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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.
    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 >
    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.
    Heroes
    April 1, 2015, Volodya, Tolya, Anton and Egor Egorychev fly to Prague, rent an old Opel and drive to Karlovy Vary on their own. Here, in the center of the city, cramped by historic buildings, an old mansion looks out with the bay window on Masaryk Street. It’s the first future apart-hotel of the Revelton chain. The customers visited Mama Ro incognito and, having learned about the opening of the interior design studio, turned to the guys to create a design. Anton, Volodya, Tolya and Egor climb up the floors, admire the bay window
    The part of the building that protrudes above the plane of the facade.
    , make the first sketches and at the same time try to get rid of the feeling of deja vu that has taken over them: only a few months have passed since the end of the third construction but the building itself is the mate of the Moscow Mama Ro mansion.
    Heroes
    April 15, 2014 Sasha Marusheva, following Sonya, sends a sketch to Anton. She sent expressive splashes in the spirit of Jackson Pollock's abstractions. On Sonya's sketch there were African children decorated with ornaments containing ethnic patterns. Shortly before this, the concept of the Tree of Legends became a decision for the website that was now under construction and Anton got stuck on thinking about the missing theme of Studio 7. Suddenly, Sasha, sitting in the administrative position opposite Anton, suggests calling the studio “Street Art”: Warrior figures, ethnic motifs, patterns of ornamentation and “splattered” color stains of new layers. A picture of the graffiti made two months ago in the transition of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome instantly flashes in the memory of Anton. Eureka! The Studio 7's blank canvas is covered with the first sketches.
    Heroes
    June 16, 2015, Zhenya Remizova in St. Petersburg sends Nastya Timofeeva a test drawing for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Twenty unique towers, relief features of Borovitsky Hill, facades of ancient temples, and dozens of different facades are passed on the way to Mama Ro: Nastya, realizing the complexity of the idea, recalls Zhenya who was teaching drawing in school together with her. Zhenya takes a fragment of the sketch, compares it in Google Street view and easily and quickly draws it in the smallest of details. Zhenya associates this slow, painstaking process with the Sims game. Nastya has a talented apprentice.
    Heroes
    June 19, 2015, Egor Egorychev and the guys finish the layouts and project documentation for the first Revelton apartment hotel. They are made up of four hundred and fifty meters, three floors, an attic, and eight cozy studios: next in turn is the laborious process of visualization. Egor for the first time recommends to Volodya a familiar 3D modeler from Ivano-Frankivsk. “After the first project, Danya has become a good friend to me <...>, Danya’s responsiveness, desire to help and continuous improvement of skills mixed with a procrastination peculiar to creative people became a most memorable experience as well as a base for our friendship” - Volodya remembers some time later. Mama Ro begins to get used to Volodya’s exclamations: “To the left, to the right, to the left – oh no, make as it was before,” “A monster,” and “Danya, you’re tiring me!” For those who work in the managers room, Virtual Danya became no less tangible than those entering through the door.
    Heroes
    Danya, 3D-artist and poet from Ivano-Frankivsk, starts working with the guys in June 2015.
    July 15, 2015, Egor Egorychev sends Anton a trial text about the Assumption Cathedral while Nastya Timofeeva and Zhenya Remizova in St. Petersburg continue to work on the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Anton, recalling the impression he got from the visit of the Melnikov House, offers Egor to write the texts for the interactive route geotags on a future website. “Egor will not be available and he will recommend Zhenya to me. The same Zhenya who we met in the summer of 2013 just before the first trip to the Melnikov House. I was upset as Egor writes well but then I understood that I was wrong.” Zhenya Stakhanova takes a couple of days: there is doubt whether the history of the oldest of the preserved stone buildings of the Moscow Kremlin can fit within 700 characters. She creates an elegant essay of several paragraphs. Egor sends Zhenya’s contact to Anton.
    Heroes
    July 17, 2015, Sonya and Sasha Marusheva are in the courtyard of Mama Ro and having pulled the canvas onto a large square frame, they proceed to create "the pictures of the world and love": Sonya makes "ethnic" figures and Sasha – the expressive drip-splashes in the spirit of Jackson Pollock. The name of the paintings will be born a little later from a suggestion made by Alikhan who appears once more on the threshold of the creative process. Inspired by the girl’s work, Alikhan will write an impromptu poem about an engineer, who in love, hijacked a train for the sake of a girl artist. The poem will not survive, but the plot will serve as the basis for the Studio 7 legend and explain the appearance of such unusual canvases. The next step is the creation of a tabled diorama inspired by the poem written by Alikhan.
    Heroes
    July 27, 2015, David in New York, after returning from work, finishes the proofreading of the translation, makes corrections, and sends them back to Tanya. The text crosses from New York to Paris. Tanya reads them again, makes the final corrections, and redirects them from Paris to Moscow; and then to Beijing. “I don’t remember any particular stories with the translations other than working on them at night after I came home from work. How’s Mama Ro going btw? I really liked what they were doing art-wise,” David recalls this three years later.
    Heroes
    “We met with David through the exchange program of the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut with the Moscow Art Theater School. After meeting through that, it was the first time I went to the USA and I had some difficulties with housing. And when David found out about this he said, ‘What are you worrying about? You can stay at my place in Chicago.’ Since then, we have a tradition that David and I see each other every year. In Chicago, then in Los Angeles, then in New York. Then he came to Moscow. Then there was New York again. Three times, David flew here to Paris. There was not a year where we missed our meeting. Therefore, when Anton first asked for translations to be read by a native speaker, the first person I thought of was Davidushka. He found that interesting too. He then told everyone at home about Mama Ro. I think this is because David is always open to opportunities and never refuses anything. He likes to try. For example, when he was in Moscow, he wanted to see Mama Ro in live, and we went with him to watch how the construction was going. And then he went together with Anton and Tolya for winter bathing in an ice-hole.”
    Heroes
    Tanya studies and works in Paris, rents a small apartment with access to the roof in the city center, and learns European languages one by one. She helps the guys with translations online with David. In the photo: David is visiting Tanya in Paris.
    A few days later, on August 3, 2015, Li in Beijing, having sat down at Baker & Spice Cafe in Dongfang Road, completes the Tanya’s translations of David’s text into Chinese, saves them, and sends them back to Paris. “I worked on the translations at different times and locations, mostly in Paris when I was studying there. I also did another translation job after I moved back to Beijing. I love working in cafés. So, I did most of the translation work there <…>.”, Li recalls this three years later. “I remember specifically being impressed by how the Mama Ro team built a coffee table from scratch
    This refers to the furniture created by Valery Fedorovich for the Pine studio. The process is described in detail in the studio legend
    . They actually went to the lumber mill in the suburbs to choose the wood themselves. I remember thinking “Wow, that’s real enthusiasm and dedication.”
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Li
      Xiong

      Interpreter
      Translation into Chinese for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    “We met with Li while studying at INSEEC University. I had then just arrived in Paris, and he had been living here for a year already. At first, Li seemed arrogant to me. A fashionable guy with glasses, who lived in London from the age of eighteen, with a perfect British accent. And then, at a party, he approached Ruslan and me and said: ‘Russia and China are brothers!’ He said that directly. It was unusual to us as we thought there were many biases against Russians. We became friends. Then we began to learn each other’s languages and laughed a lot. And when it came to having the translation done in Chinese, I already knew who to turn to and Li turned out to be a reliable friend. And my request touched him very much. He was pleased that he was needed for an interesting case. And he took it very seriously. We then had our internships and would go to lunch together. And he began to ask me. He wanted to see Mama Ro and Russia. And then, when Li first came to us, it was a funny moment. New Year was coming, Li was with us. Anton arrived. And I presented them to each other: "Here, Li, this is Anton." And Li extended his hand to Anton and laughed: “Hello, boss!”
