centimeters, like a weightlifting plate but instead with weight of fifteen kilograms of pure steel. The most difficult part is for Pasha: leveling each platform perfectly (a column will rise from it up through the floors and must stand strictly vertical on the platform).
    Heroes
    On the night of January 5, 2014, Tolya and Pasha lift the first column with a mobile crane and pass it through the window of the second floor. Inside Zheka, uncle Serezha, Misha and the other male-builders take it and, having tied it with ropes, gently lower it down through the floors with the butt on the platform. The first of the five fortification columns are installed. There is welding work ahead: around the base of the column, a special load distribution pyramid is assembled and scalded at the seams. The next task is to do the defectological checks, acts of compliance with technology. Only a certified welder can weld fortifications respecting GOST standards (a set of technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC)) 5264-80 and 9467-75.
    Heroes
    January 8, 2014, Tolya, Pasha, Uncle Seryozha, Misha, Volodya, Anton and other guys lift and hold ropes in their hands and curse as the first beam, a 30-centimeter unloading ceiling I-beam, is pulled and installed in a four-meter well between the columns. What remains is to figure out how to throw the beam onto the shelves and under the ceiling with the knowledge that the weight of the beam is about 300 kilograms. In the courtyard, there are another 48 meters of I-beams waiting for their turn; Zheka is cutting steel with a gas cutter listening to the NoGGano “Insure” (НоГГано «Застрахуй») track.
    Heroes
    By mid-January 2014, Tolya develops pyrophobia: in order to bring four cylinders with oxygen and acetylene for a gas cutter from the warehouse in Mytishchi, he and Pasha carefully degrease the Rover's interior with gauze rags - God forbid they jerk around from any contact with oil. Shortly before Tolya brought a whole trunk of five-liter oil bottles on the Rover (Valery Fedorovich decided to expel moisture from the pine saw cuts by heating them in a 100-liter barrel with vegetable oil). In the courtyard of Mama Ro, Tolya and Pasha unload the Rover, prudently bringing the cylinders to a separate floor.
    Heroes
    In the basement of the mansion there are three pines sawed in two on the sawmill, round cuts with tree rings, and sanded branches folded to dry. Valery Fedorovich accepted the offer of Anton to work on the “Pine” studio. “I think it was before the New Year, on December 26, 2013, Valery Fedorovich and Tolya went 350 kilometers into the forest and returned with two trailers loaded with pine. “I will never forget the face of Valery Fedorovich when we walked around the forest and chose pines for the studio. I could not understand which of one us was younger: strong and energetic, he had time to participate in all processes. And then he would find me and oh-so fervently pushing his shoulder, ask something conspiratorially just like a child! And he was so happy about everything,” recalls Anton.
    Heroes
    On the morning of January 23, 2014, under the windows of Mama Ro there are four granite boulders. Next to them is the canvas boaster
    A tool used by sculptors for stone cutting. Professional masters use from 10 and more scarps in their work.
    . Valery Fedorovich goes out into the courtyard and watches with interest Uncle Sasha’s almost ritual-like preparation for work. On the eve of the night, Volodya and Anton brought and loaded the boulders with a manipulator and Volodya asked his father to come in to look at the amount of work to see if he could help with the manufacturing of a megalithic bed
    Megaliths are structures from stone blocks of the Neolithic era, collected by the ancient peoples of the North: from England (Stonehenge) to Russia (Karelian labyrinths).
    for the “Stone” studio. Uncle Sasha arrives and, for the first time, meets Anton and Valery Fedorovich. The ready to work set of boasters promotes an unconditional willingness to help the friends of his son.
    Heroes
    All of the boasters in Uncle Sasha's set are made of the cemented carbide alloy
    Wear-resistant alloy made up of 90% tungsten carbide, used in work with hard materials.
    by his own order. He studied to be a metallurgist but for the last thirty years he has been working as an engraving artist. Stone is his real passion. Just like in the case of the geologist, Valery Fyodorovich. While Uncle Sasha cuts off the excess from the granite boulders, in a half split-up, outside in the cold, Mama Ro begins to form a friendship between two master titans who create the “Pine” and “Stone” studios.
    Heroes
    For the first time, Egor Ognerubov comes to Chistye Prudy on January 30, 2014. Some guys specialized in assembling watches from Soviet indicator lamps, and after some persuasion agreed to share the contact of their electronic engineer with Volodya. And they were recommended to Volodya through a contextual advertising agency. Egor enters the managers’ room and without taking off his backpack, holding his back to the wall, demonstrates his contactless radio sensor to the guys: he places a cobblestone on the table for the “Stone” studio and turns it into a switch. All you need to do is hold your palm up. There are plenty of radio-electronic ideas in the golden head of Egor.
    Heroes
    The end of January 2014. The fortification reaches the third floor and one of the columns fits exactly through the wall of the future shower room in the “Pine” studio. Nadia is just completing work on the 3D model of the pine crowns and begins to think out loud what to do with the column
    Имеется ввиду одна из трехэтажных колонн усиления особняка, прошедшая точно по границе душевой в студии “Сосновая” (отмечена голубым).
    Initially the shower partitions were planned to entirely of glass, but the reinforcement plan of the mansion makes need for its own adjustments. Nadia is the first 3D modeler working on the project and helps the guys visualize the “Stone”, “Pine”, “Bauhaus” and “Melnikov” studios. A year ago, one of the participants during the mosaic assembly laid out a “Tom Sawyer” type of post which included an invitation to join the process and Nadia was the one stranger who responded.
    Heroes
    • Nadya Bobileva

      3D modeler
      Mosaic in the Byzantine studio, 3D-modeling of the 9-13th studios.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
    February 7, 2014, 40 kilometers away from Moscow, Volodya is trying to fall asleep in a sleeping bag on a dilapidated foam sofa: "The face freezes, the body burns". The wooden window barely holds the heat. As always, in the suburbs, the February frosts are stronger than in Moscow. Outside through the window we can hear barking dogs and the creaking of the Kratovo pines laden with snow. We hear the noise of a train. The village of Kratovo lies about an hour’s drive from Moscow: the Kazansky Railway Station, a train, a platform with the same name passes. Here Volodya and Kostya rented a carpentry workshop and set about creating furniture for the future Bauhaus studio. Volodya spends the night in the workshop.
    Heroes
    On the subject of the second after the start of the work: “the day was the beginning of my long-dotted journey, Moscow - the workshop in Kratovo - Moscow. I traveled this way exactly 120 times, and its total length was 4,800 kilometers... every time the train lazily left from under the tall rooftops of the Kazansky Station, my heart inexplicably trembled. 40 kilometers beyond Moscow seemed to me almost like a flight to the Moon "- recalls Volodya.
    Heroes
    The next day, on February 8, 2014, Kostya passes the un-planed board through the planer
    A carpenter's tool used to remove (plan) excess thickness and level the surface of wood.
    . The dusty, uniform in color material goes under the shaft and it comes back, as Volodya says, as "the surface of Jupiter": the knife shows a florid pattern of the ash wood. His "cosmic beauty" isn’t the only feature. At the very beginning, when Volodya draws the strict, minimalistic sketches of future furniture, Kostya proposes using an ash tree because of its high strength and elasticity: even the ancients made cudgels, bows, and spears; even their own cosmogony was made from it since, in Scandinavian culture, the World Tree was considered to be an Ash tree. From time to time Kostya gets the drills stuck in it.
    Heroes
    February 21, 2014, in Kratovo, Kostya and Volodya leave the workshop and cross the railway tracks. It's getting dark. The icy crust crunches under their feet. A stray dog starts following the guys. Shurik the Welder lives somewhere on the other side of the railway tracks to whom Kostya wants to introduce Volodya. The road turns right and stretches along the tracks. Volodya guesses that the derivative from Sasha - “Shurik” - paired with the nickname “Welder” in everyday life, is like “minimizing his real talents”: for everyone who is familiar with Shurik knows that he is almost a legend, a poet with a welding electrode instead of a feather. Volodya and Kostya are approaching Shurik's house and the barking behind the fence makes the stray dog take flight.
    Heroes
    Shurik meets the guys with bread and salt: right from the doorway to the table. On the table there are mantis with elks (a type of dumpling); Shurik loves to hunt. Kostya eats mantis with a good appetite and plays with Honda, a snow-white husky. The name of the second dog is Baton, a skewbald Eskimo dog. They drove the stray dog away. After the dinner they take a tour of the house. Volodya likes the corbel consoles
    A cantilever structure is an element in architecture and interior that projects perpendicularly to the plane of the facade or wall and does not have additional supports.
    on the balcony which has two structural channels. Like the whole house, Shurik invented and assembled it with his own hands. The conversation goes down into the workshop. Shurik shows the guys his ideas and the idea of the Bauhaus studio gradually acquires graceful metal structures. Shurik knows how to make anything from metal.
    Heroes
    Heroes
    The third construction is gaining momentum. More and more people appear in a small managers room and more and more often the workspace spills out onto the back door and into the smoking room. Dima considers the smoking room a place of power: here he likes to discuss the layout of the Mama Ro magazine. “Here - Dima remembers - all the most interesting conversations take place” - being 187 centimeters tall and doing laborious layouts in the managers room, the spacious stairwells serve Dima well: Dima hangs on the railing, Dima sits on the wall, Dima jumps through the flight of stairs. Furthermore, he always finds a companion. The conversation flows easily, extends beyond the mansion and spreads over Chistye Prudy. It is at this moment, Dima meets Alikhan for the first time. Alikhan comes out of the managers room to the back door and says: “Hello”.
    Heroes
    Until March 21, 2014, Alikhan is almost invisibly present at the construction site. He puts the cameras on time-lapse mode and shoots the work of Pasha, Zheka, Misha, uncle Serezha and the other guys. Throughout all this time, Alikhan acts as the “video eye” impartially framing everything for the film. Alikhan isn’t there but his camera lens is. Until one day Sonya appears in Mama Ro together with the beginning of spring. Nastya was looking for an assistant and Volodya recalled the artist Sonya whom he knew from university. Sonya begins to work with the guys for the first time, and Alikhan’s “video eye” loses its impartiality forever.
    Heroes
    March 24, 2014, Alikhan and Sonya drink tea on the roof of the Mama Ro mansion and watch the fuss in the yard. Down below, a truck crane has just arrived right under the windows of the “Stone” studio and is starting preparations to lift the boulders to the second floor. Tolya and Pasha have already taken out the window so that the arrow, a tool on the machine, with the boulder could pass inside. Uncle Sasha and Anton tie the stones with straps. Tolya runs downstairs and begins to worry that 250 kilograms of granite will slip over someone's head. Alikhan grabs the camera and runs to shoot it.
    Heroes
    The next day, March 25, 2014, Anton and Uncle Sasha try to turn the boulders over to their spots in the studio and are not able to. One of the guys comes in and hands them a piece of a gas pipe (if you can't turn it over, you can try to roll it). "It’ll flatten it" – Anton was convinced. “Nonsense!” – and indeed, Uncle Sasha and the guys lift the boulder with six hands, Anton puts the pipe under it and the stone begins to roll. “A strange feeling – Anton recalls – something like a chicken egg that cannot be squeezed in a fist or light bulbs in a neck of a jar on which you can stand.” Uncle Sasha finds another piece of scrap metal as it’s more convenient to roll the boulder with two.
    Heroes
    Apostle Uncle Sasha the next day after placing the boulders on the second floor.
    March 27, 2014 Anton invites Egor Egorychev to look at the space of the “Pine” studio. Egor works with Volodya and makes calculations of the metal structures for the “Bauhaus” studio. Nadia just finished the drawings of the second unit and now they need a strength calculation (a ton of glass floor from triplex
    Impact-resistant tempered optical glass made of three layers, glued with a film, withstands the weight of several people at the same time.
    will be laid on the mezzanine). Egor looks at the mezzanine drawings and specifies the areas where support is needed and concludes: "You can set the UAZ, it will hold it”. The next day, Egor, Lesha’s partner, sends through the calculation: for a three-meter beam with a cross section of 100x100x3mm and a total load of 500 kg per meter; additionally, there is a deflection of 1.56 cm. Just according with the building code: 2.1 cm. So, Egor was right. Tolya and Pasha begin to weld the mezzanine.
    Heroes
    On April 1, 2014, there was a panic at the construction site: all the water leaked out of the barely finished shower room in the “Pine” studio. “Uncle Serezha worked: he carefully laid down the layers of waterproofing, rechecked everything and, not without pride, called me to approve the work: you can check, he said – I did it as if it was for myself! We poured in four centimeters of water in accordance to the technology and left for lunch. We returned an hour later and there was no water...” - recalls Tolya. Uncle Serezha runs off somewhere cursing frightfully. Tolya on all fours starts to look for a leak. If the water leaked to the floor below, there would be a scandal. In this same moment, happy uncle Serezha comes back. It turned out that Misha thought that there was a flood in the shower and he conscientiously collected all the water with a vacuum cleaner. Uncle Serezha's waterproofing is well done.
    Heroes
    It would take time to learn to understand Uncle Seryozha's rapid-talking. Uncle Seryozha is from Donbass and communicates with a characteristic intonation. When the construction team learns to understand his speech, Uncle Seryozha's jokes will spread among everyone.
    On April 6, 2014, in St. Petersburg, Galya finishes and sends Anton the last file of the light books
    The internal name of the engraved and illuminated book cases made for the Stone and Pine studios.
    for the “Stone” and “Pine” studios after two months of monotonous work. “Nastya Timofeeva hates the vector work
    Vector mapping is a way of displaying graphics using program code, necessary, for example, for engraving light books (the laser moves using the code).
    and in December 2013, she politely sent me off with this idea to her friend Galya” - Anton and Galya get acquainted; Galya makes a test file; Anton takes him to the laser cutting place and by February 20, 2013, he collects a folder of 41 scans for the future light books
    To create light books, each cover is scanned separately, then vectorised, and engraved on a plexiglas book case.
    for Galya. “Maybe, only a year later, for the first time, we would chat about the life in St. Petersburg and Moscow, about this and that, as is usually the case, Galya works in a Spartan way: without words, simply for the result. Consequently, everything is always on time.”
    Heroes
    April 17, 2014, Anton sends to Galya a graphic file with the Sumerian cuneiform as a test vector. A message is encrypted in the file. Somewhere within it was a joke that instead of copying the incomprehensible-to-anyone cuneiform, "it’s better to learn Sumerian" and to encrypt something in it in the “Stone” studio. Anton recalls Nastya's talent for languages and suggests her to find more information about the Ancient Sumerians, is it possible to write in cuneiform, for example, the Brodsky's poem “Under a sprawling elm”? Nastya gets into it and after a while brings the phonetic translation of the poem. Then Anton remembers the longer “San Pietro” and Nastya translates again, and the two encrypted messages appear in the studio's lamps.
    Heroes
    April 24, 2014, in St. Petersburg, Nastya Timofeeva finishes the watercolor version
    This refers to the color version of the Mama Ro logo created by Nastya Timofeeva in 2014 for the opening day of six new studios.
    of the Mama Ro planet and begins preparing for her first trip to Moscow. For the last five months, Nastya has been working on the illustrations for the magazine that’s being made by Dima, and Anton suggests her to come to create rock art for the “Stone” studio: “Nastya has a polyglot-like talent in painting, she can draw and paint in completely different styles”. Nastya sends a file, downloads a ticket to Moscow and finds out that Anton reserved everything backwards – the train is from Moscow to Petersburg. Three days later, on April 27, 2014, Nastya is finally in Moscow, and has met with the guys for the first time.
    Heroes
    April 28, 2014, in Kratovo, Shurik finishes the work on the frame of the cantilever stairs for the “Bauhaus” studio. Egor Egorychev, Volodya and Lesha come to see the result. The weight of the structure turned out to be only 200 kilograms. It’s the victory of the applied approach over a theoretical: at the very beginning, when Egor and Lesha did the design calculations, Shurik looked at the drawing and replaced all the vertical pillars with a light diagonal, he suggested to weld a stair stringer
    The diagonal bearing element of the staircase was welded into a rigid frame according to Sasha Sergeev's plan to obtain solid cantilever steps (protruding from the wall plane) in the Bauhaus studio.
    – “we need to do it this way”. Egor thoughtfully looks at the drawing. With this option, all the cantilever steps turn into levers that work on twisting and breaking a bridgeboard. However, neither the profile nor the thickness of its wall would not allow this. Egor comes up with a verdict: we can do this. Shurik has been working with metal for over thirty years.
    Heroes
    Five days later, on May 3, 2014, there is a fuss again near the main entrance of Mama Ro. Shurik and Volodya brought the frame of the cantilevered staircase from Kratovo and the builders didn’t know how to lift it to the second floor: “We won’t be able to swing it around, the width of the flight of stairs is not enough”. “Won’t swing it around,” - Shurik echoes them knowing that on every team there is a lover of impossible missions. “We will swing it around, and we will get it inside”, Uncle Serezha grunts in response. “Should we bet on it?” - Shurik bets for a bottle of good whiskey and after twenty minutes he begins to weld the frame of the staircase in the future “Bauhaus” studio. Uncle Serezha is able to do the impossible.
    Heroes
    May 12, 2014, in Kratovo, Volodya sweeps his finger along the corner of a wooden armchair of the “Bauhaus” studio and immediately withdraws his hand as blood runs out from the pad of his finger. Kostya invited Volodya to check whether the edges were sharp enough. Volodya, from his own experience, becomes convinced of Kostya’s argument that it really is necessary to remove a flat face even if it’s a millimeter one. The density of ash wood is such that it can be used to cut the blades. Perfectionism and passion for strict lines give way to experience: Kostya removes a millimeter face edge.
    Heroes
    May 20, 2014, Tolya arrives at the construction site before everyone else and sees the following: Misha transplants grapes with his one elbow in the ground in the yard. The day before the neighbor from the first floor asked Tolya to help her plant seedlings. “Grapes are a weed, just dig it in and it will take root,” she said. “The next day, at sunrise, Misha came and dug everything back out. He carefully laid it out, cut and carefully placed every sprout back in a different place. He was silent and focused. It looked like a meditation and his face expressed some kind of peace - says Tolya - I asked him why he was doing this, and he, embarrassed by my attention, kept silent and then smiled somewhere to the side and replied: because these are grapes...”- in Transnistria, where Misha is from, they love grapes and know how to take care of them.
    Heroes
    Sonya at Chistye Prudy. Alikhan’s photo. With the arrival of spring around the Mama Ro mansion, the walking season around the city begins. Alikhan finally disappears from the dusty chaos of the construction site.
    May 22, 2014, Sonya with a cup of tea returns to the managers room, opens a photo with Valery Fedorovich, and uncle Sasha with her phone, removes the saturation, frames it and posts it on the social network saying: “One of the most interesting conversations in my life”. The conversation of two master titans, who politely accepted young Sonya to their group, takes place slowly over tea in a sunny smoking room. They talk about everything: geological exploration, sculpture, painting and cinema, specifically, Andrei Tarkovsky and Michalis Kakoyanis films. The interlocutors hadn’t watched one of these films, but the conversation was dear to Sonya: “We were talking about these films but it was like we were in the film itself. And we drank tea”.
    Heroes
    Valery Fedorovich, uncle Sasha and Sonya quickly become friends. Despite the difference in age, two elderly craftsmen eternally covered with a whitish layer of dust and youthfully in love with their work, easily get along with the younger generation. Everyone at the construction site notices their inexhaustible energy. Volodya, who watches with interest the emerging friendship, ironically says that when he was a kid the mother would throw out his father's flowers “not because they were fading, but because they were annoying” – that is, Uncle Sasha worked with his bare hands with uranium ore. “Yes, they are both, in fact, uranium elders” - laughs Volodya. One time, geologist Valery Fedorovich engaged in the exploration of uranium deposits, and metallurgist Uncle Sasha - in the alloys made from raw uranium.
    Heroes
    May 28, 2014, Nastya Timofeeva arrives again in Moscow. Egor Egorychev, Volodya and Anton conduct a tour of the old Arbat. The theme of the tour: “Soviet and alien technologies on the Old Arbat. From Melnikov’s House to the Foreign Ministry Building”. Nastya came to Moscow to help Volodya realize the painting of the Melnikova studio, and Egor agreed to introduce Nastya to the topic. The friends come to the foot of the Foreign Ministry and talk about the famous Smolensk incident where the disappearance of the skyscraper in 1952 was replaced with an extraterrestrial replica with a spire on the site of the freshly built Foreign Ministry building
    After the war and up to Stalin's decree in 1952, the skyscraper of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs was built according to a project that didn’t involve a spire.
    and followed by the mysterious death of Joseph Stalin. Nastya attentively listens to the guys.
    Heroes
    The guys prepared a surprise for Nastya. According to the plan on one of the side streets Egor should suddenly say goodbye and leave the tour. The friends slowly move towards the Melnikov house. Nastya doesn’t yet know about Egor’s friendship with the descendants of the architect. At the wall of Tsoi, Egor suddenly receives a call coming from Volodya’s pocket. Unfortunately, Egor has to leave immediately. Nastya, Volodya and Anton say goodbye to Egor who disappears into Arbat’s side streets. Egor proceeds with what he had planned: he runs around the block from the opposite side, jumps over the fence into the backyard of the Melnikov house and hides behind the gate just before the guys arrive.
    Heroes
    The friends come to the gate from the Krivoarbatsky Lane and talk about the secret status of the house and developments of the space by Konstantin Melnikov and Sergey Korolev. Egor is behind the gate. According to the plan, he must show himself at the very end of the story and invite Nastya on a tour of the house. Suddenly, Nastya interrupts the story and suggests that they try to knock on the door and see if they can meet the descendants of the architect. Volodya and Anton, having looked at each other, approve Nastya's “good idea” and watch with pleasure as she knocks on the gate of Melnikov’s house and finds Egor behind it.
    Heroes
    June 1, 2014, Egor Ognerubov arrives at Chistye Prudy to introduce Misha to the work going on in the “Stone” and “Pine” studios. On this day, it’s Misha Kurlov’s first time at the construction site. While Egor is finishing the program for light books
    This refers to the program to control the LED strips that change the colors inside the light books in the Pine studio.
    , Pasha calls Misha from Ukraine to help with the soldering of LEDs. Nobody assumes yet that there is a whole month of work still to do. Misha meets Egor and the rest of the guys, investigates the matter and goes to lunch with everyone. At this moment, Volodya and Nastya Timofeeva break away from the painting of the Melnikov studio and take a smoke break. Anton and Volodya introduce Nastya to Egor. Egor, being shy of new people, covers his shyness by being in a hurry for business.
    Heroes
    Egor Ognerubov, whose surname could be translated from Russian as the “flame cutter”, explains to the guys the origin of his last name by slash-and-burn agriculture which his ancestor was engaged in in ancient times (when they cut down the forest, a flame cutter would come to replace the woodcutter and “cut down” the remaining stumps and perches by means of fire). Modern Egor is a specialist in radio electronics, but he speaks with enthusiasm about the leaves turning yellow in the trees after a process of irradiation of the forest edge with tropospheric radio waves. Two years ago, somewhere in the deaf Russian forests, Egor served as a liaison in the army forces: with two army fellows at KAMAZ truck equipped with a tropospheric radio station.
    Heroes
    • Egor Ognerubov