    Heroes
    “The brightest of the memories is, of course, the experience of working with the foreign friends. The moment when you know that you can rely on a person. And the guys don’t fail, being at the distance of the oceans. The will to take such speed and urgency. This is simply great!” Tanya says. Anton started collecting the mass media articles about Mama Ro for the website and asked his sister to make translations of the most interesting ones into English and Chinese (the number of guests to Mama Ro from China increased that year along with the devaluation
    A two-fold collapse of the ruble against the dollar at the end of 2014, which was the result of the transition of the Crimean Peninsula from the jurisdiction of Ukraine to Russia and the introduction of economic sanctions against the Russian Federation by the United States.
    and the idea appeared to translate the site into two languages). Tanya turns for help to David and Li.
    Heroes
    “I translate mainly here in Paris, at work when I have free time, or at lunch. In the evening I make corrections at home, or check the guys' adjustments and correct them. Mama Ro was with me throughout all my work experience. But besides Paris, there were many other places: for example, Bali, where I first translated for Mama Ro when the first studios opened. Or Greece, when the others opened up. And sometimes, when Anton asks - as always! - something very, very urgent, I translate right on the go: in a cafe, in the subway, at a party,” Tanya recalls this three years later.
    Heroes
    “Of course, when it became clear for the first time that Mama Ro should speak two languages, I immediately thought of my sister — her friendship with the guys was developing in front of my eyes. I also had a prejudice against the "professional" translation: firstly, the bad fame of translators' approximate approach, and secondly, I thought that Mama Ro should fundamentally sound like the voice of our peers, maybe with stylistic mistakes, but approved by native speakers. So, we developed a method: Tanya translates, the guys do the proofreading, and we adjust. But there was another circumstance that warmed my soul which was Tanya’s linguistic vein. For example, her ability to immediately say the number of letters in randomly read sentence. Or the phenomenal speed of mastering a new language. Language for her is a tangible substance. I think this is why the guys accept Tanya’s translations practically without any changes,” Anton says.
    Heroes
    August 10, 2015, Volodya and Danya are on the verge of a quarrel: the work on the first apart-hotel Revelton approaches, Volodya, as the photographer, demands a clean rendering of the visuals, and the “impossible”: he needs a photorealistic transfer of chrome-plated interior details. “That's when Dima intervened. In a very calm voice, he advised to spin some settings, changed some colors and started the render: pixel by pixel the picture began to appear and... an accurate hit on the target!” Volodya says. For the first time in the space of Mama Ro, the grounded voice of Dima Krivenko is heard. “Dima has a phenomenal peculiarity: an amazingly calm attitude for any situation, including deadlines. As the guys say, ‘Dima is full of Zen: even if he tears his hand off, there is a high probability that he will pick it up and bring it to the hospital.’”
    Heroes
    September 7, 2015, Danya in Ivano-Frankivsk finishes the last modifications to the renderers and sends them to Volodya as a zipped archive file. The design project for the first Revelton apartment hotel in Karlovy Vary is ready. “It’s an interesting fact, but the trial interior that we were presented to them in April in the form of a collage didn’t suit them at all,” Volodya says. With the work already in process, the guys completely reworked the concept of the design project and started it anew. "But instead of starting to look for other people to execute the project, they still believed in our experience." Volodya collects all the material that has been developed over the months of working with Egor, Danya and Dima, prepares a presentation and presents it to the customer. The long-term cooperation of Mama Ro with the network of Revelton apartment hotels is ahead.
    Heroes
    September 24, 2015, there is a traditional Muslim lamb soup called chorba on the table in Mama Ro. Mahabat informed the guys about the coming of the “big holiday Kurban-bayram” on the eve of the holiday, and offered to treat them with this traditional dish. “Well,” we said, “bring it on!” Nastya laughs as she did not expect such an outcome. The next day, Mahabat and Aidzharkyn enter the manager’s room and with the words, “Have a nice meal,” they put a pan of rich meat soup on the table. An hour later, the empty pan is sent to the sink.
    Heroes
    November 27, 2015, Sonya finishes her work on the coffee table-diorama for Studio 7, so the spatial illustration of the legend is ready. The diorama is mounted in an underframe and covered with a glass display case. On top of the glass there is a story based on the lost poem by Alikhan describing an event taking place in the landscape: A disgraced machinist hijacks a train and kidnaps his beloved Sonya. Alikhan's imagination became text and then Alikhan went by train to the Caspian Sea. And settled down somewhere in the Urals
    The plot of Alikhan’s poem formed the basis of “Street Art” studio’s legend
    . “No one else saw him in Mama Ro. Sometimes it seems to me that there was no Alikhan,” says Anton. “But still, he couldn’t not exist as there is video footage. Sometimes Alikhan responds to messages. But for some reason he reacts evasively to our invitations. He is probably now very far away from us... "
    Heroes
    January 8, 2016, Volodya posts an announcement on the Internet searching for an architect to prepare the Bauhaus studio furniture documentation. The guys have just finished making the vintage table for Farida and Alexander (the original antique table that was planned during the specification of the design project was bought by someone and Mama Ro and Kostya produced a whole series of vintage furniture for the couple
    This refers to the “Neocolonial Series” presented in the “Furniture” section of the Mama Ro website.
    from scratch). The idea to present the Mama Ro furniture workshop, along with the launch of the site, hang in the air. “The fact is that I did the furniture for the “Bauhaus” studio more by intuition, rather than drawing all the forms and blueprints,” Volodya explains. Documentation is needed to create 3D-models of the “Bauhaus” furniture and further this custom-made project.
    Heroes
    Among others, Oksana responds to Volodya’s announcement, “...an important detail: I usually try to choose people to execute projects who do not have a huge amount of reviews and ratings. For some reason, it seems to me that only such people haven’t yet lost their excitement,” and Volodya chooses her. Oksana first arrives at Chistye Prudy, meets with the guys and disappears for half an hour in the “Bauhaus” studio. “Well, the speed is phenomenal. But what about the quality?” Oksana says goodbye to the guys and takes time to process the taken measurements. “Not even a couple of days have passed, and I was leafing through a multi-page pdf with all the angles, sections and necessary constructive structures,” Volodya says. Oksana begins to work with the guys on the projects of the interior design agency and becomes part of the team: "She came for 1 order, but it turned out to be work for ages."
    Heroes
    Oksana comes to work with the documentation of the Mama Ro furniture workshop and remains with the guys. Until now, there wasn’t a more thorough approach to the painstaking process of selection and drawing up specifications for design projects of the interior studio.
    March 19, 2016, Volodya and Anton come to meet with Sasha Ivansky on Krutitskaya Embankment. A large office space of 400 square meters with a view of the Moscow River. Volodya, having listened to Sasha's wishes, suggested creating the Instat headquarters from scratch and move it to a new, spacious office. Sasha learned about the Mama Ro interior design agency six months ago when he was visiting Farida and Alexander and at the beginning of September 2015, he invited Volodya for the first time to his office at Paveletskaya. “I went up to their small and scattered office and saw a lot of tables there with different guys and between them a tall and thin man with light gray in his hair and incredibly musical hands. It was Sasha Ivansky - the inspirer and creator of Instat.”
    Heroes
    “The meeting began without introduction: Sasha quickly shook my hand, said that in the new version of the office he would like to see minimalism and went into a long visionary monologue. He talked about the office he had in his dreams, what he would like to see in his office, and so on and so forth. And after the monologue was over, he never returned to the old office, although he remained physically there — Sasha was already in his new future Instat office. Then I realized that we needed to start from scratch”, recalls Volodya. The guys greet Sasha, step up the echoing, still empty space of the new headquarters, take measurements and get down to work on the custom project.