      Radio Electronic engineer
      Soldering, programming of light books in the Pine & Stone studios, fireplace video in the Bauhaus studio.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
    June 2, 2014, Anton, Volodya and Nastya Timofeeva go to Kratovo on Rover. Alikhan jumps in to take a ride with the guys but suddenly he falls asleep on the way. The guys are so passionate about their conversation that they forget about Alikhan right up to the Moscow Ring Road. And Alikhan is having a dream. He is Tintin who got into the '80 Olympics in Moscow and Egor Ognerubov is an evil genius radio electronics engineer who decided to enslave the whole world. If he doesn’t stop him, just as the Olympic Bear flies up on the balloons over Moscow, immediately the rockets from all mines, submarines and trains in the USSR will rush to the USA. Like the Trojan horse, Egor hid a cunning radio device inside the bear to deceive the Soviet Electronic Warfare
    Electronic Warfare (EW) means are used by the armed forces to create radio interference on the lines of communication, control, guidance and navigation of a potential enemy.
    forces and hack the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense!
    Heroes
    Pause
    FIRST PART

    Construction Era

    On May 12, 2012, after several unsuccessful attempts to attract an investor, Tolya, Anton and Volodya, put aside the completed presentation and start the Mama Ro project on their own. They rent a small space at Spiridonovskaya, buy plaster, tools and start the very first construction in Mama Ro’s history. Just like Yulia at the very beginning, and then in Maly Ivanovsky, with their own hands. The guys have almost no money, they have to scrape and borrow. Dima Trusov, Aydar, Zlata, Yulia and Lena help out. The project only needs to define a studio format which will be born in the construction process.
    May 20, 2012, 2:09AM, immediately after the demolition of the walls. The next day, it would be decided to leave everything as it is: two spacious studios instead of rooms. At that moment, all subsequent Mama Ro studios were born.
    .
    Heroes
    May 27, 2012, there is a festive table set in the space of the future Studio 1: stacked bags of plaster laid over each other. There is a navy-style pasta (Russian dish made of cooked pasta mixed with stuffing made of stewed ground meat), a rice salad with onions, shrimp and eggs, bread and three different ice cream flavors on the "table". Volodya’s mom, Nadejda Alekseevna, doesn’t allow the comrades to die of hunger. The guys go out for Coke and forget to buy disposable cutlery, so they will have to improvise with a grinder’s key. It’s Volodya's birthday.
    Heroes
    The end of June. Sun rays creep along the newly laid, varnished floor of solid pine. Having climbed onto the window sill, Ro jumps into the space of the future Studio 1. There is a pleasant coolness inside and a summer afternoon outside. Ro finds a cut-off bottom of a plastic bottle, kneads a viscous white paste in it and proceeds to do slow and crazy work: a careful chiseling out of the joints in a large wall of glass blocks.
    Heroes
    After lunch, Alina comes in through the door and takes the baton from Ro. The day is drawing to a close. Masha comes from work and sets a dinner for the guys right there on the floor. It’s the first meal of the day. Ro, Alina, Anton, Volodya and Tolya take a break from work and gather at the “table”. Eating from a floor that is laid with your own hands seems much tastier. Days are running by fast. Yulia, Masha, Roxana, Zlata, Alina, sometimes together, or replace each other, appear, support, and help friends. The struggle for the result acquires a special meaning.
    Heroes
    The support of Yulia, Masha, Zlata, Alina, Roxana holds a lot of meaning for the friends. As Anton recalls, “They worked like hell from morning ‘till night, from bell to bell, non-stop and without days off... and all the work is difficult, in the morning you have to work on your body, otherwise it’s not possible to turn the arm or leg, it hurts everywhere…the second week, everyone felt it at the same time. I weighed 76 kg before the construction work, after it - 67! And the guys lost 10 kg each. Well, this five-year plan fit into 60 days was only possible because the girls saved the men. They would feed us, and since we had no money left at the end, they would then come and help. And we don’t even ask them for help, somehow we do it all by ourselves. At that time, I absolutely admired this sensitivity to our needs, and for the first time I realized what heroism is; when a soul is able to lift and grind everything in its path in spite of any fatigue. With the support of the girls, we felt like real heroes.”
    Heroes
    July 17, 2012, Volodya, Yulia and Anton come to the studios before anyone else. Vartan, who responded to Volodya’s request to help take photos of the studio, comes next. The interior shooting is scheduled for the evening. The cleaning and preparation begin. It’s a warm July rain outside. Shooting is the final step in the construction process, the moment of alienation of the work from the author. In a few hours, the very first two studios of the project will begin an independent life. Two days later and 69 days from the start of construction, on July 19, 2012, the Mama Ro project opens its doors for the first time for guests.
    Heroes
    On the night of July 24, 2012, Alikhan arrives at Kazansky Railway Station at the high-speed train Vladikavkaz-Moscow. There are poems and songs in a green suitcase. House Keys, Zippo, Lucky Strike. Alikhan spent about two years in his small homeland, walking to Massive Attack and Skreamin’ Jay Hawkins across the foothills of Caucasus, tearing wild flowers and scratching a wind song with a pencil until one day he found himself on the steps of the train leaving for the plains. The moon has risen. Night came on Earth. Alikhan lowered the flap putting his face to the stars, lit a cigarette and scooped up a handful of new ideas from the Universe. The train delivered all its rhythms, squeaked loudly and Alikhan found himself in a Moscow night.
    Heroes
    Alikhan calls his friends. He needs to find a place for the night. Anton is on duty at Mama Ro and is occupied with postponed businesses. Studio 1 is empty tonight. The comrades meet at the Patriarch Pond and walk 84 squares
    Here is not the figure of speech, but the figure of the pond itself: the Patriarch Pond in Moscow is really square in shape.
    around the shore, talking life about this and that. It will take another year before their communication can continue again, but for now Anton leaves Alikhan in the studio and runs off on the last train in the metro.
    Heroes
    Night on Earth. Alikhan over Nazran on the eve of his return to Moscow.
    August 5, 2013, Anton Voltman and Nastya Paskute come to Mama Ro at Spiridonovka. Volodya and Anton complete the cleaning in Studio 2. The three of them alternate in pairs to do the cleaning themselves in the newly opened studios and today it was their turn. After finishing with the cleaning, the friends gather together and go from Spiridonovka to the Boulevard Ring, take Yulia with them and head off towards Arbat.
    Heroes
    The starting point for Volodya’s friendship with Anton Voltman and Nastya Paskute, as well as with the guys, was the workshop. Here, even before the start of construction of the first studios, the friends didn’t manage to build a shower room for a long time. In addition, In the spring of 2012, Volodya rents a room in Milyutinsky Lane to spend the nights here, unexpectedly, his neighbor, living in the communal apartments, turns out to be Nastya Paskute. Volodya knows Nastya from school.
    Heroes
    The guys become friends and Nastya introduces Volodya to Anton Voltman. One evening, Volodya recalls, when entering the house on Milyutinsky, “there was an incredibly loud and very infectious laugh in the building... after a moment I see a funny picture: Nastya looks apologetically at me and then at some curly red-haired and very skinny guy holding a garbage bag. Considering its size, it was a little less by weight than the guy himself... Nastya says: Volodya, this is Anton, Anton this is Volodya, my neighbour. The red-haired dude nods in my direction and, having slightly stumbled, very ridiculously jumps down the stairs hugging a bag... being already downstairs he fell down but jumped up cheerfully assuring us that he was ok and disappeared in the doorway...”. It turned out that Anton had deliberately escaped from the party in order to come and help Nastya take out the construction debris.
    Heroes
    Anton Voltman lives in the neighboring Bobrov Lane that is perpendicular to Milyutinsky and the guys become friends. It turns out that Anton and Volodya are united by a common passion in art: in his room in Bobrov Lane, Anton creates large abstract panels on the walls in the spirit of the Russian avant-garde. Volodya’s favorite since childhood El Lissitzky and also Tatlin, Malevich, Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, Konstantin Melnikov in Architecture and Dziga Vertov in Cinematography… In stormy discussions, the friends even start thinking about creating the podcast “Evening Art Talks with Voltman and Nizovtsev ". And after a while, Volodya learns that Anton is friends with a guy named Egor Egorychev who is writing a book about the Melnikov’s house
    The “The House of the Melnikovs: Konstantin and Victor” book, author Egorychev Egor. The publication is supported by the “Moscow that doesn’t exist” project, 2012.
    . Anton promises to introduce Volodya to Egor eventually.
    Heroes
    Friends come up to Arbat where they are met by a tall thin guy with short hair. He’s in a black t-shirt and jeans, as everyone will note and remember, and looks kind of similar to the young Tsoi. He firmly shakes everyone's hand, presents his companion Zhenya and, after lighting a cigarette, invites them into the labyrinth of Arbat lanes. The guys finally get to know Egor.
    Heroes
    The house of the architect Konstantin Melnikov on Krivoarbatsky Lane is a monument of avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century. To get to this house, in August 2012, is not easy as there is a legal dispute between the descendants of the architect and the state. In the eyes of his friends, Egor seems almost like Stalker (a popular Russian character in Russian cinematography) in a world full of the avant-garde. He approaches the dilapidated gate, opens it, and lets them into the courtyard. Ekaterina Viktorovna comes out of the house towards them and greets everyone. She is the granddaughter of Konstantin Melnikov. Egor helps her and supports her in conflict with the authorities. After a short introduction, Ekaterina Viktorovna invites everyone to the house so that Egor can give them a tour and make some tea.
    Heroes
    Melnikov's house consists of two cylinders cut into each other: the first one consists of two floors and the second one of three. It takes some time to walk through it but the way Egor tells the story of the house, as well as his excitement about it, stops time outside the house and launches them into a special, big world where they freely embrace and travel between eras.
    Heroes
    The waste-free production, invented by Melnikov, is the process where not a single construction waste truck was taken out of the house and construction site. There are no additional supporting walls or columns inside the cylinders. According to the architect's design, the floors, in nine-meter round spans, were assembled in the form of a membrane from boards which are set on their ends. There are cozy warming details in the architecture such as, an octagonal window on the west wall which was left by Melnikov due to a slanting beam that penetrated inside the future living room. There is a huge folding window of two and a half meters in height turns the living room into a covered terrace in summer. A heater that heats the house through a system of air ducts hidden within the walls is installed in the foundation of the old building preserved by the architect who lives in the basement. And from a bird’s eye view, the shape of the house forms an infinity sign (or a solar eclipse). All these elements together give them a sense of the time, a relativeness, after visiting the house built in 1929. Thus, begins their friendship with Egor and Zhenya.
    Heroes
    Four months later since August 2012, before the construction of the next studios for Mama Ro. Everything is done for the first time and takes time including paperwork, contracts with agencies, and registration in reservation systems. List: to learn to sell two freshly built studios, to advertise in the devilish interfaces of Yandex Direct and Google AdWords, to resolve failures: with guests, with services, with agents, and even with gangsters. The latter, as it turned out, also rent studios. And the main objective is to pay back the debts to the people who believed in the project: Dima, Aydar, Zlata, Yulia, and Lena. When all of this would be in the past, the next step is to find a place for new studios.
    Heroes
    The place that Tolya and Anton found in mid-November 2012 driving around with a pack of agency offers on the side streets of Moscow. It was a former apartment building built in 1896 at the corner of Ogorodnaya Sloboda and Gusyatnikov lane, near Chistye Prudy. It was built in the nineteenth century! During the 20th century, as in other parts of the USSR, there existed communal apartments (an apartment shared between several unknown people or families). At the beginning of the 21st century there were many communal apartments that were in awful states. Leaking roofs, rotten floors, exposed walls under crumbling plaster shingles. And three-meter tall ceilings. The friends meet the property agent, climb the wide flights of stairs to the third floor and roam enchantedly under the pre-revolutionary stucco molding that has been preserved in some places. This place is something they couldn’t have even dreamed of.
    Heroes
    The toponym "Chistye Prudy" (“Clean Ponds”), applied to this part of historical Moscow, does not officially exist. However, this name following the example of “Mama Ro at Patriarch's Ponds” is included in the name of the new Mama Ro, and later in the internal folklore of the project. It is also interesting to notice that there is only one pond at the Patriarch's as well as at Chistye Prudy.
    A week later, it turns out that the place has been sold. A certain merchant bought the queue and made an advance payment for the first month. That was something that the friends couldn’t do as they were collecting the required amount all week. In short, they didn’t make it in time. The planet will take another 31 revolutions around its axis before the unoccupied mansion of the 19th century somewhere in Moscow suddenly returns to the friends. During this time, the guys ride around the city, visit new places, choose and draw layouts, and get agreements on loans. Until one day, it turns out, that the certain merchant doesn’t pay the rent.
    Heroes
    January 13, 2013, the mansion in Gusyatnikov lane. This is the start of the second construction. It’s winter. It’s cold and it’s snowing. Tolya, with a perforator, lies on the edge of the roof with his feet resting against the base of the almost completely disassembled (by him) chimney. There is a demolition of emergency furnaces currently going on. Downstairs we see someone's car and next to it a building of three floors. The mortar in the pipe is old and the bricks can be removed with a kick. If you accidentally walk out on such a surface, in this case, even a fence at the edge of the slope will not help, as someone took it off for an unknown reason. “It's time to get down” - Tolya decides to make a safety harness, when suddenly someone passes a hand under his back. Pasha, looking out of the dormer window, grabbed Tolya by the belt. Pasha's height (under two meters) and the scope of his arms are just long enough to secure Tolya as he finishes with the chimney.
    Heroes
    It’s hard not to notice Pasha at the construction site. Pasha is the tallest one among the workers, who on January 3, 2013 were brought by a foreman recommended by Zlata, to the construction site at Gusyatnikov. In fact, the acquaintance begins at the very beginning of the construction at two o’clock in the morning. A 10-ton MAZ car loaded with foam blocks just arrived in the yard. Tolya has to wake up the hard workers to go unload the car. There are no conveniences at the construction site, the guys are sleeping right on the floor close to the heater. It’s frosty outside.
    Heroes
    “And so,” Tolya recalls, “you go up, open the door and you see this picture: it's dark, everyone is more or less settled down, sleeping. And only Pasha, with his height, when pulls the blanket up to his head – his legs become exposed. And when he pulls it down – vice versa. The poor fellow isn’t sleeping. But there is nothing to do, get up, guys, - you say - the MAZ has come! Let’s go to unload... and there is silence in response! And only the cheerful voice of Pasha in the dark: ‘Well, hello to you, dear’”. Ironically as the construction goes on, Tolya would repeatedly pay attention and appreciate his permanent involvement in all processes and would become a good companion to Pasha.
    Heroes
    January is coming to an end. The construction of the six new studios is in full swing. Volodya, Tolya, Anton, in pairs, clean and take turns in settling guests in the first two studios. It’s the low season, winter, and, in particular, the hardest selling month of the year which makes the friends fight for each and every client. Either way, the project results in 100% occupancy for January as the studios are built with enthusiasm and love, and guests pay back with their positive reviews. The ideas that hang in the air stayed in their memory was left in the studio by the guys during the first construction. The inspiration from the visit of the Melnikov House and meeting the talented workers: all these give a birth to a new leitmotif to the development of the Mama Ro studio format. Next.
    Heroes
    Valery Fedorovich takes up work on the log bridge
    The internal name of the multimedia center and dock stations is in the 3rd-8th studios.
    at the behest of the heart. This is how he would respond to the request of Yulia to realize their idea: "This is the real work - for the heart." It would take some time to convince Valery Fedorovich to take payment for the work done. A wood master, a geologist and a poet, he believes that working with wood is not a craft but a way to bring the warm, tactile sensations of interaction with natural material to the world’s big cities. Anton asks Yulia to introduce them to Valery Fedorovich who teaches children sculptural carving in an orphanage where Julia works as a volunteer. And already on February 14, 2013, somewhere in the snowy woods in the Mikhnevo village near Moscow, Valery Fedorovich, Yulia and Anton, after eating boiled pearl barley, cut a dry pine using a two-handed saw.
    Heroes
    Start of work on the log bridges. Valery Fedorovich approaches the process without unnecessary preludes, “If we need to do it, then we take a saw and go into the forest.”
    Valery Fyodorovich explains that the brick of 1896, revealed and sandblasted
    Sandblasting is a method of cleaning the surface of paint, old plaster, etc. by supplying a jet of air with sand under high pressure.
    in the new studios, was like swinging the pendulum back to the 20th century. Since people who live in cities gradually evade interaction with nature, they now unconsciously seek to get it back: if not a crust of Borodinsky bread
    A variety of rye bread with caraway seeds that is widespread in Russia.
    , the texture of the baked clay in the picturesque cracks on the old brick, then the brick reminds one of the clay utensils in an ancient dwelling. Hence the global trend of people in large cities creating lofts in former factories.
    Heroes
    The search does not last long; Valery Fedorovich calls the forest his second home and easily navigates it. They found what they were looking for, sharpened it with a saw, and a dead pine tree crashed into the frosty snow. There are several months of handmade work ahead.
    The idea of the log bridge also came from the same source: the delight of the combination of two natural textures, wood and baked clay, originates from the workshop in Maliy Ivanovsky lane where even before the project was born, Anton and Volodya, having purchased a pine timber for the rack, invented the second level in their workshop with a non-cylindrical log
    A log that hasn’t undergone factory processing with a milling cutter in order to obtain the same diameter along the entire length.
    . Later on, after meeting Valery Fedorovich, for Anton, this line would result in the creation of the “Moscow” studio and then the “Pine” studio, so Volodya’s acquaintance with Anton Voltman would one day lead to the creation of the “Suprematist” and then the “Melnikov” studio. Ideas wait for their masters.
    Heroes
    Working on a log bridge together with a bark beetle is part of Valery Fedorovich's aesthetic vision. According to him, what nature always offers is best. The result: a bizarre pattern “drawn” by a bark beetle that had spent winter on a dead pine tree, and was left untouched on all the log bridges.
    In early February, Anton and Yulia arrive by train in the city of Maloyaroslavets, 120 kilometers from Moscow. The blue sky, February arrives, and two jackdaws sit on the statue of the hero who fought the war with Napoleon. Having strayed a little, the friends finally find themselves in front of the gates of the St. Nicholas Chernoostrovsky monastery. Sister Rafaila meets them and takes them for a small tour of the monastery; It was only yesterday that they didn’t know each other. For the creation of a Byzantine mosaic, Volodya had recommended Anton a store with stained glass at the Botanical Garden and here Julia met sister Rafaila.
    Heroes
    It turned out that the nuns who were choosing the glass in the store had already worked out the technology invented by the guys, and instead of smalt
    Deep blue coloured glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Used for making mosaics.
    they were already using colored glass in the mosaic somewhere in the Moscow region. Suddenly, sister Rafaila stops the guys and whispers to them the story of the mother who had just passed by the temple: the mother had stopped walking due to cancer, when suddenly, to the surprise of the doctors, the cancer unexpectedly passed in its final stages.
    Heroes
    Finally, the friends are invited to the workshop and the nuns show them how the mosaics are made with the stained glass. This technology saves money, but Anton is not sure that it is aesthetically justified, so the acquaintance with sister Rafaela seems to be a kind of miracle too: they were at the right time and in the right place, and without starting the complicated expensive process got an opportunity to see how to achieve their desired results. For this, Anton and Julia have come to the monastery.
    Heroes
    The idea to inlay a Byzantine mosaic on brick had also come from a workshop in Maly Ivanovsky. Like the idea of clearing brick walls from plaster, proposed by Yulia in June 2011. The friends partially beat off the brick from the plaster and were fascinated by the aesthetics of the fragments of stucco moulding that had survived under the ceiling: “It would be great to leave it here under the lacquer”. “And also to intersperse it with a couple of fragments of a torn mosaic, like a relic of a bygone era. Just like the mosaic in Hagia Sophia which survived under the Ottoman plaster.” The only difference this time would be that the guys would have to realize the idea themselves.
    Heroes
    The friends return to Moscow, buy a test piece of the stained glass and take it to the glass workshop to try to reduce the gloss with the help of a sandblasting tool. The sisters' mosaic is perfect except the glossy, “glassy” glitter that gives off the imitation. In the meantime, as a replacement for the golden smalt, Volodya has the idea of covering the glass with a metal leaf. The friends make the first test, then take the sandblasted fragment from the glass workshop and get a fully formed puzzle - a real mosaic: the “golden” smalt is different only by using the metal leaf, while the sandblasted colored glass is almost identical to the real smalt by its texture. The friends share the advanced technology with the sisters of St. Nicholas Monastery.
    Heroes
    In the beginning of April 2013, two months later, the last fragment of a seven-meter panel takes its place on the studio wall: Anton, Yulia, Elnura, Elaman, Marcel, Sharif, Turdibek and others gently lift up the plate of the Byzantine mosaic, slowly as not to break it, turn it over on its’ edge and put it in glue. The two months of work are over. Turdibek, the only master of fine jewelry on the team, would need about a week to finish everything, namely, to patch up the crumbling areas and to combine the alternately applied fragments into a single mosaic panel. At the same time, in the future “Suprematist” studio, Anton Voltman completes the work on the avant-garde wall composition while Valery Fedorovich finishes the production of a log-TV
    The internal name of the projection screen in the Old Moscow studio (formerly “Moscow”). More information about it in the studio legend.
    TV in the interior that would later become the “Moscow” studio.
    Heroes
    Comparison of similarities during the mosaic assembly. The mosaic is conceived as "neopastoral" which is a poetic representation of the Golden Age of Mama Ro, formed in the project during the construction of the first two studios. The guys "plough" (in the literal pastoral and figurative senses), the girls bring comfort. In the photos from left to right: Yulia (she’s cooking on the mosaic), Roxana (playing the shepherd's flute), Zlata (seeing the guys off to the work), Masha (in charge of sea navigation), Volodya, Tolya, Anton are in several scenes at the same time.
    Kostya appears on the threshold of the construction site during its final chords. Tolya turns to Denis and Denis recommends this woodworker named Kostya. In the process of the construction, one of the workers accidentally sandblasted the old door revealing the beauty of the wooden texture
    When treating wood with an air jet with sand under high pressure, the soft fibers of the wood are squeezed out, emphasizing the texture of the tree rings.
    under the layers of paint. And the friends decided to keep all the doors for the time being removing from each the paint in exactly the same way. The time comes either to throw them away or to find a master capable to make a worker's mistake into a work of art.
    Heroes
    Kostya agrees to take up the challenge together with his friend. One day, they come up with an idea to use brass as a decorative element that would complement the texture of the wood and mask any of the flaws such as the holes from the squeezed out knots from sandblasting and the old tie-ins from the locks. The work starts to pick up momentum. The woodworker and restorer in great form, Kostya turns out to be a real artist and a talented actor. "I was amazed by the incredible theatricality of Kostya’s actions... a moving picture in the French studio: materials flying across the entire room - sparks, smoke - combined with the rays of the sun cutting diagonals of volume and resting against freshly plastered walls that resemble an ancient temple, and two titans taming a strange golden beast…," Volodya recalls the work of the guys with brass. Later, when Volodya would propose Kostya to create the original furniture for the Bauhaus studio, Kostya’s talent to turn any craft into a show will surprise the friends on many more occasions.
    Heroes
    The second construction is coming to an end. The woodworkers put the studio doors on hinges, Anton throws out all the unnecessary things in the trash container from the window of the third floor, and Tolya, cursing, runs to get back everything he needs. Sasha Povzner, Denis' friend, gives Tolya the contact information of Aidzharkyn for studio cleaning. Throughout the time span of August 2012 to April 2013 the friends still go to Spiridonovka to clean the first two studios on their own, and Tolya, looking at the thrill with which Anton and Volodya straighten the wrinkles when making the bed is worried that with the growth of the company and delegation of duties all this would be neglected. Aidzharkyn first comes to the construction site with his sister Mahabat and the guys realize that Tolya's fears were not justified. The long work process begins and so does the new friendship of Aidzharkyn and Makhabat with the guys.
    Heroes
    April 26, 2013, the six new studios of Mama Ro open their doors. Anton and Tolya shave off their four-month grown beards. Volodya asks Vartan for his help again with a photo session of the interiors. The studios, starting from the third to the eighth, receive their unique names (the creation of the Byzantine mosaic influenced the development of this project). During the construction, the “Studio-Legend” format was born for the first time in Mama Ro: the thematic studios and their stories - the legend. The initial plan of the mosaic assumed only the mythologization of the project. Following the mosaic (and more precisely the “Byzantine” studio), the other studios receive their names as well such as “Chinese”, “French”, “Suprematist”, and “Moscow”.
    Heroes
    Together with two months of work (to manage 10 to 20 people work on the mosaic at the same time requires managerial and organizational skills) the format of a creative workshop is born for the first time in the project. Subsequently, this experience will lead to the creation of more complex Mama Ro original studios, such as “Pine”, “Stone” and “Bauhaus”. Studio 7 only remains as the one without a unique name for the time being. The friends calculate the serial number through the Coriolis force
    Fictitious force (inertia) due to the rotation of the Earth, under the influence of which the air flows in the Northern Hemisphere spin counterclockwise.
    for the Northern Hemisphere and by having drawn a spiral counterclockwise between studios in Moscow.
    Heroes
    Spring. Chistye Prudy. The very first Mama Ro’s managers’ room is on the third floor. For the time being, the wooden, freshly painted doors are wide open on April 27, 2013 - it is no longer cold and you can keep them open even for a whole day. Inside the room are the first guests of the newly opened studios. “They chose the ‘French’ one,” Tolya says, “Nastya, do you need help?” Nastya had already taken the guests to the studio after having them sign the contract with her. And she replies, echoing from somewhere in the corridor, “No, no, I want to do it myself, I can manage,” and disappears again in a whirlwind to the “French" studio.
    Heroes
    Tolya is familiar with Nastya thanks to his mother’s drama studio where he worked from the age of twelve and believes that you will not find a more sensitive and involved person. This whole year before the opening of the new studios Anton has been responding to letters from guests, polishing the booking grid and has been skeptical about the transfer of duties between them. “In our project, at the first construction site, Tolya came up with the nicknames of the whole trinity: he is a socialist, Volodya is a capitalist, and I am an autist. I leave with my head stuck in some process and I don’t see the light until I bring order there. So, the same happened with Nastya: the system didn’t have time to settle down due to the face that our project had, not just two, but eight studios. It’s very hard to delegate something imperfect. But everyone understood that it was time for the team to grow.”
    Heroes
    The client is not always right. But the client can always be “non-guilty” as we say in Russia. The matter obviously depends on the depth and wisdom of the observer. A guest quarreled with someone one minute, couldn’t find their way to Mama Ro the first time, had a large request or a very heavy suitcase; and there is no dogma in the world that could help solve these problems, especially since the three project founders are socialist, autist, and (even!) capitalist. Nastya begins to work with the guys, going into everything easily and playfully and brings the project a special gift that not only the clients didn’t have, but also the guys themselves – wisdom.
    Heroes
    With the expansion of the project, there is a young star that begins its ascent in Mama Ro’s sky. Nastya joins the project.
    May 23, 2013, Pasha gets behind the wheel of a Rover, sets out and drives off without a rear window: a huge stump in the trunk smashes the window on the asphalt from acceleration. Tolya found this stump beautiful and could not pass it by. Pasha continues to work with the guys: they adapted an old seven-seater Rover, bought in January for the construction and for transfers to the airport. Guests would have to ride with the wind for some time.
    Heroes
    On June 18, 2013, somewhere in the hinterland village, Sasha finalizes sixteen sample letters for Mama Ro in HTML format, compresses them into a zip-file and sends them thousands of kilometers to Chistye Prudy. Yulia found Sasha's contact information from someone her friends knew at the Big Cartoon Festival. No one really knows where Sasha works from but they say that it’s somewhere in Siberia - a hermit programmer living in a hut. He’s kind, polite, intelligent. The guys first meet Sasha and ask for help with the layout of the typical HTML-letters for Mama Ro's guests.
    Heroes
    June 30, 2013, Nastya, Anton and Alikhan go up to the smoking room, taking with them a pack of Hergé’s comics about Tintin. “The Adventures of Tintin” is Alikhan’s favorite childhood comic book. After the opening of the new studios it had become mandatory in Mama Ro to say the Mama Ro studio library is a collection of wonderful books "from Hergé to Abba Dorotheus" due to the fact that the guys collected the books from their own libraries for first two studios. Thankfully, the courier has finally delivered a batch of comics from Paris for the English-speaking clients of Mama Ro.
    Heroes
    Alikhan is looking through the comics one by one with pleasure, the guys are telling him about the new saying, and Alikhan's imagination immediately begins forming an idea of how to illustrate this. The bright spot scattered on the table here would form the base. Alikhan is taking the panorama of the “Chinese” studio with him and disappears again for several months.
    Heroes
    July 19, 2013, Volodya, Tolya, Anton, Nastya, Yulia and Pasha approach the Kremlin walls and set up a picnic under the Nabatnaya Tower. They do it on the same hill as one year ago right after the end of the first construction. That day Yulia brought cheese, fruit and half a bottle of rum to the studios at Spiridonovka street, and the guys went to celebrate its opening on Red Square. They spontaneously chose the hill with the best view of St. Basil's Cathedral. While the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) is sleeping, the picnic at the base of the Nabatnaya Tower becomes tradition. Mama Ro is now one year old.
    Heroes
    July 23, 2013 Dima arrives at 3:40PM (15:40) at Chistye Prudy. The friends bought bikes for Mama Ro and want to develop their own cycling routes for guests. Yulia doesn’t have time to help with the layout and Anton decides to ask for help from the founder of the Kompot design studio, the same person who developed the identity for Coltmedia two years ago, Dima. The negotiation is ahead: the first two Mama Ro studios have been operating for a year and four days and, since January, they have started making a small profit, but even with Anton’s personal money it is barely enough to finally cover the costs of the burnt bathhouse. Up to this point everything was done in a traditional manner with help and mutual assistance of others.
    Heroes
    At this moment Zlata comes to the managers room to have some tea. Together the guys take a small tour of Mama Ro and show Dima the free "French" and "Moscow" studios. In the beginning, when creating the workshops in the Maly Ivanovsky, Dima managed to make his own contribution by puttying the walls and now, in contrast with the how he left the studio, he notes a qualitative growth. “Dima’s opinion at this meeting is of great importance for me,” says Anton, “Dima is talented and still has a designer’s halo around him...”.
    Heroes
    The friends agree on a rough layout for the future cycling routes and Dima thinks about the price. “I don't know,” Anton recalls, “why he agreed but I really wanted him to take it. Even if he would ask for an exorbitant price.” Finally, having agreed on a nominal fee under the unexpected Zlata’s "tha-a-at’s expensive" remark, Anton and Dima shake hands and the project begins to generate its own graphic design for the first time. Over time, the relationship with Dima would lead to the beginning of the development of Mama Ro’s own website.
    Heroes
    On September 10, 2013, Tolya, Volodya and Anton come out by the side streets to New Arbat and, heading towards the Kremlin, discuss the meeting that just took place. The owner of the mansion, having visited Mama Ro studios incognito, was impressed and wanted to meet the guys. As a result of the meeting, it becomes clear that starting from the new year they could rent the entire building. The new third construction is now ahead.
    Heroes
    September 14, 2013, bits and bytes from North Palmyra come via the fiber optic cable to Chistye Prudy: a low-res graphic route from the metro to Mama Ro. Before sending the image in high resolution the artist Nastya Timofeyeva, who drew the picture, asks to transfer the second part of the payment. Payment bits and bytes go back. Nastya is as old as the guys but the acquaintance begins with the respectful Russian formal tense of “You” and want to be reinsured with the payment that the work done isn’t done in vain. Again, bits and bytes come from Petersburg but this time with the high-resolution image which is immediately redirected (either to Siberia or to the ends of the earth) to Sasha’s hut for the lay-out work. Nastya finishes drawing a route for the HTML letters.
    Heroes
    Nastya, who has never been to Moscow, begins the work (that has already been done before her) from scratch: the guys got this contact from the previous artist (and Mama Ro guest) who did not have time to complete the work on the route. As it turned out it was a happy occasion: the first result that comes from St. Petersburg is perfect. Over time the guys would realize more than one project together with Nastya: Nastya would visit Moscow for the first time and then later many more times, becoming a good friend with the guys. It would become an easy matter to take “Sapsan” train for a Sunday party at Mama Ro or Nastya’s exhibition in Saint Petersburg. But for now, that’s all in the future.
    Heroes
    On November 18, 2013, in the small wing of the second floor, Tolya and Pasha set up headquarters. They stretch a sheet on top of the Soviet wallpaper of the old communal apartment, set up the projector, shift the tables and lay out the mansion’s drawings. The small wing is empty; the previous owners have just moved out and the guys get the opportunity to start earlier. They display the estimate of the upcoming construction. The start date is December 1, 2013.
    Heroes
    The end of 2013. Anton, Dima and Nastya come out of the cinema, get in the Rover and ride around Moscow listening to the music of Milana. The third construction has already been underway for a month but Alikhan and Dima still haven’t met each other due to the fact that while the old partitions are being scrapped, Alikhan rarely appears at Chistye Prudy. Dima is starting to work on a project magazine, Alikhan, shortly before this, agrees to come up with a video for Mama Ro about the creation of the new studios. The song “Dance” begins to play in the salon, it’s Dima's favorite track of Milana: “When I first heard this song in 2010, I asked myself: What is this passion, what would this performer be like in a live performance, and if I meet him what would he say to me?" The song is sung by the voice of Alikhan, the author of the text and the founder of the Milana band.
    Heroes
    In 2007, a high school graduate Alikhan Albakov, together with four classmates, conceives the rock group called Milana. The band quickly becomes popular on social networks. Thanks to the first tracks, the guys find themselves on the stages of the cult clubs of the capital. In its second year of live performances, Milana gets contacted by a major music label. But suddenly the group breaks up. Alikhan goes offline and for several years leaves to his small homeland, leaving a large audience with a discography of twenty tracks... among whose listeners are Dima and Anton who are not yet familiar with each other. They both like the same Milana songs. Both first learned about the group through the "Dance" track. The only difference is that Anton, having learned the name of the singer, was amazed to find that they had known each other from school.
    More tracks Here
    On January 2, 2014, Tolya and Pasha pour out the concrete from MAZ car that arrived under the windows of Mama Ro. The work on the reinforcement of the building begins. Just before the start of construction of the six new studios, MoszhilNIIproekt (an organization that specializes on the building layouts, reconstructions) examined the floors of the house and concluded that in Moscow “at the intersection of Gusyatnikov lane and Ogorodnaya sloboda, there was a fossilized Leviathan skeleton”. For almost 120 years of existence, steel beams in the ceilings of the mansion took on the shape of a whale’s ribs. Four formwork molds are waiting for their filling in the basement to become the new reinforced columns.
    Heroes
    The concrete M-300 with granite rubble sets for about 40 minutes. During this time, Tolya and Pasha need to pour it on all in the formwork molds while fixing them on top of it the steel platforms (before they stop sinking in the solution). The weight of one platform, with the size of thirty by thirty and a thickness of two centimeters, like a weightlifting plate but instead with weight of fifteen kilograms of pure steel. The most difficult part is for Pasha: leveling each platform perfectly (a column will rise from it up through the floors and must stand strictly vertical on the platform).
    Heroes
    On the night of January 5, 2014, Tolya and Pasha lift the first column with a mobile crane and pass it through the window of the second floor. Inside Zheka, uncle Serezha, Misha and the other male-builders take it and, having tied it with ropes, gently lower it down through the floors with the butt on the platform. The first of the five fortification columns are installed. There is welding work ahead: around the base of the column, a special load distribution pyramid is assembled and scalded at the seams. The next task is to do the defectological checks, acts of compliance with technology. Only a certified welder can weld fortifications respecting GOST standards (a set of technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC)) 5264-80 and 9467-75.
    Heroes
    January 8, 2014, Tolya, Pasha, Uncle Seryozha, Misha, Volodya, Anton and other guys lift and hold ropes in their hands and curse as the first beam, a 30-centimeter unloading ceiling I-beam, is pulled and installed in a four-meter well between the columns. What remains is to figure out how to throw the beam onto the shelves and under the ceiling with the knowledge that the weight of the beam is about 300 kilograms. In the courtyard, there are another 48 meters of I-beams waiting for their turn; Zheka is cutting steel with a gas cutter listening to the NoGGano “Insure” (НоГГано «Застрахуй») track.
    Heroes
    By mid-January 2014, Tolya develops pyrophobia: in order to bring four cylinders with oxygen and acetylene for a gas cutter from the warehouse in Mytishchi, he and Pasha carefully degrease the Rover's interior with gauze rags - God forbid they jerk around from any contact with oil. Shortly before Tolya brought a whole trunk of five-liter oil bottles on the Rover (Valery Fedorovich decided to expel moisture from the pine saw cuts by heating them in a 100-liter barrel with vegetable oil). In the courtyard of Mama Ro, Tolya and Pasha unload the Rover, prudently bringing the cylinders to a separate floor.
    Heroes
    In the basement of the mansion there are three pines sawed in two on the sawmill, round cuts with tree rings, and sanded branches folded to dry. Valery Fedorovich accepted the offer of Anton to work on the “Pine” studio. “I think it was before the New Year, on December 26, 2013, Valery Fedorovich and Tolya went 350 kilometers into the forest and returned with two trailers loaded with pine. “I will never forget the face of Valery Fedorovich when we walked around the forest and chose pines for the studio. I could not understand which of one us was younger: strong and energetic, he had time to participate in all processes. And then he would find me and oh-so fervently pushing his shoulder, ask something conspiratorially just like a child! And he was so happy about everything,” recalls Anton.
    Heroes
    On the morning of January 23, 2014, under the windows of Mama Ro there are four granite boulders. Next to them is the canvas boaster
    A tool used by sculptors for stone cutting. Professional masters use from 10 and more scarps in their work.
    . Valery Fedorovich goes out into the courtyard and watches with interest Uncle Sasha’s almost ritual-like preparation for work. On the eve of the night, Volodya and Anton brought and loaded the boulders with a manipulator and Volodya asked his father to come in to look at the amount of work to see if he could help with the manufacturing of a megalithic bed
    Megaliths are structures from stone blocks of the Neolithic era, collected by the ancient peoples of the North: from England (Stonehenge) to Russia (Karelian labyrinths).
    for the “Stone” studio. Uncle Sasha arrives and, for the first time, meets Anton and Valery Fedorovich. The ready to work set of boasters promotes an unconditional willingness to help the friends of his son.
    Heroes
    All of the boasters in Uncle Sasha's set are made of the cemented carbide alloy
    Wear-resistant alloy made up of 90% tungsten carbide, used in work with hard materials.
    by his own order. He studied to be a metallurgist but for the last thirty years he has been working as an engraving artist. Stone is his real passion. Just like in the case of the geologist, Valery Fyodorovich. While Uncle Sasha cuts off the excess from the granite boulders, in a half split-up, outside in the cold, Mama Ro begins to form a friendship between two master titans who create the “Pine” and “Stone” studios.
    Heroes
    For the first time, Egor Ognerubov comes to Chistye Prudy on January 30, 2014. Some guys specialized in assembling watches from Soviet indicator lamps, and after some persuasion agreed to share the contact of their electronic engineer with Volodya. And they were recommended to Volodya through a contextual advertising agency. Egor enters the managers’ room and without taking off his backpack, holding his back to the wall, demonstrates his contactless radio sensor to the guys: he places a cobblestone on the table for the “Stone” studio and turns it into a switch. All you need to do is hold your palm up. There are plenty of radio-electronic ideas in the golden head of Egor.
    Heroes
    The end of January 2014. The fortification reaches the third floor and one of the columns fits exactly through the wall of the future shower room in the “Pine” studio. Nadia is just completing work on the 3D model of the pine crowns and begins to think out loud what to do with the column
    Имеется ввиду одна из трехэтажных колонн усиления особняка, прошедшая точно по границе душевой в студии “Сосновая” (отмечена голубым).
    Initially the shower partitions were planned to entirely of glass, but the reinforcement plan of the mansion makes need for its own adjustments. Nadia is the first 3D modeler working on the project and helps the guys visualize the “Stone”, “Pine”, “Bauhaus” and “Melnikov” studios. A year ago, one of the participants during the mosaic assembly laid out a “Tom Sawyer” type of post which included an invitation to join the process and Nadia was the one stranger who responded.
    Heroes
    • Nadya Bobileva