    Heroes
    Sasha Ivansky, the founder of Instat, learns about the Mama Ro project by visiting Farida and Alexander. Mama Ro interior design agency would have to work soon on a design project for Instat.
    May 2, 2016, Nastya finishes the final edition of consulting - a lot of the work is over. Volodya gives them the text in proof and then in print; and presents it to the customer. Mama Ro has been working for almost four years with an average load of 98.10%, and the Revelton's customers have decided to turn to the guys for consulting services for their first apart-hotel in Karlovy Vary. Competitive market, strategy and sales channels, management, target and non-target marketing, loyalty system: Nastya, Volodya, Tolya and Anton arrange and brainstorm their own experience and, after several focus groups, their invisible method of work has become real until today. It will take Nastya another month confined within four walls to study the market of Karlovy Vary for her to comprehend what had been gained and to produce a well-composed and organized text.
    Heroes
    May 28, 2016, Shurik arrives at Sakharov Avenue, goes up to meet the guys on the eighth floor and, seeing the freshly poured floors, recalls one huge construction in the Soviet Union where concrete was poured which now is the foundation of the radio telescope: when inside the business of concrete mixers, the MAZ car was failing and, in order to not interrupt the steady pouring, the glass imploded and broke into the cabin and the machine, together with the concrete, was dumped into the pit. Shurik, inspired by Mama Ro’s many years of experience, offered the guys his space to open two more studios. A five minutes walk from the main office, the guys favorite, Chistye Prudy. Anton, Volodya, and Tolya confirm and Shurik's proposal gives rise to a new, fourth Mama Ro construction site.
    Heroes
    Volodya wanted to work with Alice since the time of the third construction, when together with Kostya, he created the “Bauhaus” studio. The social network offered to view several works by an unknown artist, and, “having overcome this shyness,” Volodya added her as a friend. “These were graphic pictures that immediately captivated me with its dynamics, simplicity and skill. I wanted to offer Alice work in the studio.” However, “Bauhaus” was almost complete and Volodya returns to the correspondence two years later, together with the start of the new studios. Andon June 13, 2016, Alice in Veliky Novgorod completes and sends Volodya her first work. In the process of this discussion the theme of the studio is born: a retro-futuristic Moscow from an alternative past. Alice’s first trip to present Moscow is ahead.
    Heroes
    June 6, 2016, Anton again writes to Sasha in Siberia. He needs a small HTML-letter and at the same time decides to check if Sasha could recommend a programmer to create their website: “At that time I just finished the page-proof and didn’t even think of addressing it to Sasha. For some reason, our discussion when Sasha said he didn’t work on websites remained in my head.” Sasha specifies some work points with Anton, Anton sends Sasha's some layout examples, and Sasha, after taking a pause for reflection, answers two days later that he’s ready to start working from July 1. Anton for the first time learns that Sasha is not a hermit-programmer from Siberia but rather he is from the Urals, and lives and works in a village in the Tver region and Anapa.
    Heroes
    June 9, 2016, Tanya in Paris, walking through the Luxembourg Garden, calls Marcin and offers him work on the translations with her. Over the year, with the work on the website the volume of texts has increased to 350 thousand characters. Tanya and David decided to offer proofreading of the translations to Marcin as David is busy with work and exams and became difficult for him to check the large volumes of texts at night. “I had to wait for a while: Marcin then lived for a year in China, taught English there, studied Chinese. He loves Asian culture and very quickly learns new languages. So, I was able to contact him only after his return to the US "- recalls Tanya. Marcin, in Los Angeles, responds to Tanya’s call and a week later Anton collects and sends them the first block of the texts for translation.
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    “I know Marcin as well as David thanks to the exchange program between the O’Neal Center and the Moscow Art Theater School. Our friendship started with the fact that he tried to speak Russian. Marcin is half Colombian, half Polish, and since Polish and Russian languages are quite similar, Russian was easier for him than for other Americans. However, sometimes he would mistakenly speak Polish, and in the end, would end up mixing English, Russian and Polish: we spoke an incomprehensible language together <...>. I was astonished by Marcin’s hard work: at that time, I didn’t speak much English, while Marcin was fluent in Polish, English, Spanish and continued to study more. Everything was easy for him. I saw him open to everything new, his big deep world, and it was so inspired that I also wanted to speak different languages. It was his openness and hard work that inspired me to go abroad, work there and learn new languages. Therefore, when that story appeared [with a large volume of translations], he was happy to take it as a new challenge and the opportunity to work on something interesting. We organized the workspace in Google doc and began to translate. We would make comments there directly in the text and send messages to each other in there. We would joke and laugh at different words, learn about their etymology, compare meanings in different languages. It was interesting and funny.”
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    June 27, 2016, Sasha Marusheva greets a new guest, signs the contract with him and discovers the “Pollock” signature on the last spread. It turned out that the grandson of the artist, Jason, booked an apartment at Mama Ro. A year ago, Sasha was inspired by Jackson Pollock's paintings when she suggested calling Studio 7 "Street Art", and then together with Sonya she created a painting for it. Sasha and Jason finish up with the contract and go up to the third floor to “Street Art”: “Wow! It’s really very similar to his style! It’s impressive guys, great work!” Sasha shows the grandson of her favorite artist the result of her last year’s work.
    On August 16, 2016, exactly three months after the start of the construction, the new office of Instat is ready. It looks absolutely in line with the visuals from the design project. Volodya arrives at Krutitskaya Embankment (the company has already partially moved to the new address) to help the installers set up the logo light at the reception desk and meets Sasha Ivansky in the office. “We strolled quickly around Instat. Sasha was very inspired by the cinema as we installed a huge retractable screen with a projector for the staff to work with statistics. He began to dream organizing silent movie cinema evenings for the whole international Instat team once the move in was complete,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    “Actually, Sasha also liked the furniture that we made from scratch.” The question of the furnitures high cost arose at the stage of the design project’s completion, and Volodya suggested Sasha Ivansky use the Mama Ro furniture workshop as a resource. Within a few days, Oksana creates drawings on Volodya’s first sketches and Danya, in Ivano-Frankivsk, models the future furniture in 3D. A month later: “It was morning, there was a meeting with the master and a visit of the paint shop located in the territory of a former textile plant. The glass blocks of huge walls and long industrial boulevards was why they said, “The plant spread to a territory comparable to a small town.” The serial production of the designed furniture required factory-made production, and after several unsuccessful calls which Volodya made to several Moscow factories, Sasha Ivansky offered him a contact in his hometown “A couple of days later I was already flying on a small motor plane to Cheboksary,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    • Danya Gavriluk

      3D modeler
      3D-illustrations, 3D-modeling for the interior design Mama Ro agency.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Sasha Ivansky

      Partner
      Client of the Mama Ro interior design agency, co-founder of Mama Ro 5, partner.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    September 27, 2016, Galya in St. Petersburg finishes transferring the Tree of Legends into vector format and sends it off to Anton: the picture drawn by Nastya Timofeeva in the graphic editing program is adapted for retina display and in the course of the work on the website, it became clear that it is better to transform all graphic material into this format: Nastya’s jewelry drawings significantly lose in raster graphics. “Especially on the retina! And then, we’ll need them once again for engravings and souvenirs - all this won’t be in vain,” explains Anton. Galya again helps the guys in everything that concerns the vector, and she also helps it parallel Zhenya Remizova’s work on the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Anton downloads the file and asks Galya to help sketch out, in vector form, a map of Moscow for the Investor’s section: “Over the course of two years we’ve become friends but I couldn’t expect what she said: Galya wrote suddenly, that she fell in love with Moscow due to working on these maps and drawings..."