      3D modeler
      Mosaic in the Byzantine studio, 3D-modeling of the 9-13th studios.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
    February 7, 2014, 40 kilometers away from Moscow, Volodya is trying to fall asleep in a sleeping bag on a dilapidated foam sofa: "The face freezes, the body burns". The wooden window barely holds the heat. As always, in the suburbs, the February frosts are stronger than in Moscow. Outside through the window we can hear barking dogs and the creaking of the Kratovo pines laden with snow. We hear the noise of a train. The village of Kratovo lies about an hour’s drive from Moscow: the Kazansky Railway Station, a train, a platform with the same name passes. Here Volodya and Kostya rented a carpentry workshop and set about creating furniture for the future Bauhaus studio. Volodya spends the night in the workshop.
    Heroes
    On the subject of the second after the start of the work: “the day was the beginning of my long-dotted journey, Moscow - the workshop in Kratovo - Moscow. I traveled this way exactly 120 times, and its total length was 4,800 kilometers... every time the train lazily left from under the tall rooftops of the Kazansky Station, my heart inexplicably trembled. 40 kilometers beyond Moscow seemed to me almost like a flight to the Moon "- recalls Volodya.
    Heroes
    The next day, on February 8, 2014, Kostya passes the un-planed board through the planer
    A carpenter's tool used to remove (plan) excess thickness and level the surface of wood.
    . The dusty, uniform in color material goes under the shaft and it comes back, as Volodya says, as "the surface of Jupiter": the knife shows a florid pattern of the ash wood. His "cosmic beauty" isn’t the only feature. At the very beginning, when Volodya draws the strict, minimalistic sketches of future furniture, Kostya proposes using an ash tree because of its high strength and elasticity: even the ancients made cudgels, bows, and spears; even their own cosmogony was made from it since, in Scandinavian culture, the World Tree was considered to be an Ash tree. From time to time Kostya gets the drills stuck in it.
    Heroes
    February 21, 2014, in Kratovo, Kostya and Volodya leave the workshop and cross the railway tracks. It's getting dark. The icy crust crunches under their feet. A stray dog starts following the guys. Shurik the Welder lives somewhere on the other side of the railway tracks to whom Kostya wants to introduce Volodya. The road turns right and stretches along the tracks. Volodya guesses that the derivative from Sasha - “Shurik” - paired with the nickname “Welder” in everyday life, is like “minimizing his real talents”: for everyone who is familiar with Shurik knows that he is almost a legend, a poet with a welding electrode instead of a feather. Volodya and Kostya are approaching Shurik's house and the barking behind the fence makes the stray dog take flight.
    Heroes
    Shurik meets the guys with bread and salt: right from the doorway to the table. On the table there are mantis with elks (a type of dumpling); Shurik loves to hunt. Kostya eats mantis with a good appetite and plays with Honda, a snow-white husky. The name of the second dog is Baton, a skewbald Eskimo dog. They drove the stray dog away. After the dinner they take a tour of the house. Volodya likes the corbel consoles
    A cantilever structure is an element in architecture and interior that projects perpendicularly to the plane of the facade or wall and does not have additional supports.
    on the balcony which has two structural channels. Like the whole house, Shurik invented and assembled it with his own hands. The conversation goes down into the workshop. Shurik shows the guys his ideas and the idea of the Bauhaus studio gradually acquires graceful metal structures. Shurik knows how to make anything from metal.
    Heroes
    Heroes
    The third construction is gaining momentum. More and more people appear in a small managers room and more and more often the workspace spills out onto the back door and into the smoking room. Dima considers the smoking room a place of power: here he likes to discuss the layout of the Mama Ro magazine. “Here - Dima remembers - all the most interesting conversations take place” - being 187 centimeters tall and doing laborious layouts in the managers room, the spacious stairwells serve Dima well: Dima hangs on the railing, Dima sits on the wall, Dima jumps through the flight of stairs. Furthermore, he always finds a companion. The conversation flows easily, extends beyond the mansion and spreads over Chistye Prudy. It is at this moment, Dima meets Alikhan for the first time. Alikhan comes out of the managers room to the back door and says: “Hello”.
    Heroes
    Until March 21, 2014, Alikhan is almost invisibly present at the construction site. He puts the cameras on time-lapse mode and shoots the work of Pasha, Zheka, Misha, uncle Serezha and the other guys. Throughout all this time, Alikhan acts as the “video eye” impartially framing everything for the film. Alikhan isn’t there but his camera lens is. Until one day Sonya appears in Mama Ro together with the beginning of spring. Nastya was looking for an assistant and Volodya recalled the artist Sonya whom he knew from university. Sonya begins to work with the guys for the first time, and Alikhan’s “video eye” loses its impartiality forever.
    Heroes
    March 24, 2014, Alikhan and Sonya drink tea on the roof of the Mama Ro mansion and watch the fuss in the yard. Down below, a truck crane has just arrived right under the windows of the “Stone” studio and is starting preparations to lift the boulders to the second floor. Tolya and Pasha have already taken out the window so that the arrow, a tool on the machine, with the boulder could pass inside. Uncle Sasha and Anton tie the stones with straps. Tolya runs downstairs and begins to worry that 250 kilograms of granite will slip over someone's head. Alikhan grabs the camera and runs to shoot it.
    Heroes
    The next day, March 25, 2014, Anton and Uncle Sasha try to turn the boulders over to their spots in the studio and are not able to. One of the guys comes in and hands them a piece of a gas pipe (if you can't turn it over, you can try to roll it). "It’ll flatten it" – Anton was convinced. “Nonsense!” – and indeed, Uncle Sasha and the guys lift the boulder with six hands, Anton puts the pipe under it and the stone begins to roll. “A strange feeling – Anton recalls – something like a chicken egg that cannot be squeezed in a fist or light bulbs in a neck of a jar on which you can stand.” Uncle Sasha finds another piece of scrap metal as it’s more convenient to roll the boulder with two.
    Heroes
    Apostle Uncle Sasha the next day after placing the boulders on the second floor.
    March 27, 2014 Anton invites Egor Egorychev to look at the space of the “Pine” studio. Egor works with Volodya and makes calculations of the metal structures for the “Bauhaus” studio. Nadia just finished the drawings of the second unit and now they need a strength calculation (a ton of glass floor from triplex
    Impact-resistant tempered optical glass made of three layers, glued with a film, withstands the weight of several people at the same time.
    will be laid on the mezzanine). Egor looks at the mezzanine drawings and specifies the areas where support is needed and concludes: "You can set the UAZ, it will hold it”. The next day, Egor, Lesha’s partner, sends through the calculation: for a three-meter beam with a cross section of 100x100x3mm and a total load of 500 kg per meter; additionally, there is a deflection of 1.56 cm. Just according with the building code: 2.1 cm. So, Egor was right. Tolya and Pasha begin to weld the mezzanine.
    Heroes
    On April 1, 2014, there was a panic at the construction site: all the water leaked out of the barely finished shower room in the “Pine” studio. “Uncle Serezha worked: he carefully laid down the layers of waterproofing, rechecked everything and, not without pride, called me to approve the work: you can check, he said – I did it as if it was for myself! We poured in four centimeters of water in accordance to the technology and left for lunch. We returned an hour later and there was no water...” - recalls Tolya. Uncle Serezha runs off somewhere cursing frightfully. Tolya on all fours starts to look for a leak. If the water leaked to the floor below, there would be a scandal. In this same moment, happy uncle Serezha comes back. It turned out that Misha thought that there was a flood in the shower and he conscientiously collected all the water with a vacuum cleaner. Uncle Serezha's waterproofing is well done.
    Heroes
    It would take time to learn to understand Uncle Seryozha's rapid-talking. Uncle Seryozha is from Donbass and communicates with a characteristic intonation. When the construction team learns to understand his speech, Uncle Seryozha's jokes will spread among everyone.
    On April 6, 2014, in St. Petersburg, Galya finishes and sends Anton the last file of the light books
    The internal name of the engraved and illuminated book cases made for the Stone and Pine studios.
    for the “Stone” and “Pine” studios after two months of monotonous work. “Nastya Timofeeva hates the vector work
    Vector mapping is a way of displaying graphics using program code, necessary, for example, for engraving light books (the laser moves using the code).
    and in December 2013, she politely sent me off with this idea to her friend Galya” - Anton and Galya get acquainted; Galya makes a test file; Anton takes him to the laser cutting place and by February 20, 2013, he collects a folder of 41 scans for the future light books
    To create light books, each cover is scanned separately, then vectorised, and engraved on a plexiglas book case.
    for Galya. “Maybe, only a year later, for the first time, we would chat about the life in St. Petersburg and Moscow, about this and that, as is usually the case, Galya works in a Spartan way: without words, simply for the result. Consequently, everything is always on time.”
    Heroes
    April 17, 2014, Anton sends to Galya a graphic file with the Sumerian cuneiform as a test vector. A message is encrypted in the file. Somewhere within it was a joke that instead of copying the incomprehensible-to-anyone cuneiform, "it’s better to learn Sumerian" and to encrypt something in it in the “Stone” studio. Anton recalls Nastya's talent for languages and suggests her to find more information about the Ancient Sumerians, is it possible to write in cuneiform, for example, the Brodsky's poem “Under a sprawling elm”? Nastya gets into it and after a while brings the phonetic translation of the poem. Then Anton remembers the longer “San Pietro” and Nastya translates again, and the two encrypted messages appear in the studio's lamps.
    Heroes
    April 24, 2014, in St. Petersburg, Nastya Timofeeva finishes the watercolor version
    This refers to the color version of the Mama Ro logo created by Nastya Timofeeva in 2014 for the opening day of six new studios.
    of the Mama Ro planet and begins preparing for her first trip to Moscow. For the last five months, Nastya has been working on the illustrations for the magazine that’s being made by Dima, and Anton suggests her to come to create rock art for the “Stone” studio: “Nastya has a polyglot-like talent in painting, she can draw and paint in completely different styles”. Nastya sends a file, downloads a ticket to Moscow and finds out that Anton reserved everything backwards – the train is from Moscow to Petersburg. Three days later, on April 27, 2014, Nastya is finally in Moscow, and has met with the guys for the first time.
    Heroes
    April 28, 2014, in Kratovo, Shurik finishes the work on the frame of the cantilever stairs for the “Bauhaus” studio. Egor Egorychev, Volodya and Lesha come to see the result. The weight of the structure turned out to be only 200 kilograms. It’s the victory of the applied approach over a theoretical: at the very beginning, when Egor and Lesha did the design calculations, Shurik looked at the drawing and replaced all the vertical pillars with a light diagonal, he suggested to weld a stair stringer
    The diagonal bearing element of the staircase was welded into a rigid frame according to Sasha Sergeev's plan to obtain solid cantilever steps (protruding from the wall plane) in the Bauhaus studio.
    – “we need to do it this way”. Egor thoughtfully looks at the drawing. With this option, all the cantilever steps turn into levers that work on twisting and breaking a bridgeboard. However, neither the profile nor the thickness of its wall would not allow this. Egor comes up with a verdict: we can do this. Shurik has been working with metal for over thirty years.
    Heroes
    Five days later, on May 3, 2014, there is a fuss again near the main entrance of Mama Ro. Shurik and Volodya brought the frame of the cantilevered staircase from Kratovo and the builders didn’t know how to lift it to the second floor: “We won’t be able to swing it around, the width of the flight of stairs is not enough”. “Won’t swing it around,” - Shurik echoes them knowing that on every team there is a lover of impossible missions. “We will swing it around, and we will get it inside”, Uncle Serezha grunts in response. “Should we bet on it?” - Shurik bets for a bottle of good whiskey and after twenty minutes he begins to weld the frame of the staircase in the future “Bauhaus” studio. Uncle Serezha is able to do the impossible.
    Heroes
    May 12, 2014, in Kratovo, Volodya sweeps his finger along the corner of a wooden armchair of the “Bauhaus” studio and immediately withdraws his hand as blood runs out from the pad of his finger. Kostya invited Volodya to check whether the edges were sharp enough. Volodya, from his own experience, becomes convinced of Kostya’s argument that it really is necessary to remove a flat face even if it’s a millimeter one. The density of ash wood is such that it can be used to cut the blades. Perfectionism and passion for strict lines give way to experience: Kostya removes a millimeter face edge.
    Heroes
    May 20, 2014, Tolya arrives at the construction site before everyone else and sees the following: Misha transplants grapes with his one elbow in the ground in the yard. The day before the neighbor from the first floor asked Tolya to help her plant seedlings. “Grapes are a weed, just dig it in and it will take root,” she said. “The next day, at sunrise, Misha came and dug everything back out. He carefully laid it out, cut and carefully placed every sprout back in a different place. He was silent and focused. It looked like a meditation and his face expressed some kind of peace - says Tolya - I asked him why he was doing this, and he, embarrassed by my attention, kept silent and then smiled somewhere to the side and replied: because these are grapes...”- in Transnistria, where Misha is from, they love grapes and know how to take care of them.
    Heroes
    Sonya at Chistye Prudy. Alikhan’s photo. With the arrival of spring around the Mama Ro mansion, the walking season around the city begins. Alikhan finally disappears from the dusty chaos of the construction site.
    May 22, 2014, Sonya with a cup of tea returns to the managers room, opens a photo with Valery Fedorovich, and uncle Sasha with her phone, removes the saturation, frames it and posts it on the social network saying: “One of the most interesting conversations in my life”. The conversation of two master titans, who politely accepted young Sonya to their group, takes place slowly over tea in a sunny smoking room. They talk about everything: geological exploration, sculpture, painting and cinema, specifically, Andrei Tarkovsky and Michalis Kakoyanis films. The interlocutors hadn’t watched one of these films, but the conversation was dear to Sonya: “We were talking about these films but it was like we were in the film itself. And we drank tea”.
    Heroes
    Valery Fedorovich, uncle Sasha and Sonya quickly become friends. Despite the difference in age, two elderly craftsmen eternally covered with a whitish layer of dust and youthfully in love with their work, easily get along with the younger generation. Everyone at the construction site notices their inexhaustible energy. Volodya, who watches with interest the emerging friendship, ironically says that when he was a kid the mother would throw out his father's flowers “not because they were fading, but because they were annoying” – that is, Uncle Sasha worked with his bare hands with uranium ore. “Yes, they are both, in fact, uranium elders” - laughs Volodya. One time, geologist Valery Fedorovich engaged in the exploration of uranium deposits, and metallurgist Uncle Sasha - in the alloys made from raw uranium.
    Heroes
    May 28, 2014, Nastya Timofeeva arrives again in Moscow. Egor Egorychev, Volodya and Anton conduct a tour of the old Arbat. The theme of the tour: “Soviet and alien technologies on the Old Arbat. From Melnikov’s House to the Foreign Ministry Building”. Nastya came to Moscow to help Volodya realize the painting of the Melnikova studio, and Egor agreed to introduce Nastya to the topic. The friends come to the foot of the Foreign Ministry and talk about the famous Smolensk incident where the disappearance of the skyscraper in 1952 was replaced with an extraterrestrial replica with a spire on the site of the freshly built Foreign Ministry building
    After the war and up to Stalin's decree in 1952, the skyscraper of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs was built according to a project that didn’t involve a spire.
    and followed by the mysterious death of Joseph Stalin. Nastya attentively listens to the guys.
    Heroes
    The guys prepared a surprise for Nastya. According to the plan on one of the side streets Egor should suddenly say goodbye and leave the tour. The friends slowly move towards the Melnikov house. Nastya doesn’t yet know about Egor’s friendship with the descendants of the architect. At the wall of Tsoi, Egor suddenly receives a call coming from Volodya’s pocket. Unfortunately, Egor has to leave immediately. Nastya, Volodya and Anton say goodbye to Egor who disappears into Arbat’s side streets. Egor proceeds with what he had planned: he runs around the block from the opposite side, jumps over the fence into the backyard of the Melnikov house and hides behind the gate just before the guys arrive.
    Heroes
    The friends come to the gate from the Krivoarbatsky Lane and talk about the secret status of the house and developments of the space by Konstantin Melnikov and Sergey Korolev. Egor is behind the gate. According to the plan, he must show himself at the very end of the story and invite Nastya on a tour of the house. Suddenly, Nastya interrupts the story and suggests that they try to knock on the door and see if they can meet the descendants of the architect. Volodya and Anton, having looked at each other, approve Nastya's “good idea” and watch with pleasure as she knocks on the gate of Melnikov’s house and finds Egor behind it.
    Heroes
    June 1, 2014, Egor Ognerubov arrives at Chistye Prudy to introduce Misha to the work going on in the “Stone” and “Pine” studios. On this day, it’s Misha Kurlov’s first time at the construction site. While Egor is finishing the program for light books
    This refers to the program to control the LED strips that change the colors inside the light books in the Pine studio.
    , Pasha calls Misha from Ukraine to help with the soldering of LEDs. Nobody assumes yet that there is a whole month of work still to do. Misha meets Egor and the rest of the guys, investigates the matter and goes to lunch with everyone. At this moment, Volodya and Nastya Timofeeva break away from the painting of the Melnikov studio and take a smoke break. Anton and Volodya introduce Nastya to Egor. Egor, being shy of new people, covers his shyness by being in a hurry for business.
    Heroes
    Egor Ognerubov, whose surname could be translated from Russian as the “flame cutter”, explains to the guys the origin of his last name by slash-and-burn agriculture which his ancestor was engaged in in ancient times (when they cut down the forest, a flame cutter would come to replace the woodcutter and “cut down” the remaining stumps and perches by means of fire). Modern Egor is a specialist in radio electronics, but he speaks with enthusiasm about the leaves turning yellow in the trees after a process of irradiation of the forest edge with tropospheric radio waves. Two years ago, somewhere in the deaf Russian forests, Egor served as a liaison in the army forces: with two army fellows at KAMAZ truck equipped with a tropospheric radio station.
    Heroes
    • Egor Ognerubov

      Radio Electronic engineer
      Soldering, programming of light books in the Pine & Stone studios, fireplace video in the Bauhaus studio.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
    June 2, 2014, Anton, Volodya and Nastya Timofeeva go to Kratovo on Rover. Alikhan jumps in to take a ride with the guys but suddenly he falls asleep on the way. The guys are so passionate about their conversation that they forget about Alikhan right up to the Moscow Ring Road. And Alikhan is having a dream. He is Tintin who got into the '80 Olympics in Moscow and Egor Ognerubov is an evil genius radio electronics engineer who decided to enslave the whole world. If he doesn’t stop him, just as the Olympic Bear flies up on the balloons over Moscow, immediately the rockets from all mines, submarines and trains in the USSR will rush to the USA. Like the Trojan horse, Egor hid a cunning radio device inside the bear to deceive the Soviet Electronic Warfare
    Electronic Warfare (EW) means are used by the armed forces to create radio interference on the lines of communication, control, guidance and navigation of a potential enemy.
    forces and hack the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense!
    Heroes
    Pause
    DIGRESSION

    Alikhan’s Dream

    So, from the previous paragraph, we learn that Alikhan fell asleep. Being on the last row of the Rover and suspecting nothing, he travels with the guys to Kratovo. He has a dream: having stuffed the Olympic bear with cunning radio equipment, Egor Ognerubov is going to arrange a nuclear apocalypse. The world is in danger again. Will Alikhan-Tintin manage to neutralize the Olympic bear and save everyone from the evil genius Egor Ognerubov? While the history of the Mama Ro project goes on as usual, these questions can only be answered by plunging into Alikhan’s sleep together with him.
    Heroes
    Alikhan's nonexistent comic book cover.