    Heroes
    On the night of October 6, 2016, a year and four months later, Zhenya Remizova, in Saint Petersburg, finishes work on the graphic route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Two square kilometers of unique architecture, 828 units of construction, water and automotive equipment, 1598 pedestrians and an incalculable number of scenes are more than half complete and brought by Zhenya to a victorious end. “I still wonder how Zhenya refused me. I was ready for this after Nastya Timofeeva came out of this work. It was all a really crazy idea. We argued, set deadlines, after which Zhenya would give up everything but, nevertheless, this girl would return anyway and with a new force to take up work. She is a true hero! Why, Zhenya wrote later, I should go to Moscow - I already saw everything there..."
    Heroes
    “It was, of course, very interesting for me to work with Zhenya, Nastya and Galya – our three girls from Saint Petersburg. We were creating the visual content for a project in Moscow and about Moscow, i.e. our future site, but I was looking at it with the eyes of people from St. Petersburg. And I had all different opinions: Nastya fell in love with the city from the first day, even when she visited us in April 2014; Galya struck me with a change in her attitude; and Zhenya, finally, came once I gave her a tour and heard something like: I thought it was big and modern, but it turned out to be an ordinary Russian city. It was interesting to get to know my dear Moscow in a new way. And many of the ideas and perspectives from which the material was submitted came in the process thanks to this very experience. Therefore, I (from Moscow) thank St. Petersburg in the personage of Zhenya, Nastya and Galya: the city for the first time saw itself in a perspective from which no one had ever seen it before,” says Anton.
    Heroes
    On October 10, 2016, a year and three months later, Zhenya Stakhanova finishes and sends to Anton the last eleven essays. The texts for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin are ready. Anton transfers the texts to the Chistoye village and Sasha proceeds to build an interactive route with 56 geotags in the Moscow Kremlin and 16 more on the way to it from Chistye Prudy. “The most difficult thing was to create a story of 700 characters. Zhenya shoveled a huge amount of material and somehow managed to fit it into a sketch for the smartphone screen. And this was the main criterion: that the Mama Ro guest could go along the route drawn by St. Petersburg Zhenya’s namesake and read about what they see right on their feet. And you know what? Once, when I was in the Alexander Garden, I unknowingly pulled out a phone out of my pocket and read the description of the Trinity Tower. There was no limit to my delight!” Anton recalls. Another 55,000 characters are sent to Paris and Los Angeles by Tanya and Marcin for translation.
    Heroes
    October 15, 2016, Dima begins to work on another proof for Mama Ro. While Sasha in the Chistoye village creates a desktop version of the website, Anton asks Dima to help with developing a mobile version. Dima comes to Chistye Prudy for the first time in two years. “We had argued and didn’t talk to each other for some time. And it was a new Dima who arrived. I was surprised at the beginning of his answer: he wrote something like he was ready to do anything if we asked him. I heard this from Dima for the first time. And then, when we began to work, the feeling was confirmed: Dima had changed a lot during these two years. If earlier there was a temperamental guy with a tenacious mind and a loose tongue (a tongue without bones as Russians would say), now his qualities had a complete new tonality. This new quality of sacrificing himself for the sake of the team (which was so far only dimly guessed as a new quality of his) and his eagerness to help I later will be able to admire in all its glory several times over,” Anton says.
    Heroes
    October 31, 2016, Volodya and Sasha Ivansky, in Cheboksary, walk out of the airport into the airfield and head towards the ladder. The day before, Sasha Ivansky offered Mama Ro to create another design project for the Instat branch. Volodya and Sasha went to Cheboksary to see the space for the new office. “We were approaching the ladder. Sasha had been interested in our project for some time and was asking about my work.” Volodya tells Sasha about Mama Ro, about the design projects for the Revelton apartment hotels, and for the first time wonders if Sasha is interested in working on such a project together. “This is how, for the first time in Sasha’s usual simplicity and directness, we agreed to work together”. Volodya and Sasha Ivansky enter into a gentlemen’s agreement. The search for a new space for Mama Ro is ahead and the fifth construction.
    Heroes
    On November 6, 2016, the fourth construction was completed. Alisa finishes the time-consuming process of painting the “Neo Moscow” studio and goes to “Sarai” to help Tolya with the cleaning. Tolya did the design of the second studio. Volodya starts the "Neo Moscow" shoot. There is an augmented reality in black and white on the studio's walls. At the very beginning of the work, Volodya rented a helicopter to take photos of Chistye Prudy from a bird’s eye view. Thus, Alisa could do the paintings of the “Neo Moscow” walls in a way that transmit exactly the perspective of the Academician Sakharov Prospect with the panorama of the Kremlin and Chistye Prudy in the distance. So now “a guest could see themselves in the walls through a parallel dimension”. On the next day two new Mama Ro studios open their doors to guests. In contrast to the “Neo Moscow” studio, the guys rename the “Moscow” studio into “Old Moscow”.
    Heroes
    December 10, 2016, Danya gives Volodya the Skype contact of Masha Darmoros. The amount of work on the Revelton apartment hotels increases exponentially, and Danya, together with Dima Krivenko, start to fall behind schedule. They need an assistant. “For some reason, Danya fenced me off in every possible way as long as he could from working with Masha, Danya’s girlfriend, and therefore, also, a 3D-professional,” Volodya recalls. Worrying that the inclusion of a new person in a streamlined process will take time, Volodya starts Skype, and Masha’s voice is heard in the managers room for the first time. Masha writes down Volodya’s changes in detail (somewhere in Ivano-Frankivsk, a pencil rustles on the paper), takes a pause, and says goodbye until tomorrow.
    Heroes
    “She called in the morning and asked if I could see the screen. I responded positively and the download icon appeared on the monitor, which hung a little longer than expected, to which I even managed to mumble that I could not see anything. When suddenly a picture appeared in front of my eyes, in which everything was exactly as we discussed. Everything was in its place: light, color, textures! My speechlessness returned immediately after the inner skeptic was defeated by the reanimated optimist. I saw an amazing result faster than expected and done with soul. That day it became clear to our team of visualizers that a new person had arrived,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    Masha Darmoros is the only 3D artist in the team who enters all the workflows of the interior design agency without any need for adaptation. In the photo: Masha and the cat Richard.
    On December 24, 2016, Marcin, in Los Angeles, landed at Starbucks on 12313 Jefferson Boulevard completes the edits of the remaining translations — the essays of Zhenya Stakhanova for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Tanya in Paris saves and sends the finished texts to Moscow. The work on translations is completed. “I mostly remember the descriptions of the rooms, like the room with the big rock and I remember the room with the trees! I really like the story of how difficult it was to bring the trees back. I also remember how they found the old mosaic for the Byzantine behind the plaster, I really liked that. The image of having coffee in a French like room looking out into the streets of Russia with a clear glass shower also has stayed with me. I remember Tanya and I speaking to each other trying to figure out what the best way to edit the documents were especially being so far from each other, that was an interesting thing to try and figure out,” Marcin recalls two years later.
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Zhenya Stakhanova

      Copywriter
      Excursion texts for the "Mama Ro - Kremlin" route on the current website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    On the night of December 31, 2016, Sasha, in Anapa, is on the home stretch for the website. There will be an upload for the public to access the Mama Ro domain. “The New Year was coming. The work still had no clear end. All last week we were working together non-stop on the website with four hands: I brought it, Sasha charged. Without literally ever getting offline, he’s in Anapa having spent his birthday working on the layout and I’m on the mezzanine in the managers room, sleeping under my desk for the third day. At some point, we realized that today we would work until morning. There was no way to delay to tomorrow: we planned to give a present to the guests - to open the website. I remember how at some point Sasha glanced at our spreadsheet in Google Sheets and there was only five hours of work there, and he only responded with: ‘I’ll go and pour myself some cognac.’ I still laugh at it,” Anton laughs.
    Heroes
    Time flies. Morning is coming. Finally, at six in the morning, setting the last attribute (the Christmas
    This refers to the Orthodox Christmas celebrated in Russia on January 7.
    tree in the header of the website), Sasha suggests starting to upload the website. “It was exciting! I thought for a moment how much effort was spent this year, how many different people helped to make this colossus. I made a direct analogy with a ship taking off into the ocean: ribbons, rope, and a fountain of splashes.” Anton solemnly offers Sasha to “cut the rope.” The comrades exchange courtesies and on December 31, 2016 at 6:31am, Sasha uploads the Mama Ro website to the network. “The way I worked during these last few days can be compared only to the work at the first construction site. I think it explains why both of these periods are now so dear to me. And there was a strong feeling of a shoulder next to you in front of a big task. And pressure. Sasha, of course, is a powerhouse! I was proud to work with him.” Anton and Sasha congratulate each other on the New Year and, hit the sack, and say goodbye to Christmas – the work on the design agency page is now in the future.
    Heroes
    The pre-New Year fuss passes Sasha as it is the last month of the final assembly. The upload of the website is planned on December 31st. In the photo: Sasha celebrates his birthday reading PHP code.
    On January 18, 2017, the guys meet with Vartan Vartanian at Petrovka and go deep into the back streets of the city. Vartan picked out several locations for the new Mama Ro project with Sasha Ivansky and invited the guys to come check them out. The search for a place begins. “Vartan is a true genius in his field: he is pedantic in the questions where it is needed, and extremely gentle in others. He has tact, sensitivity. It's all about him. From my experience, he’s the only realtor who has a trusting relationship with all his clients,” says Volodya. Ironically, Volodya met Vartan in the same house on the Vodootvodniy channel where the story of Mama Ro started five years ago thanks to Yulia Krasnova. Volodya, by accident, found a rental offer, moved there to live and then met his neighbor from the floor above.
    Heroes
    Having finished showing them one option, Vartan and the guys go to the opposite side of Petrovka and again go deep into the backyard to watch the next one. “I remember the moment when we first went to look at the options. That moment when we went up to the apartment of some academician. Vartan was our new realtor and it wasn’t very clear to him what we wanted. And suddenly he began to very carefully get into our approach: the way it works, and the height of the ceilings, why we needed such things, what kind of atmosphere, in what areas, and what is the ratio of the parts. The guy absolutely, sincerely and consciously began to delve into what we need <...>. It seems to me that Vartan has a good sense of beauty, which allows him to do the work of a realtor very subtly - not only from the point of view of the seller, but also from the point of view of the buyer (and more precisely it concerns our creative specifics). It was the first realtor in my life who did the really necessary work,” Tolya recalls.
    Heroes
    The place that Vartan finds on February 14, 2017, having studied the market based on the wishes of the guys, is a former apartment house of 1876 right near Chistye Prudy. It’s the nineteenth century! In the 20th century here, as elsewhere, communal apartments existed. At the beginning of the 21st, some communal apartments were still left. In them one could see pre-revolutionary stucco, three-meter ceilings, shingles exposed under shattering plaster, and a leaking roof. This place is something the guys never could have dreamed of due to the fact that it’s an exact copy of the Mama Ro mansion that is on the same side of the street on Gusyatnikov Lane, with only one house in between them. The guys start preparing for the fifth construction.
    Heroes
    April 1, 2017 Marina, Volodya and Anton come to Monino to the Air Force Museum, walk through the aircraft exposition and, having chosen the turboprop Tu-114
    Soviet long-haul passenger aircraft.
    in the backyard, start setting up easels against its background. Marina unpacks the canvases: there are portraits of pilots, scenes aboard military aircrafts and landscapes of the Kubinka closed airfield… “My acquaintance with Marina began several years ago due to these works of art. When I came upon these pictures on Facebook, I was so impressed that I wanted to meet with the author and wrote a lot of compliments to Marina. She decided that I was crazy and didn’t answer anything,” Anton recalls. “But a few years later, in August 2014, when I invited everyone to the opening of the new Mama Ro, I saw Marina online and sent her an invitation. As a result, we suddenly began to communicate for no reason at all.” Anton dreams of creating an Art Store and asked Marina to take part in a shoot, alongside with Kubinka’s paintings either in Kubinka or in an atmosphere close to aviation.
    Heroes
    Marina is a professional painter, she appears in the history of Mama Ro along with aviation. A few years before that, Anton met Marina, having come across the announcement of her exhibition dedicated to the Kubinka airfield. He believes that Marina is no equal in painting among his peers.
    April 5, 2017, Marina, after three days of work, takes pictures and sends to Anton the first stack test
    A tool used by sculptors for artistic modeling.
    which is the plasticine bas-relief of the Mama Ro logo. For the last couple of years, Anton and Volodya have been alternating in attempting to create a three-dimensional version of the logo with 3D modelers and fail again and again. “This is a nightmare! The market is literally overflowing with modelers of all types who worked on video games characters, but who have absolutely no aesthetic taste!” The need to bring the 3D logo came to their minds again and became more urgent together with the start of the fifth construction, and after the third attempt with modelers. Anton decided to seek help from Marina.
    Heroes
    “I can’t explain why, but for me, contacting Marina was an extreme measure. Once in a while she had already helped us on different things, but the bas-relief was something else. I don’t know if this description is accurate enough, but I would call it the fear of a masterpiece. Because inside myself I was sure that when Marina takes a tool in her hands, it is always of a high voltage, that is, a work without compromise. It’s scary to become a culprit of such tension. However, at the same time, it’s exciting as everything lights up from within when you see people working this way. Later, when she would be working on the bas-relief for several months, I, helping her organizationally, would repeatedly experience this sensation of delight,” Anton says.
    April 15, 2017, Anya Zelenskaya in Kiev sends Volodya a zip-archive. Volodya transfers it to Anton and Anya’s furniture renders fly to Anapa (Sasha finished working on the web page of the Mama Ro interior design agency on February 17 and proceeded to work on the furniture workshop). They need to collect the Mama Ro furniture portfolio for the website. Volodya proposes not to take photos of the furniture, but to “assemble it from scratch,” in 3D. “I needed somebody who had experience in working with textures and complex geometry” - Volodya begins to select examples of good quality work in 3D and surprisingly finds out that all the options he selected belong to one author. “Anya turned out to be a stubborn and intractable girl, but her taste allowed her to do really beautiful things. We fought several times. It got so bad that at one point we even stopped working together. However, each time the result came out cooler and cooler.” Volodya starts working with Anya, and the Mama Ro furniture workshop gets a first-class portfolio.
    Heroes
    Anya Zelenskaya, an artist, musician and 3D artist, starts working with the guys and helps build a 3D portfolio for the Mama Ro furniture workshop.
    May 7, 2017, Tolya sends a message on social network to Masha Bochkareva. Nastya decided to make Mama Ro around the clock and asked the guys to offer their friends and acquaintances a job as a night administrator. Tolya recalls Masha: long time ago, before Mama Ro was born, Tolya organized competitions for filming social advertising, and Masha, being among the participants, became his student. “She came as a little girl, sixteen years old, said she wanted to make movies,” Tolya recalls. Masha communicates with Tolya for several years and comes to the opening of the new studios. “I think Masha was in Mama Ro’s orbit because she wanted to make creative decisions from the very beginning. Even then, she seemed to me to be a marginal in the good sense of the word, a white crow with her special vision. Well, we, in turn, always wanted to work with extraordinary people,” Tolya recalls. Masha responds to Nastya’s proposal.