    Luzhniki

    Alikhan-Tintin rushes into the Luzhniki stunned by a standing ovation. The Olympic Bear, stuffed with radio equipment, is carried into the stadium. But where does one look for Egor in such a large crowd? By intuition, penetrating the dream, Alikhan-Tintin understands that the key lies in the microphone of Lev Leshchenko who enters the stage when the bear takes off, and once the closing song of the games is finished, he turns off his microphone and, unwittingly, releases the entire nuclear arsenal. He must at all costs get this microphone! Alikhan-Tintin is faster than the wind and at the front of the stage, and with amazement, discovers that Valery Fedorovich is going to perform “Goodbye, our gentle Misha” instead of Lev Leschenko. And along with him Sonya accompanies him on the backing vocals.
    Alikhan-Tintin starts a fight with Valery Fedorovich Leshchenko and easily gets the microphone. What remains now is to catch Ognerubov. Alikhan-Tintin rushes to the edge of the stage but unexpectedly receives a heavy stab in the back. Behind him, Sonya jumps off the stage. She is an Amazon assigned by Egor to protect Valery Fedorovich. Alikhan-Tintin cannot believe his eyes, even in his wildest of nightmares he couldn’t imagine that he would have to fight Sonya. At this moment, one and a half thousand acrobatic dancers run out onto the stadium stage and their fight merges with the on-going show. Sonya fights flawlessly and bows, collecting the ovation from the stands, but Alikhan-Tintin fights her back no worse, until both of them fall unconscious from exhaustion. When he awoke, Alikhan-Tintin grabs the microphone and runs off in search of Ognerubov.
    Egor Ognerubov anticipates an apocalypse on the edge of the Olympic flame bowl. Finally, Alikhan-Tintin notices a sinister silhouette against the background of a flame and rushes towards him. At the same moment, Misha Starish suddenly appears among the spectators and pours hard, unripe grapes at his feet. Followed by Nadia who launches Archicad and one by one removes the stands from under his feet. From somewhere, Anton pulls his oily, greasy-smeared fingers and Volodya, snatching a board without a face edge, strives to chop someone into pieces. Behind them, Egor Egorychev appears and sings in a deafening falsetto “The House of Melnikov”, and metal Tolya and Pasha, advancing like guards on the clock, cross I-beams on the way. And Nastya sprinkles the steps with Sumerian cuneiform as if it was salt from a bucket.
    Rolling and climbing, Alikhan-Tintin overcomes more and more obstacles. Finally, arriving at the foot of the bowl, two monsters meet him: one was uncle Serezha crossed with a rooster and the second was Dima crossed with a spider crawling sideways on the wall. Flicking and whistling threateningly, both get closer and closer. Alikhan-Tintin turns to flight in horror and, having slipped on cuneiform, rolls down from the podium head over heels. At the same time, Sonya comes to life in the arena, at first thoughtfully and seriously watching Alikhan's misadventures, unexpectedly rolls with laughter loudly and playfully. Never in her life had she seen anything more ridiculous.
    Finally, Alikhan-Tintin is at the top of the bowl with the Olympic flame. Egor Ognerubov, turned his back on him, watches as they prepare an Olympic bear in the arena. “Give me the microphone, Alikhan! The future is inevitable...” - says Ognerubov, and from his words Alikhan-Tintin understands that the devilish invention in the bear will work regardless as it, having flown far enough away, loses contact with the microphone anyway. “Surrender, Ognerubov, it's over!” - Alikhan-Tintin interrupts him, rushes to meet him and immediately bounces off being blinded by a bright flash. They aren’t alone in the bowl! This is Shurik the Welder who creates the Olympic flame through thermite a welding process. “It’s a pity, it’s a pity. And I was hoping that we would watch the apocalypse salute together” - sighs Egor snatching the microphone from the blinded Alikhan-Tintin and shoves him off the edge of the bowl.
    In exactly two and a half seconds Alikhan-Tintin reaches the foot of the stadium. This is enough time for the blue sporty 1957’s Chevrolet Corvette SS to arrive to catch him. Alikhan lands right in the seat of the sports car. Amazon Sonya suddenly comes to his aid! “We urgently need to get back upstairs. He took the microphone!” – cries the blind Alikhan-Tintin and suddenly feels that something weighty appears in his hand. The microphone! All this time he was pursuing Ognerubov, having mistakenly confused Sonya’s microphone with the real one snatched from Valery Fedorovich. But why didn’t she give it to Ognerubov? “Ha-ha, are we on-air now?” - Alikhan-Tintin is excited about turning up the volume on the radio tape recorder and at the same time the Olympic bear soars above the stadium under the noise of “We are the Moscow beat”.

    Olympus

    The stadium rejoices. Egor, realizing that the Amazon had betrayed him, blows out the Olympic flame in fury. “He was bluffing that the microphone is not necessary: the bear is actually activated if it flies off a hundred meters away but the launch of the nuclear missiles will start only if it is in the radius between Luzhniki and Frunzenskaya, which is, in this moment, where the Ministry of Defense is. So, without a microphone, Ognerubov can only pray for the direction of the wind to guide his missiles. And that we don’t move a muscle for fear of setting of the missiles. That is, dead.” – Sonya, starting her pursuit, drives to the Luzhnetsky Bridge. Fortunately, the Olympic Bear flies in the direction of Sparrow Hills. Sight returns to Alikhan-Tintin: he sees through the veil that Olympus rises on the horizon instead of Sparrow Hills. And they, following the bear, rush along the Luzhnetsky bridge directly over there.
    Alikhan-Tintin and the Amazon Sonya enter the foothills of Olympus. Trees, streams and birds here seem frozen in anticipation of something. Alikhan-Tintin asks Sonya to drive the car closer so he can jump and neutralize the Olympic bear. At this moment a thin sound is heard over the slope as if somebody was playing a pipe. Alikhan-Tintin turns around and sees that towards them, from the thicket, the woodworker, Kostya, with goat legs, a beard and horns comes at them. He is either the devil himself or the ancient Greek Pan. Alongside him there is a whole herd of roe deer and goats. “Firebirds won't surrender just like that,” says Sonya, and just as soon as Pan Kostya manages to bring the flute to his lips, she squeezes the pedal.
    "Hold on" - shouts Sonya, trying to get away from the chase. Pan Kostya with the roe deer and goats jump after him overtaking the Corvette. Alikhan-Tintin notices an oak grove on the right. Sonya flies into it, and they manage to get away. The Olympic bear hovers in the sky swaying over the tops of the trees. Now he is out of reach. Alikhan thinks on a new plan and gets suddenly lost in reverie. It seems that he is no longer Alikhan-Tintin who is saving the world, he isn’t in a sports car and Sonya is not the Amazon who has just saved his life. He just has to descend and dissolve into this charming song. Alikhan-Tintin takes the microphone, stands at the door, but an unexpectedly strong jerk pushes him back into the chair. “Fasten yourself!” Sonya shouts while fastening his seatbelt and the Corvette takes off out of a grove filled with singing pandas.
    “What was it?” - Alikhan-Tintin and Sonya land in a glade with a giant oak tree in the center. "You almost returned the microphone to Ognerubov, giving in to their song." “Whose?” Alikhan-Tintin turns back. But there is no one there. Sonya takes over again and goes after the Olympic bear and for the first time Alikhan-Tintin notices that the oak in the glade is not just gigantic but of colossal size capable of reaching the top of the bowels of the universe. And behind it, someone comes down who is equally great. Alikhan-Tintin peers into the silhouette and realizes that this is the giant Valery Fedorovich. He is an ancient titan.
    Valery Fedorovich approaches the Corvette. His eyes are covered in flames and Sonia realizes that their only protection here is the oak itself. This titan is its keeper. Looking terrifying, Valery Fedorovich goes around the tree and Sonya drives the Corvette in a circle using the crown as a shield. Unwittingly, Alikhan-Tintin observes Valery Fedorovich in horror and tries to wake up marveling at Sonya's coolness. “Look what Ognerubov has done,” says Sonya, watching Valery Fedorovich who finally, grabbing the base of the oak, begins shaking the earth trying to pull it out of the ground. "This titan is ready to shake the universe itself and all for what ..." - Sonia says and suddenly without finishing the phrase, bursts out laughing: unable to unroot the world tree, the giant Valery Fedorovich grunts earnestly.
    Valery Fedorovich turns to the laugh that has spread over the atmosphere of Olympus and meets his eyes with Sonya’s. “Well, that’s enough, Valery Fedorovich” - Alikhan-Tintin seems to be hearing. “All the stars in their orbits are gone - look what you have done!” says Sonya, bursting into laughter even more from the expression on Valery Fyodorovich’s face; it seems that from a certain revelation his eyes suddenly filled with depth. With relief, the titan throws down the remnants of fire from his eyelids, gently straightens the shaken tree and, after a deep exhalation, he suddenly bursts into Homeric laughter. So much so that Amazon Sonya rushes to get the car out of the glade as quickly as possible due to the fact that the stream is spilling over and stones begin rolling dangerously because of Valery Fedorovich’s laugh.
    The Olympic bear is almost at the top. The Corvette's power is low and has barely enough energy to continue the pursuit so Sonya stops. Alikhan-Tintin jumps out of the car, quickly climbs along the rocky spurs of Olympus and finds the bear hovering right above a small clearing where everything was calm. Suddenly, a gust of wind knocks him down. On the left, Nastya Timofeeva sits on a folding chair in a flowing dress and with a ribbon in her hair, frozen like a Greek statue. And she draws something in her sketchbook. With a wave of her pencil she magically stopped the flight of the Olympic Bear. But who is she? Is she a Goddess? “Without a microphone, Ognerubov can only pray to the direction of the wind...” Alikhan-Tintin suddenly recalls Sonya’s words and, leaving behind any doubts, rushes to the bear. Nastya draws the direction of the wind.
    Alikhan-Tintin barely manages to arrive in time, a hurricane squall rips and carries the Olympic bear into the abyss. Falling and rising under the onslaught of the storm, Alikhan-Tintin hurries back to Sonya. “Timofeeva directed the bear towards Frunzenskaya. If we let it go, the world is finished!” Alikhan-Tintin shouts and Sonya turns the car around. Down at the base, Pan Kostya is already waiting with a horde of roe deer and goats. “It's so good when the only way to solve a problem is to go through it,” exclaims Sonya and hits the pedal to the floor. The corvette takes off with a roar and unexpectedly soars into the sky: the giant, Valery Fyodorovich, dragged and set a Big Springboard in their way. “Wow, wow, wow!” Alikhan-Tintin shouts, happily saying goodbye to Pan Kostya who remained somewhere below. “What a beautiful city!” – the Amazon admires the rising panorama of Moscow.

    Andreyevsky Bridge

    Having flown through the foothills of Olympus, the Corvette lands at the Moscow Palace of Pioneers and rushes in hot pursuit again. The Olympic Bear is halfway to the Ministry of Defense. Alikhan-Tintin climbs on the back of his seat and tries to grab the bear by the paw. But the squall comes down knocking him down. The bear is pulled down towards the river. “There is a bridge; it will fly right over it!” - Alikhan-Tintin notices ahead the Andreevsky Bridge. "This is our last chance, the wind is driving the bear too quickly out of the microphone's range of operation," Sonya shouts, turning to the bridge and suddenly the asphalt begins to fall into the river: Zheka in a Bruce Willis’s t-shirt appears out of nowhere and cuts the bridge beams with a giant gas cutter.
    The Olympic Bear approaches the bridge break. “Another springboard! Do not stop, accelerate more and jump into the river!” shouts Alikhan-Tintin, climbing again on the back of his seat, and Sonya realizes that he is going to jump on the Olympic Bear. The corvette bellows hysterically. Sonya looks at Alikhan who is preparing to jump. He has a microphone in his hand. “I will succeed, succeed,” Alikhan whispers without noticing how everything around him begins to tremble: something huge rises from the gap of the bridge ahead. Sonya turns and sees the eyes covered in flame. A second titan! He is Uncle Sasha lifting a giant blue boulder from the bottom of the river. Sonya understands that they don’t have time. Uncle Sasha throws the boulder.
    “Alikhan!” Sonya screams and, escaping from behind the wheel, pushes Alikhan-Tintin from the side of the car. At the same time, the giant boulder, having broken the bonnet, with a roar stops the acceleration of the sports car, and the twisted Corvette, tumbling, flies into the river. Alikhan-Titin, unable to really understand what happened, flies a few meters to the side and lands on the tail-end platform of the Moscow-Ufa speed train passing along the neighboring bridge. “It's all over” - flashes in Alikhan-Tintin’s head as the train quickly disappears into the tunnel. The Olympic Bear floats above the destroyed bridge. Sonya is unconscious somewhere below between the burning tires. A microphone rolls past her.
    The microphone rolls into the gap of the bridge and someone's hand is there just in time to catch it. Alikhan-Titin, having run out of the tunnel, knows that he is late: the Olympic bear is over the Ministry of Defense. The air is calm. Ognerubov is on the bridge. He has a microphone in his hand. Now he will turn it off and the devilish invention in the bear will activate the nuclear missiles. Suddenly, Alikhan-Titin notices Sonya: having given him a sign, she carefully sneaks up to Egor from behind. “No one can stop me!” - Egor raises the microphone, putting his finger on the switch, and at the same time a whirlwind passes through his hand. “Yes, yes, yes!” Shouts Alikhan. Sonya got the microphone! “Even you” - and Egor, removing from his second pocket the real microphone, clicks the switch off button.
    An unprecedented silence falls over Moscow. “What have you done!” Sonya shouts, not having having manage to get Ognerubov the second time. It seems to Alikhan-Tintin that everything around is frozen in anticipation of what will happen next. “Actually, nothing,” Egor suddenly replies. And he clicks the button again. “I was just joking!” - and again. There is a pause. However, nothing happens. Standing a hundred meters away from him, Alikhan-Tintin hears a starched shirt crunch on Yegor. “Damn you to hell, will you work or not!”, Egor finally gets annoyed, pointing the microphone right at the Ministry of Defense, clicks it again and suddenly the music starts playing from the speakers all over Moscow.
    The warning systems one after another start working throughout the USSR. Instead of howling sirens the track "Dance" is launched everywhere: above cities, villages, fields, forests, mountains and rivers, in trains and on ships, in airplanes and submarines, in mines underground and on even the space station in orbit. Egor, very pleased with the work of his invention, stands proudly on the precipice of the Andreyevsky Bridge as if in the middle of a stage. On the other bank, furious applause thunders over the Luzhniki Stadium and thousands of spectators rush to the streets. Everyone cuddles and sings songs, cries and throws each other up into the air. Immediately, leaving their homes, the remaining residents of the city join them. All of Moscow is filled with triumph. “As if they had just finished watching an ancient Greek tragedy,” Alikhan thinks. And suddenly he realizes that this is what it is.
    “A glorious battle, Alikhan” - a voice suddenly comes from somewhere. Alikhan turns around and sees that a silhouette approaches him on the railway tracks from the tunnel. “You are right, the world has just watched a most real tragedy. But you yourself are not fully aware of how great it is. Look at these people, jubilant as children, abandoned their homes, having forgotten about everything except one feeling: to live! Our games are three thousand years old, but this is something the world hasn’t seen for a very long time”- a familiar voice sounds, and suddenly Alikhan discerns that it is Nastya Timofeeva in the silhouette. Well, of course! How could he not immediately guess? She is Pythia. “So, you all knew from the beginning? The finale was outlined?” Alikhan exclaims. "Yes! And no”- and Pythia Nastya, coming out of the tunnel, pulls out her sketchbook to him. Alikhan opens it and finds inside a comic book about Tintin and the Olympic Bear.