    Heroes
    On the night of June 24, 2017, Marina finishes and sends Anton the result of her three months work: a meter panel with two children on an oak branch made of clay. The bas-relief is ready. “It was a great experience! It was amazing to watch the sculpture come to life in the hands of the painter. I also remember how Marina complained that the material was physically hard for her. And then, when her photos would arrive, I was surprised again and again: it was light and airy and you couldn’t say that the material somehow resisted! And I only had time to drive around the shops and buy tools with obscure names (right along the way, Marina found, read about them, asked to bring them and immediately seized them). As always, everything went well with Marina: quickly, simply and brilliantly! ”- Anton recalls. The purchase of plaster and silicone, the mold casting, the plaster version casting, the plastic version casting, scanning and the transferring of the bas-relief in 3D are now ahead. Along with trials and errors the work will continue until December.
    Heroes
    On September 23, 2017, Tolya in Starbeevo in Khimki carefully puts climbing gear on the guys: straps, ropes and carbines so that no one falls from the branches of the ancient oak tree. Sasha Marusheva plays with the goats that just arrived for a shoot near Yaroslavl. Here, among the goats, Masha Bochkareva plays on the strings on Volodya’s guitar. Volodya takes pictures of Masha as she will have to return to Chistye Prudy so that Anya, along with the rest, can be back at the oak tree by the beginning of the shoot. Nastya consults Dima about her dress (again, Dima is a stylist). Finally, having finished with the straps, Tolya parks the crane-manipulator that has just arrived and, jumping into the cabin, directs the boom of the crane over the oak crown in order to hang the hammock for Sasha. Looking away from the goats, Sasha shouts that she will never climb that high.
    Heroes
    A few days ago, Anton and Tolya drove out here with a crane and spent the day preparing for the shoot: they fixed specially designed harnesses for themselves on the branches; Volodya and Anya tied the fasteners for the hammock and with their own weight they tested a spot for Sasha; and they hung a swing for Nastya. They also rehearsed the fall from the oak with climbing ropes. Since fall suddenly arrived, all the stages for the search of a suitable tree and preparation happened in gloomy weather, and the summer landscape (which was necessary for the guys’ shoot) was gone. The guys read that the upcoming Saturday is the last day of summer for the year.
    Heroes
    Having waited for Anya's arrival, Tolya gives a command to “get on the branches,” and they all gather at the cradle. Anton, Volodya, Nastya, Sasha and Anya are in turn delivered to the crown. Tolya helps everyone to move onto the oak and to fasten the rope. When finished, Tolya climbs onto his branch and fastens himself in as well. This century old oak now carries the Mama Ro team. This shoot was planned by the guys for several years, but the number and dispersion of people who invested their talent and heart into the project every year made the idea all the more fantastic: as a result, it turned out to be almost impossible to gather everyone in one place on one day. The guys found a suitable tree and an elegant way out.
    Heroes
    The shoot has begun. Tolya, dangling his leg, directs the shoot. Volodya, sitting on a thickset branch, photographs the landscape on his favorite camera. Anton is buried in Dostoevsky. Caught in an unusual setting, Anya is calm as never before, and Sasha is on the highest point of the oak in the end. Nastya in a white dress flies on a swing in the rays of the setting sun, from time to time, jumping in and out from the framing of the lens. Dima pushes her in the swing and runs away behind the frame. Nastya was the most successful and most correct here as Tolya notes that “Nastya is the main muse of Mama Ro.” Suddenly, clinging to something on the crown of the oak tree, Nastya loses her balance slips and falls from the swing.
    Heroes
    “It was an interesting moment. Earlier Sasha couldn’t understand why Dima was behind the scenes because he volunteered to help with this shoot and did so much. But we decided that the image of the tree is so spacious that if it’s impossible to gather everyone in one photo (so to speak, the whole Grand Mama Ro, as in that dream of Alikhan, everyone who created the project) then why not just conditionally limit ourselves to the current composition and to look at it symbolically? For example, the roots of a tree or the soil is fertilized by many people’s work which results in a tree that grows stronger which then is taken over by kids playing in treehouses. All this is symbolic for Mama Ro. We are not in this photo literally. So, now back to Dima. Tolya was worried that someone would definitely fall and hurt themselves, so he had to buy and put on mountaineering rope. But this insurance (just as figuratively) is already there in this photo: once Nastya falls, Dima rushes in and immediately catches her. That's why he stayed behind the scenes," Anton recalls.
    Heroes
    November 27, 2017 Vartan Vartanian writes to Volodya. It became clear that the resumption of the fifth construction is not far off. Back in the early summer, Vartan found out that from the winter it would be possible to create the studios on two floors at once, and the guys froze the process for a while to start and finish both floors at the same time. The question on the studios themes raises again. On one floor the deconstructions of the wall partitions has already been completed, and the guys get back to the measurements and design of the space. And suddenly, in the process of working, they remember and begin to discuss the words of Dima: that he and many of his friends would love to one day create a Mama Ro studio.
    Heroes
    December 17, 2017, Masha Bochkareva finishes the retouch of the September “Oak Shoot” stills in a hurry and prepares for her departure. Anton wants to make postcards from individual photos for the opening of the new studios. “She came up to me during one of the night shifts and said, ‘Don't be worried about this retouching. I will help you.’ I, then, had some time management trouble. And indeed, she did everything within a month without asking anything for her work. And then she flew to Paris." Masha decided to get away from the guys and live in a new city for a while. Anton downloads and unzips the file. On the retouched postcards lay Volodya, Tolya, Anton, Nastya, Anya and Sasha on the branches of the Starbeevo Oak and no signs of the rope and special harnesses.
    Heroes
    December 31, 2017, Tolya, Volodya, Anton, Nastya, Sasha and Anya, together with her dog Plyusha, climb onto the second tier in the managers room to take a picture as a souvenir. “At some point, we realized that the six-year story of Mama Ro is two equal halves of three!” Anton says, “When the preparation for the fifth construction resumed, it became interesting to us to see how much time passed from the last one. And suddenly we realized that it was exactly three years. In the first three years, we built all the time, and during the second three years we spent our time in our managers’ room on the second tier. The workflows have gradually moved from the analog world (from the construction sites, trips around industrial zones and construction markets) to the digital one. During this time, we refined our identity, created the website, and launched the interior design agency: everything in the online world. I tried to formulate this observation in one of the conversations with Dima and solemnly proclaimed that after the era of construction in Mama Ro the era of the entresol came, and I received a storm of laughter. It’s a touching and funny moment. There was a slight sensation of detachment, and suddenly we wanted to capture our managers’ room in a photo.”
    Heroes
    The New Year is coming. Guys go home leaving the room until the next morning. The upcoming fifth construction is in the near future. For the first time in the history of the project, the ideas of the new studios are not waiting for the guys, but for their new authors. Having built the Mama Ro foundation, the guys listened to Dima’s words about the authorship of the new studios and suggested it to Nastya, Anya and Sasha. Then to Masha and Nastya Timofeeva. And, finally, to Dima himself. Two more authors are hidden somewhere in the future. Who they are, what studios are waiting for their turn - nobody knows. The Christmas tree becomes dim. The door closes. The wave of history overtakes itself so that, rushing back, in can roll in again with a new force.
    Heroes
    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.
    Heroes
    April 1, 2015, Volodya, Tolya, Anton and Egor Egorychev fly to Prague, rent an old Opel and drive to Karlovy Vary on their own. Here, in the center of the city, cramped by historic buildings, an old mansion looks out with the bay window on Masaryk Street. It’s the first future apart-hotel of the Revelton chain. The customers visited Mama Ro incognito and, having learned about the opening of the interior design studio, turned to the guys to create a design. Anton, Volodya, Tolya and Egor climb up the floors, admire the bay window
    The part of the building that protrudes above the plane of the facade.
    , make the first sketches and at the same time try to get rid of the feeling of deja vu that has taken over them: only a few months have passed since the end of the third construction but the building itself is the mate of the Moscow Mama Ro mansion.
    Heroes
    April 15, 2014 Sasha Marusheva, following Sonya, sends a sketch to Anton. She sent expressive splashes in the spirit of Jackson Pollock's abstractions. On Sonya's sketch there were African children decorated with ornaments containing ethnic patterns. Shortly before this, the concept of the Tree of Legends became a decision for the website that was now under construction and Anton got stuck on thinking about the missing theme of Studio 7. Suddenly, Sasha, sitting in the administrative position opposite Anton, suggests calling the studio “Street Art”: Warrior figures, ethnic motifs, patterns of ornamentation and “splattered” color stains of new layers. A picture of the graffiti made two months ago in the transition of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome instantly flashes in the memory of Anton. Eureka! The Studio 7's blank canvas is covered with the first sketches.
    Heroes
    June 16, 2015, Zhenya Remizova in St. Petersburg sends Nastya Timofeeva a test drawing for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Twenty unique towers, relief features of Borovitsky Hill, facades of ancient temples, and dozens of different facades are passed on the way to Mama Ro: Nastya, realizing the complexity of the idea, recalls Zhenya who was teaching drawing in school together with her. Zhenya takes a fragment of the sketch, compares it in Google Street view and easily and quickly draws it in the smallest of details. Zhenya associates this slow, painstaking process with the Sims game. Nastya has a talented apprentice.
    Heroes
    June 19, 2015, Egor Egorychev and the guys finish the layouts and project documentation for the first Revelton apartment hotel. They are made up of four hundred and fifty meters, three floors, an attic, and eight cozy studios: next in turn is the laborious process of visualization. Egor for the first time recommends to Volodya a familiar 3D modeler from Ivano-Frankivsk. “After the first project, Danya has become a good friend to me <...>, Danya’s responsiveness, desire to help and continuous improvement of skills mixed with a procrastination peculiar to creative people became a most memorable experience as well as a base for our friendship” - Volodya remembers some time later. Mama Ro begins to get used to Volodya’s exclamations: “To the left, to the right, to the left – oh no, make as it was before,” “A monster,” and “Danya, you’re tiring me!” For those who work in the managers room, Virtual Danya became no less tangible than those entering through the door.
    Heroes
    Даня, 3D modeler и поэт из Ивано-Франковска, начинает работать с ребятами в июне 2015 года.
    July 15, 2015, Egor Egorychev sends Anton a trial text about the Assumption Cathedral while Nastya Timofeeva and Zhenya Remizova in St. Petersburg continue to work on the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Anton, recalling the impression he got from the visit of the Melnikov House, offers Egor to write the texts for the interactive route geotags on a future website. “Egor will not be available and he will recommend Zhenya to me. The same Zhenya who we met in the summer of 2013 just before the first trip to the Melnikov House. I was upset as Egor writes well but then I understood that I was wrong.” Zhenya Stakhanova takes a couple of days: there is doubt whether the history of the oldest of the preserved stone buildings of the Moscow Kremlin can fit within 700 characters. She creates an elegant essay of several paragraphs. Egor sends Zhenya’s contact to Anton.
    Heroes
    July 17, 2015, Sonya and Sasha Marusheva are in the courtyard of Mama Ro and having pulled the canvas onto a large square frame, they proceed to create "the pictures of the world and love": Sonya makes "ethnic" figures and Sasha – the expressive drip-splashes in the spirit of Jackson Pollock. The name of the paintings will be born a little later from a suggestion made by Alikhan who appears once more on the threshold of the creative process. Inspired by the girl’s work, Alikhan will write an impromptu poem about an engineer, who in love, hijacked a train for the sake of a girl artist. The poem will not survive, but the plot will serve as the basis for the Studio 7 legend and explain the appearance of such unusual canvases. The next step is the creation of a tabled diorama inspired by the poem written by Alikhan.
    Heroes
    July 27, 2015, David in New York, after returning from work, finishes the proofreading of the translation, makes corrections, and sends them back to Tanya. The text crosses from New York to Paris. Tanya reads them again, makes the final corrections, and redirects them from Paris to Moscow; and then to Beijing. “I don’t remember any particular stories with the translations other than working on them at night after I came home from work. How’s Mama Ro going btw? I really liked what they were doing art-wise,” David recalls this three years later.
    Heroes
    “We met with David through the exchange program of the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut with the Moscow Art Theater School. After meeting through that, it was the first time I went to the USA and I had some difficulties with housing. And when David found out about this he said, ‘What are you worrying about? You can stay at my place in Chicago.’ Since then, we have a tradition that David and I see each other every year. In Chicago, then in Los Angeles, then in New York. Then he came to Moscow. Then there was New York again. Three times, David flew here to Paris. There was not a year where we missed our meeting. Therefore, when Anton first asked for translations to be read by a native speaker, the first person I thought of was Davidushka. He found that interesting too. He then told everyone at home about Mama Ro. I think this is because David is always open to opportunities and never refuses anything. He likes to try. For example, when he was in Moscow, he wanted to see Mama Ro in live, and we went with him to watch how the construction was going. And then he went together with Anton and Tolya for winter bathing in an ice-hole.”
    Heroes
    Tanya studies and works in Paris, rents a small apartment with access to the roof in the city center, and learns European languages one by one. She helps the guys with translations online with David. In the photo: David is visiting Tanya in Paris.
    A few days later, on August 3, 2015, Li in Beijing, having sat down at Baker & Spice Cafe in Dongfang Road, completes the Tanya’s translations of David’s text into Chinese, saves them, and sends them back to Paris. “I worked on the translations at different times and locations, mostly in Paris when I was studying there. I also did another translation job after I moved back to Beijing. I love working in cafés. So, I did most of the translation work there <…>.”, Li recalls this three years later. “I remember specifically being impressed by how the Mama Ro team built a coffee table from scratch
    This refers to the furniture created by Valery Fedorovich for the Pine studio. The process is described in detail in the studio legend
    . They actually went to the lumber mill in the suburbs to choose the wood themselves. I remember thinking “Wow, that’s real enthusiasm and dedication.”
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Li
      Xiong

      Interpreter
      Translation into Chinese for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    “We met with Li while studying at INSEEC University. I had then just arrived in Paris, and he had been living here for a year already. At first, Li seemed arrogant to me. A fashionable guy with glasses, who lived in London from the age of eighteen, with a perfect British accent. And then, at a party, he approached Ruslan and me and said: ‘Russia and China are brothers!’ He said that directly. It was unusual to us as we thought there were many biases against Russians. We became friends. Then we began to learn each other’s languages and laughed a lot. And when it came to having the translation done in Chinese, I already knew who to turn to and Li turned out to be a reliable friend. And my request touched him very much. He was pleased that he was needed for an interesting case. And he took it very seriously. We then had our internships and would go to lunch together. And he began to ask me. He wanted to see Mama Ro and Russia. And then, when Li first came to us, it was a funny moment. New Year was coming, Li was with us. Anton arrived. And I presented them to each other: "Here, Li, this is Anton." And Li extended his hand to Anton and laughed: “Hello, boss!”
    Heroes
    “The brightest of the memories is, of course, the experience of working with the foreign friends. The moment when you know that you can rely on a person. And the guys don’t fail, being at the distance of the oceans. The will to take such speed and urgency. This is simply great!” Tanya says. Anton started collecting the mass media articles about Mama Ro for the website and asked his sister to make translations of the most interesting ones into English and Chinese (the number of guests to Mama Ro from China increased that year along with the devaluation
    A two-fold collapse of the ruble against the dollar at the end of 2014, which was the result of the transition of the Crimean Peninsula from the jurisdiction of Ukraine to Russia and the introduction of economic sanctions against the Russian Federation by the United States.
    and the idea appeared to translate the site into two languages). Tanya turns for help to David and Li.