    Moscow

    Incredible things happen in Moscow. The sun, descending over the horizon, flooded the city with some kind of special golden light. Booming voices and glee is everywhere. No sounds of transport passing. People go to the embankments, carrying with them musical instruments, lay tables right on the roadway, in the alleys and on the foothills of Olympus. Slanting beams of light penetrate the space, and the birds, happily chirping, travel through them between the trees. The river is splashing quietly. Finally, the first song is heard and all the instruments joyfully echoe it. “None of this is there,” says Nastya, while Alikhan looks through the comics. "As there is no Amazon Sonya, who saved your life twice today," she adds, and the comic unfolds itself on the page where Tintin, having sped up his blue Corvette, jumps and neutralizes the Olympic bear.
    Suddenly there is laughter some distance from the precipice of the bridge. Alikhan turns in its direction and sees Sonya surrounded by flowers. The titan Valery Fyodorovich descended from the foothills of Olympus, holding a tiny eight-petalled dryad in his palm. As soon as Sonya accepted his gift, the bridge beneath her cracked open from the flowers that grew around her her. Next to the bridge is an astonished titan Uncle Sasha watching the power of flowers over the stone. “She is not an Amazon, is she?” Alikhan asks looking at Sonya. “Neither am I Pythia, Alikhan. We are all masks. But each of us has our own idea,” Nastya answers and Alikhan sees how titan Uncle Sasha goes under water for a moment and picks up the battered Corvette from the bottom of the river. “No longer an Amazon, Alikhan,” Pythia suddenly adds, looking at Sonya. “The titans accept her into their world. They will give her the name Eurydice.”
    “But why does this story not exist in the actual comic?” - Alikhan again sketches the sketchbook and suddenly notices that the tiny dryad that Sonya placed on the blue boulder has grown into a tree of incredible proportions. And it continues to grow. “This is an ancient game, Alikhan. The second and main part of the Olympic Games is history now. In them the beauty of the body came first and then the beauty of the spirit was affirmed. But somehow we managed to break the thread of the story and open it, having all gathered in one dream, it’s a mystery even to Pythia. The prophecy has come true,” says Nastya, and Alikhan sees that one of the branches of the tree stretches beside them. “We have been invited, Alikhan. Come, you will see everything for yourself,” and, having straightened out her dress, Nastya steps over to the branch and soars up over Moscow. And Alikhan follows her.
    Stepping from branch to branch with ease, Nastya climbs higher and Alikhan, trying to keep up, barely manages to look around. “Long ago, before the names and the beginning of time, a stone rolled down from one great mountain surrounded by water. And then another. And then another again. The stones rolled one after another as if by someone's invisible will, forming more and more islands in different parts of the world. The first islands! Then a prophecy hovered over the water...”- says Pythia and, suddenly stopping, slowly glances around the space. Alikhan jumps over to her and for the first time notices that here, on other branches, are Egor Ognerubov, Nastya, Dima, Tolya, Volodya, Anton, Kostya, Egor Egorichev and everyone else are already there. And among them is Sonya. “The branch on which two or more sit, there will be a right space!” says Nastya.
    Pythia’s dress waves in the wind. An upward gust of wing runs along the foliage reaching the top of the giant crown. Alikhan looks above him and sees that the tree is infinite: there a multitude of people up there sitting, admiring the sunset. During their ascent the tree managed to cover and absorb all of Moscow. “And this oak tree growing from stone is the path to this space, Alikhan. Here the song easily travels from the earth to the sky and back. Like this wind,” says Pythia, and at this same moment, Sonya rushes past them jumping from branch to branch. “How cool, how cool it is, Alikhan! Look, what a miracle! Let’s run together! ”- and, not leaving him a choice, accompanied by the laughs of Pythia and the guys, Sonya takes Alikhan along with her.
    “We will live here! Together! How great it is, how wonderful! ”- Sonya finally takes a seat on a picturesque branch at the very edge of the crown, and, cheerfully dangling her legs, invites Alikhan over to her. Alikhan sitting down watches in amazement Sonya’s transformation: the recent formidable Amazon and now an enthusiastic, carefree child. “Look how beautiful, look!” - down there, as if frozen, Moscow sparkles in the rays of the setting sun. “It’s astonishingly beautiful, Sonya!” - suddenly a voice from above calls to her. This is Egor Ognerubov, sitting right above them. There is a quiet smile on his face. “Well, let’s stay here to live. Yes! Yes! ”- echoing the guys: Tolya, Volodya, Anton, Dima and Kostya. “We have always lived here!” – replies Pythia.
    The branch under Sonya and Alikhan continues to grow out: it becomes so real to Alikhan that once people would hollow out boats of such branches. “This is exactly it - Pythia reads his thoughts -“the tree is the essence of the boat,” the ancients said. When the green crown rose above the first island, they made a boat from it and discovered many new worlds on it; other uninhabited islands. Thus, the boat became a symbol that glued together the fragile human world”, explains Nastya while the huge branch trembles underneath them: the titans approached the tree and Valery and grabbing the very base of the branch, made two notches near Sonya and Alikhan. “Soon you will wake up, Alikhan. They are here to complete the ceremony”- Alikhan hears the words of Pythia Nastya in his head as if she had really spoken.
    “Huh?” Alikhan asks, watching the masterly movement of the chisel in the titan’s hand: Valery Fedorovich carefully grabs the branch under him and Sonya, sculpts something from it. “The Titans want to present their gift. This is our reward for the game,” says Pythia. "Reward? But we lost!” Alikhan replies to her. “Bloody hell, just look at this! Strike me down if Fedorych isn’t sculpting a new Corvette there!”- suddenly exclaims Tolya, looking at what is happening around Alikhan and Sonya. All turn to them and indeed, familiar outlines appear under Valery Fedorovich’s chisel. “The insight of Pythia is powerless in front of the prophecy, Alikhan - Nastya answers.” Once upon a time the ancients said: there is no Olympus without an Olympian. And today it belongs to Moscow.”
    "A wooden one? Ha-ha-ha, oh well!” Sonya laughs, recognizing the Corvette under the titan's chisel. “Ah, Fedoritch, what a bastard! Not bad!” Kostya cries out. His eye shine with delight. “Well, since the branch is the essence of the boat, then the boat is the essence of the Corvette,” Egor says. “Uh, the tree is the essence of the boat!” corrects Anton. “Yes, no difference, all one! A wooden Corvette is the essence of boot! And also of boyt and of surfboat”- Dima fools around. “Ha ha ha. Aerostatic boot, apparently. Am I right? Millennial... ugh," laughs Volodya, trying to find the right name. "Millennial Finist!" - Anton picks up. “Haha. Yes, it is a gift of magic wood. And it’s inside that dryad, Sonya,” replies Pythia. “Strike it down to the ground and a faithful horse will appear to save the world from Egor Ognerubov,” Dima picks up. "Then it's clearly going to be a falcon this time!" Egor bores. “Well, thank you, Egor, for not another bear,” laughs Nastya. “How cool, wow, wow! I will paint it”- Sonya pulls the hand of Alikhan.
    The millennial finist is ready. Valery Fedorovich removes the last chamfers from the sides and, pulling out the metal tip of the chisel, solemnly sticks it into the bridge between the Corvette and the branch. “It looks like it's time to cut the rope. Uh-uh, wood cutter!” Dima cries out with inspiration. “Well, who will get this honor, brothers?” Kostya asks. “Honey, don’t you want to do it?” Nastya then addresses to Volodya. “No, it's better if Tolya did it! Tolya, you are our captain - you have to let it down into the water,” answers Volodya. “That is, to the air,” corrects Egor Egorychev. “Yes, Tolya, for sure, come on!” there is a roar of approval, and the guys grabbing the cutter, all together hand it to Tolya. “Ah, and we definitely will not fall?” Sonya ask surprisingly. “Yes, don’t be chicken, Sonya! Today we saved the world and you’re talking about us falling...” Tolya laughs and cuts the jumper…
    “Oh, look what kind of flower I have,” Sonya suddenly cries out. Nastya approaches her, "Wow! This is a dryad. I wonder where it comes from as we don’t have such flowers here.” “Guys, let's go! The sun will set!” Nastya Timofeeva calls out to everyone. “Well, you are doing it great!” Alikhan suddenly hears. It is Egor Ognerubov, who turns to him, nodding somewhere below. They are on the Andreevsky bridge halfway to the Sparrow Hills. Alikhan finally comes to his senses and finds a microphone in his hand. “Guys, let's go!” - the guys call again, and Sonya, inserting a flower by her ear, together with Nastya catch up with everyone. “Cool, Alikhan, very cool. Do not stop! ”- and turning, Egor runs away after him. Alikhan picks up the microphone and, twisting in his hand, realizes that this is a statuette of stone: beautiful, with blue flickering streaks-handmade.
    The sun has touched the horizon. The swallows are high in the sky. The playing of a guitar is heard somewhere. "Aaalikhan,” Sonya's voice is heard over the slope, “catch up with us!" Alikhan responds to her but the contour of Sparrow Hills, for a minute, seems steeper than usual to him. To the right, in the direction of the sunset, two gigantic silhouettes go down the river. “This is Valery Fedorovich and Uncle Sasha, ancient titans and keepers of the universe,” thinks Alikhan, looking after them for a long time until they finally disappear over the horizon. There are claps in the evening sky and the whole of Moscow is overtaken in multicolored flashes. Alikhan watches a terrific salute and, suddenly, he becomes unusually sad. He just remembered something he forgot... It was at that moment he realized he was sleeping.
    Play
    CONTINUATION OF THE FIRST PART
    Alikhan wakes up in the back seat of the old Rover with his eyes wet in tears. A music plays in the car. Anton, Volodya and Nastya laugh. Outside the window in the headlights float the shipbuilding pines. A dream! It was only a dream! “Wake up, Alikhan. We are already in Kratovo”- Nastya says to him. Not Pythia anymore? “Probably on the way they listened again to Milana,” a thundering Luzhniki flashes in his head. The phone rings. “Where are you?!” his father is already searching for him. “Dad, I'm fine. We went to Kratovo with the guys. I will be back soon,” Alikhan makes a whirring sound. And for a second, he listens to absolute silence. “To Krakow?! What the hell are you doing in Krakow!” a furious cry comes out of the telephone and the Rover explodes with laughter. Alikhan tries his best not to forget his dream.
    Heroes
    The next day after the trip with the guys to Kratovo Alikhan would write a song. However, he would lose the text and forget the words.
    The third construction comes to an end. There is a fuss in the manager’s room. On one of the monitors in the editing program, there is a video file dated June 3, 2014: the day after the guys’ trip to Kratovo. Dancing on the edge of a metal console, Shurik demonstrates the welding reliability to Volodya who is filming him. Meanwhile, Volodya, having finished his affairs at the construction site, enters the room and sends Alikhan the remaining video files from his phone. On the opposite side, behind the next monitor, Dima and Anton work on the layout. Nastya runs through the room with a bunch of curtains. Having download the files, Alikhan opens the editing program again, and Volodya's shooting is uploaded into its terabyte video archive.
    Heroes
    On the timeline, the construction time goes by almost as fast as the time on the construction site below: while the beginning of the demolition plays on the January time-lapse
    Frame-by-frame shoot of slowly flowing phenomena at equal intervals of time, allowing to see “compressed time”, was used by Alikhan to shoot a video about the construction.
    summer sun has already rotated outside the window above Chistye Prudy, and the pillars of bright light stay on the construction site longer than just January. Anton, Alikhan and Nastya go on the Rover to Kurkino instead of Ikea to watch the mists on the Skhodnya river. Alikhan and Sergey shoot a salutary video over the Sparrow Hills to make it look like Alikhan’s dream. Kostya calls out, “Volodyaaa,” at the corner of Myasnitskaya street, and the pick-up truck below him takes off as the traffic lights change. Volodya would talk to him the next morning, sleeping somewhere on a park bench in the company of two scooters. What did Kostya do in the back of this pick-up truck? Whose was this pick-up truck? And the scooters? Kostya planned to spend the night at the construction site and continue to work in the morning on the hexagon table
    Hexagonal table in a shape of hexagon which is a figure that allowed three people to be seated optimally in the small space of the new Mama Ro administrator office.
    for the new managers’ room.
    Heroes
    A summer evening behind-the-scenes route around the suburban Moscow River, Anton and Volodya bring from Kratovo the welded shelves made by Shurik for the “Avia” studio. They put the shelves half sticking out of the Hyundai Porter (another car the guys used) hoping that they wouldn’t fell out on the road. In the future "Stone" studio, Tolya and Pasha study the strength of the materials as they wonder how to weld a pyramid for four boulders in a way that they do not burst under their weight. Uncle Seryozha and Misha Kurlov are on the mezzanine, as if they were in a coachman’s seat, smoking a cigarette. That day, the pines and smart glass
    Electrochromic glass that changes its optical properties (transparent / opaque) when an electric voltage is applied.
    were installed in the future “Pine” studio. Uncle Sasha and Valery Fedorovich work on petroglyphs for the “Stone” one. Zheka, with a multimeter in Bruce Willis's shirt, of course, listens to NoGGano. Egor Ognerubov is working on a laptop because the light-books didn’t work again. And Sonya, Sonya! She’s at work at the monitor together with Egor Egorovich and Nastya Timofeeva painting the "Melnikov" studio. In the managers’ room. On the roof. On the stairs. In the courtyard.
    Heroes
    June 18, 2014 is an interesting day for the guys. “A stranger arrived, sat down in our Rover and drove away in an unknown direction,” said Tolya. “Did it hurt?” someone asks. “Yes, it was as if we lost a close friend,” that day the guys ran out of money, and in order to be able to complete the construction, they had to sell the car. It seemed that at the same time Anton had decided to make the Rover into a model for a talisman in the "Pine" studio and he found it! Somewhere in London, it was the same color, and ordered by mail. Indeed, they went to hell and back with that Rover— it was a legend!
    Heroes
    Alikhan finishes the timeline, starts the render, and runs off to the smoking room. Volodya sits down with Dima and Anton and recommends how to correct the “Melnikov” and “Bauhaus” studios as Dima prepares the studio billboards for the opening. Behind the guys there is a freshly printed first edition "Mama Ro" magazine. Nastya passes by again with Tolya and Pasha as they are setting up a new managers’ room on the floor below. These are last days of work on the third floor. It says it is August 7, 2014 in the open doors behind the window. It is ten days before the opening of the new studios.
    Heroes
    On August 17, 2014, after nine months of construction, six new Mama Ro studios open their doors to guests. “Jazz”, “Stone”, “Pine”, “Bauhaus”, “Melnikov” and “Avia”
    Without taking into account the earlier mentioned (p. 2.28) principle of numbering accordingly the Coriolis force the neighborhood of studios No. 14 “Avia” (on the right) and No. 9 “Jazz” (on the left) looks absurd.
    are being booked according to the Coriolis force, starting with the ninth studio, “Jazz”, and right under eighth studio is "Moscow" and ending with the next to "Jazz" but the fourteenth in a row - "Avia". The presentation and video screening are scheduled at 7PM. Then an exhibition of Nastya Timofeeva’s sketches, “Plunge into Mama Ro”. Free bar and live music. Free admission.
    Heroes
    There is some fuss in the old managers’ room on the third floor. Volodya rehearses his speech. Tolya is trying on his pants. Anton and Alikhan export a file: a video will follow Volodya’s performance. Dima, acting as stylist, helped the guys with buying clothes the day before. Finally, the first guests arrive. Volodya goes out to the audience, and Anton and Alikhan try to speed up the export of the video file with the swear words. The bundles of the Mama Ro magazine, carefully arranged by Dima and Nastya, are at the entrance, and begin to slowly melt away. The opened studios no longer belong to their creators.
    Heroes
    The video about the construction, shot and edited by Alikhan, would be greeted with inspiration by the audience gathered at the opening of the new Mama Ro.
    After the end of the presentation “Jazz,” the only studio with chamber lighting and (according to Tolya’s plan) with its own bar, collects the light. Kostya, settling with Kira at the bar counter, generously pours drinks to everyone. Alikhan and Serezha laugh at Kostya. Egor Ognerubov accompanies Nastya Timofeeva everywhere with two glasses saying, "This is my page!" Nastya laughs while getting acquainted with Anton's grandmother. Meanwhile, in the courtyard of Mama Ro, another event is born extemporaneously: having taken the table top out of the old managers room, Tolya, Zheka, Misha, and Uncle Serezha, adapted it on the saw-buck and prepared an open-air banquet. The evening comes.
    Heroes
    Nastya Timofeeva for the third time comes to the guys in Moscow, but this time for the opening. She brings with her an exhibition of sketches-impressions made during her participation in the construction.
    More >
    About three hundred people come to the opening. By the end of the event, only one pile of the small Mama Ro magazine edition designed by Dima remains. In a couple of weeks, only the electronic version will remain.
    More >
    CONTINUATION OF THE FIRST PART
    Alikhan wakes up in the back seat of the old Rover with his eyes wet in tears. A music plays in the car. Anton, Volodya and Nastya laugh. Outside the window in the headlights float the shipbuilding pines. A dream! It was only a dream! “Wake up, Alikhan. We are already in Kratovo”- Nastya says to him. Not Pythia anymore? “Probably on the way they listened again to Milana,” a thundering Luzhniki flashes in his head. The phone rings. “Where are you?!” his father is already searching for him. “Dad, I'm fine. We went to Kratovo with the guys. I will be back soon,” Alikhan makes a whirring sound. And for a second, he listens to absolute silence. “To Krakow?! What the hell are you doing in Krakow!” a furious cry comes out of the telephone and the Rover explodes with laughter. Alikhan tries his best not to forget his dream.
    Heroes
    The next day after the trip with the guys to Kratovo Alikhan would write a song. However, he would lose the text and forget the words.
    The third construction comes to an end. There is a fuss in the manager’s room. On one of the monitors in the editing program, there is a video file dated June 3, 2014: the day after the guys’ trip to Kratovo. Dancing on the edge of a metal console, Shurik demonstrates the welding reliability to Volodya who is filming him. Meanwhile, Volodya, having finished his affairs at the construction site, enters the room and sends Alikhan the remaining video files from his phone. On the opposite side, behind the next monitor, Dima and Anton work on the layout. Nastya runs through the room with a bunch of curtains. Having download the files, Alikhan opens the editing program again, and Volodya's shooting is uploaded into its terabyte video archive.
    Heroes
    On the timeline, the construction time goes by almost as fast as the time on the construction site below: while the beginning of the demolition plays on the January time-lapse
    Frame-by-frame shoot of slowly flowing phenomena at equal intervals of time, allowing to see “compressed time”, was used by Alikhan to shoot a video about the construction.
    summer sun has already rotated outside the window above Chistye Prudy, and the pillars of bright light stay on the construction site longer than just January. Anton, Alikhan and Nastya go on the Rover to Kurkino instead of Ikea to watch the mists on the Skhodnya river. Alikhan and Sergey shoot a salutary video over the Sparrow Hills to make it look like Alikhan’s dream. Kostya calls out, “Volodyaaa,” at the corner of Myasnitskaya street, and the pick-up truck below him takes off as the traffic lights change. Volodya would talk to him the next morning, sleeping somewhere on a park bench in the company of two scooters. What did Kostya do in the back of this pick-up truck? Whose was this pick-up truck? And the scooters? Kostya planned to spend the night at the construction site and continue to work in the morning on the hexagon table
    Hexagonal table in a shape of hexagon which is a figure that allowed three people to be seated optimally in the small space of the new Mama Ro administrator office.
    for the new managers’ room.
    Heroes
    A summer evening behind-the-scenes route around the suburban Moscow River, Anton and Volodya bring from Kratovo the welded shelves made by Shurik for the “Avia” studio. They put the shelves half sticking out of the Hyundai Porter (another car the guys used) hoping that they wouldn’t fell out on the road. In the future "Stone" studio, Tolya and Pasha study the strength of the materials as they wonder how to weld a pyramid for four boulders in a way that they do not burst under their weight. Uncle Seryozha and Misha Kurlov are on the mezzanine, as if they were in a coachman’s seat, smoking a cigarette. That day, the pines and smart glass
    Electrochromic glass that changes its optical properties (transparent / opaque) when an electric voltage is applied.
    were installed in the future “Pine” studio. Uncle Sasha and Valery Fedorovich work on petroglyphs for the “Stone” one. Zheka, with a multimeter in Bruce Willis's shirt, of course, listens to NoGGano. Egor Ognerubov is working on a laptop because the light-books didn’t work again. And Sonya, Sonya! She’s at work at the monitor together with Egor Egorovich and Nastya Timofeeva painting the "Melnikov" studio. In the managers’ room. On the roof. On the stairs. In the courtyard.
    Heroes
    June 18, 2014 is an interesting day for the guys. “A stranger arrived, sat down in our Rover and drove away in an unknown direction,” said Tolya. “Did it hurt?” someone asks. “Yes, it was as if we lost a close friend,” that day the guys ran out of money, and in order to be able to complete the construction, they had to sell the car. It seemed that at the same time Anton had decided to make the Rover into a model for a talisman in the "Pine" studio and he found it! Somewhere in London, it was the same color, and ordered by mail. Indeed, they went to hell and back with that Rover— it was a legend!
    Heroes
    Alikhan finishes the timeline, starts the render, and runs off to the smoking room. Volodya sits down with Dima and Anton and recommends how to correct the “Melnikov” and “Bauhaus” studios as Dima prepares the studio billboards for the opening. Behind the guys there is a freshly printed first edition "Mama Ro" magazine. Nastya passes by again with Tolya and Pasha as they are setting up a new managers’ room on the floor below. These are last days of work on the third floor. It says it is August 7, 2014 in the open doors behind the window. It is ten days before the opening of the new studios.
    Heroes
    On August 17, 2014, after nine months of construction, six new Mama Ro studios open their doors to guests. “Jazz”, “Stone”, “Pine”, “Bauhaus”, “Melnikov” and “Avia”
    Упомянутый выше (п. 2.28 ) принцип нумерации по “силе Кориолиса”, без учета которого соседство студий №14 “Авиа” (справа) и №9 “Джаз” (слева) выглядит абсурдно.
    are being booked according to the Coriolis force, starting with the ninth studio, “Jazz”, and right under eighth studio is "Moscow" and ending with the next to "Jazz" but the fourteenth in a row - "Avia". The presentation and video screening are scheduled at 7PM. Then an exhibition of Nastya Timofeeva’s sketches, “Plunge into Mama Ro”. Free bar and live music. Free admission.
    Heroes
    There is some fuss in the old managers’ room on the third floor. Volodya rehearses his speech. Tolya is trying on his pants. Anton and Alikhan export a file: a video will follow Volodya’s performance. Dima, acting as stylist, helped the guys with buying clothes the day before. Finally, the first guests arrive. Volodya goes out to the audience, and Anton and Alikhan try to speed up the export of the video file with the swear words. The bundles of the Mama Ro magazine, carefully arranged by Dima and Nastya, are at the entrance, and begin to slowly melt away. The opened studios no longer belong to their creators.
    Heroes
    The video about the construction, shot and edited by Alikhan, would be greeted with inspiration by the audience gathered at the opening of the new Mama Ro.
    After the end of the presentation “Jazz,” the only studio with chamber lighting and (according to Tolya’s plan) with its own bar, collects the light. Kostya, settling with Kira at the bar counter, generously pours drinks to everyone. Alikhan and Serezha laugh at Kostya. Egor Ognerubov accompanies Nastya Timofeeva everywhere with two glasses saying, "This is my page!" Nastya laughs while getting acquainted with Anton's grandmother. Meanwhile, in the courtyard of Mama Ro, another event is born extemporaneously: having taken the table top out of the old managers room, Tolya, Zheka, Misha, and Uncle Serezha, adapted it on the saw-buck and prepared an open-air banquet. The evening comes.
    Heroes
    Nastya Timofeeva for the third time comes to the guys in Moscow, but this time for the opening. She brings with her an exhibition of sketches-impressions made during her participation in the construction.
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    About three hundred people come to the opening. By the end of the event, only one pile of the small Mama Ro magazine edition designed by Dima remains. In a couple of weeks, only the electronic version will remain.
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    SECOND PART

    Entresol Era

    ama Ro grows. After going through three constructions, the project has created fourteen unique studios. It’s the direct result of work from designers, engineers, builders, wood and stone masters, and artists. Consequently, the guests are not in debt to provide demand: in September 2014, the updated Mama Ro receives bookings for almost the maximum load: 99.3%. The three original flagship studios, the format born during the process of the third construction site, “Pine”, “Jazz” and “Bauhaus”
    As an experiment, there was allocated a larger budget than for the others for the creation of the Jazz, Pine and Bauhaus studios: for solving complex author's ideas and for raising the conversion of the project as a whole due to the increased demand for original flagship studios.
    are in incredible demand and become the engine of the project. In Mama Ro, one now more often hears the question: “Do you make custom interiors by order?” For the time being, the guy’s answer is, “No”.
    Heroes
    On September 22, 2014, five months later, the Putilin couple, Farida and Alexander, come to Mama Ro again. The guys first met the elderly couple at the end of April 2014, at the climax of the third construction Farida and Alexander appreciated the guys approach to the Mama Ro’s interiors so much that they asked if they could create a similar design project for themselves. The guys, realizing that the construction consumed all their time and energy, agreed with the spouses to return to this conversation after the construction is over. Until today, they had forgotten about the existence of Farida and Alexander. In their minds it seemed obvious that, no customer would wait so long.
    Heroes
    • Alexander Putilin

      First customer
      Inspirer of the Mama Ro interior design agency, the first customer of the design project.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Farida
      Putilina

      First customer
      Inspirer of the Mama Ro interior design agency, the first customer of the design project.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    October 7, 2014, Alikhan sends a letter to Mulinsart, a Belgian company that owns copyright on Erzhe's studio products: “Hello! My name is Alikhan. I am a graphic designer and I also draw a little <…>. We conceived a big project. <…> to draw and print in tiny copies the adventures of Tintin at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. We are aware <…> that Mr. Erzhe insisted that no one should release new books about the adventures of Tintin. However, we dared to address you as the copyright holders, because we don’t have any commercial or advertising purposes, only an artistic idea as such...” - Alikhan decided to draw a comic book for the guests of the project based on his dream in Kratovo and asks Mulinsart to authorize Mama Ro to use the Tintin brand for non-commercial purposes. A refusal arrives from Brussels.
    Heroes
    October 29, 2014, Anya’s first call to Mama Ro. Nastya, again, forms a team of administrators. Sonya has decided to travel and left Mama Ro in August, and Sasha Marusheva responded to the announcement instead of her (by coincidence, Anton and Alikhan are familiar with Sasha from school). The second administrator who was invited by Tolya after opening the new studios didn’t work well with the guys and has just gone. Anton recalls Anya. Several years ago, they worked together, and by chance, Anya is now in search of work. Nastya answers the call, invites Anya to an interview, and Mama Ro for the first time in a long time has formed a kind team of managers and of just friends: Nastya, Sasha, Anya and the men
    Heroes
    “I’ve known Anya for some time, since 2011, when she came to work in a small hotel near Sheremetyevo airport where I worked as an administrator. It was during the time when the bath house burnt down which marked the beginning of our trio. We became friends, I immediately admitted to Anya that she had some kind of calm attitude to work out problems. I remember how Anya drove me to the metro on her right-hand drive Suzuki. The machine was old, I think from 1992. And I received such a volume of technical information about the car that I stopped understanding everything in the third minute. All that remained was the experience of Anya stopping right there on Dmitrovskoye highway sorting through the whole car box if the gear for some reason didn’t stick. By the way, Sasha falls in love with her immensely because of this quality. And the guys will compose probably a volume of folklore about Anya and any extreme situation. This is what was missing on our team,” Anton recalls.
    Heroes
    On December 6, 2014, in the “Bauhaus” studio the preparation of the first design project presentation for the Putilin couple is underway. The customer, who turned out to be close in spirit and who became part of Mama Ro during the work, Farida, shared her enthusiasm about their artistic approach of the concept. Furthermore, an engineer from his university studies, Alexander, liked the technical equipment of the future interior. The guys decided to create a beautiful presentation for the couple. Farida and Alexander arrive at Chistye Prudy, go up to “Bauhaus” and the guys turn on the projector; and just as the presentation ends the Mama Ro interior design agency begins its existence thanks to the Putilin couple.
    Heroes
    • Alexander Putilin

      First customer
      Inspirer of the Mama Ro interior design agency, the first customer of the design project.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Farida
      Putilina

      First customer
      Inspirer of the Mama Ro interior design agency, the first customer of the design project.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    December 9, 2014, Anton and Nastya go to Ikea. Nastya passes through the children's department, snatches a goat toy out of one of the big baskets and, laughing, shows Anton: “Ha, look, this is Marusheva!” The toy looks like Sasha. Anton laughs because it really does. The goat, along with the rest of the guys, goes to the cashier and the next day it meets Sasha in the managers room as a gift. Time will pass, and the toy, together with Sasha, will travel all over Europe from Rome to Edinburgh and from Stockholm to Lisbon, and the tradition of identifying Sasha with a stubborn but kind goat, as well as subsequent girl trips to Ikea, will grow into a whole animals’ totem at Mama Ro which is based on the number of employees in the managers room. Including the founding fathers.
    Heroes
    January 19, 2015, Anton and Tolya at the lake "Shchepkino Swamp" near Moscow, together with Valery Fedorovich, cut an ice hole in the middle of the frozen pond. Valery Fedorovich professes a syncretic mixture of geology: Old Russian paganism, astrology and Vedic religions, and, knowing the guys' love of winter swimming, invites them to bath in the crater struck by an ancient meteorite at Epiphany. This night, according to ancestors, Aquarius pours magical Surya and, if you swim at this moment in the reservoir, which appeared from the fall of this astronomical body, you can quickly move into the coming Age of Aquarius. Anton and Tolya appreciate Valery Fedorovich’s enthusiasm.
    Heroes
    The hole for bathing is almost ready. The chainsaw is choking in icy water and the guys are late in entering the new era. It is near midnight. Valery Fedorovich worries about another thing as the sky this day is hopelessly overcast with clouds and the stars won’t be visible. Finally, having built an entire fortress from ice cubes, Anton and Tolya, warmed by this work, quickly throw off their clothes and jump to the center of the meteorite crater and swim, unaware of the unbelievable event that transpired: the clouds over the lake suddenly parted and the starlight spilled from the depths of the cosmos onto the swimmers. The next morning, at Chistye Prudy, the guys will happily talk about the entry of Mama Ro into a new era and after a while, any foolish tricks in the project will be explained only with “It is the Tomfoolery Era" that came from that night.
    Heroes
    The day after Mama Ro entered the Age of Aquarius Fool, Tolya's half-brother from Nambia unexpectedly arrives. Turns out that they grew up together when they were kids until they parted ways. The guys take Tolyamba to the team.
    January 21, 2015, Nastya Timofeeva, in St. Petersburg, finishes the first draft of the Tree of Legends. Anton comes up with the structure of the future site, and daydreams, taking Alikhan’s dream as a basement, over a metaphor that will later unite the studio legends into one image. At the same time, Tolya, in response to requests from guests, wants to create a section for tours on the website. Thus, from November 1, 2014, Nastya devotes her time to working on route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Everything is drawn from scratch and in the aesthetic, that has been developed over the year, and this requires hard work with the map services and street photos. Anton downloads the sketch, but for the time being the appearance of the Tree of Legends remains in the world of ideas. While the sketch is tested in the layout, Nastya returns to her work on route.