    Heroes
    “I translate mainly here in Paris, at work when I have free time, or at lunch. In the evening I make corrections at home, or check the guys' adjustments and correct them. Mama Ro was with me throughout all my work experience. But besides Paris, there were many other places: for example, Bali, where I first translated for Mama Ro when the first studios opened. Or Greece, when the others opened up. And sometimes, when Anton asks - as always! - something very, very urgent, I translate right on the go: in a cafe, in the subway, at a party,” Tanya recalls this three years later.
    Heroes
    “Of course, when it became clear for the first time that Mama Ro should speak two languages, I immediately thought of my sister — her friendship with the guys was developing in front of my eyes. I also had a prejudice against the "professional" translation: firstly, the bad fame of translators' approximate approach, and secondly, I thought that Mama Ro should fundamentally sound like the voice of our peers, maybe with stylistic mistakes, but approved by native speakers. So, we developed a method: Tanya translates, the guys do the proofreading, and we adjust. But there was another circumstance that warmed my soul which was Tanya’s linguistic vein. For example, her ability to immediately say the number of letters in randomly read sentence. Or the phenomenal speed of mastering a new language. Language for her is a tangible substance. I think this is why the guys accept Tanya’s translations practically without any changes,” Anton says.
    Heroes
    August 10, 2015, Volodya and Danya are on the verge of a quarrel: the work on the first apart-hotel Revelton approaches, Volodya, as the photographer, demands a clean rendering of the visuals, and the “impossible”: he needs a photorealistic transfer of chrome-plated interior details. “That's when Dima intervened. In a very calm voice, he advised to spin some settings, changed some colors and started the render: pixel by pixel the picture began to appear and... an accurate hit on the target!” Volodya says. For the first time in the space of Mama Ro, the grounded voice of Dima Krivenko is heard. “Dima has a phenomenal peculiarity: an amazingly calm attitude for any situation, including deadlines. As the guys say, ‘Dima is full of Zen: even if he tears his hand off, there is a high probability that he will pick it up and bring it to the hospital.’”
    Heroes
    September 7, 2015, Danya in Ivano-Frankivsk finishes the last modifications to the renderers and sends them to Volodya as a zipped archive file. The design project for the first Revelton apartment hotel in Karlovy Vary is ready. “It’s an interesting fact, but the trial interior that we were presented to them in April in the form of a collage didn’t suit them at all,” Volodya says. With the work already in process, the guys completely reworked the concept of the design project and started it anew. "But instead of starting to look for other people to execute the project, they still believed in our experience." Volodya collects all the material that has been developed over the months of working with Egor, Danya and Dima, prepares a presentation and presents it to the customer. The long-term cooperation of Mama Ro with the network of Revelton apartment hotels is ahead.
    Heroes
    September 24, 2015, there is a traditional Muslim lamb soup called chorba on the table in Mama Ro. Mahabat informed the guys about the coming of the “big holiday Kurban-bayram” on the eve of the holiday, and offered to treat them with this traditional dish. “Well,” we said, “bring it on!” Nastya laughs as she did not expect such an outcome. The next day, Mahabat and Aidzharkyn enter the manager’s room and with the words, “Have a nice meal,” they put a pan of rich meat soup on the table. An hour later, the empty pan is sent to the sink.
    Heroes
    November 27, 2015, Sonya finishes her work on the coffee table-diorama for Studio 7, so the spatial illustration of the legend is ready. The diorama is mounted in an underframe and covered with a glass display case. On top of the glass there is a story based on the lost poem by Alikhan describing an event taking place in the landscape: A disgraced machinist hijacks a train and kidnaps his beloved Sonya. Alikhan's imagination became text and then Alikhan went by train to the Caspian Sea. And settled down somewhere in the Urals
    The plot of Alikhan’s poem formed the basis of “Street Art” studio’s legend
    . “No one else saw him in Mama Ro. Sometimes it seems to me that there was no Alikhan,” says Anton. “But still, he couldn’t not exist as there is video footage. Sometimes Alikhan responds to messages. But for some reason he reacts evasively to our invitations. He is probably now very far away from us... "
    Heroes
    January 8, 2016, Volodya posts an announcement on the Internet searching for an architect to prepare the Bauhaus studio furniture documentation. The guys have just finished making the vintage table for Farida and Alexander (the original antique table that was planned during the specification of the design project was bought by someone and Mama Ro and Kostya produced a whole series of vintage furniture for the couple
    This refers to the “Neocolonial Series” presented in the “Furniture” section of the Mama Ro website.
    from scratch). The idea to present the Mama Ro furniture workshop, along with the launch of the site, hang in the air. “The fact is that I did the furniture for the “Bauhaus” studio more by intuition, rather than drawing all the forms and blueprints,” Volodya explains. Documentation is needed to create 3D-models of the “Bauhaus” furniture and further this custom-made project.
    Heroes
    Among others, Oksana responds to Volodya’s announcement, “...an important detail: I usually try to choose people to execute projects who do not have a huge amount of reviews and ratings. For some reason, it seems to me that only such people haven’t yet lost their excitement,” and Volodya chooses her. Oksana first arrives at Chistye Prudy, meets with the guys and disappears for half an hour in the “Bauhaus” studio. “Well, the speed is phenomenal. But what about the quality?” Oksana says goodbye to the guys and takes time to process the taken measurements. “Not even a couple of days have passed, and I was leafing through a multi-page pdf with all the angles, sections and necessary constructive structures,” Volodya says. Oksana begins to work with the guys on the projects of the interior design agency and becomes part of the team: "She came for 1 order, but it turned out to be work for ages."
    Heroes
    Oksana comes to work with the documentation of the Mama Ro furniture workshop and remains with the guys. Until now, there wasn’t a more thorough approach to the painstaking process of selection and drawing up specifications for design projects of the interior studio.
    March 19, 2016, Volodya and Anton come to meet with Sasha Ivansky on Krutitskaya Embankment. A large office space of 400 square meters with a view of the Moscow River. Volodya, having listened to Sasha's wishes, suggested creating the Instat headquarters from scratch and move it to a new, spacious office. Sasha learned about the Mama Ro interior design agency six months ago when he was visiting Farida and Alexander and at the beginning of September 2015, he invited Volodya for the first time to his office at Paveletskaya. “I went up to their small and scattered office and saw a lot of tables there with different guys and between them a tall and thin man with light gray in his hair and incredibly musical hands. It was Sasha Ivansky - the inspirer and creator of Instat.”
    Heroes
    “The meeting began without introduction: Sasha quickly shook my hand, said that in the new version of the office he would like to see minimalism and went into a long visionary monologue. He talked about the office he had in his dreams, what he would like to see in his office, and so on and so forth. And after the monologue was over, he never returned to the old office, although he remained physically there — Sasha was already in his new future Instat office. Then I realized that we needed to start from scratch”, recalls Volodya. The guys greet Sasha, step up the echoing, still empty space of the new headquarters, take measurements and get down to work on the custom project.
    Heroes
    Sasha Ivansky, the founder of Instat, learns about the Mama Ro project by visiting Farida and Alexander. Mama Ro interior design agency would have to work soon on a design project for Instat.
    May 2, 2016, Nastya finishes the final edition of consulting - a lot of the work is over. Volodya gives them the text in proof and then in print; and presents it to the customer. Mama Ro has been working for almost four years with an average load of 98.10%, and the Revelton's customers have decided to turn to the guys for consulting services for their first apart-hotel in Karlovy Vary. Competitive market, strategy and sales channels, management, target and non-target marketing, loyalty system: Nastya, Volodya, Tolya and Anton arrange and brainstorm their own experience and, after several focus groups, their invisible method of work has become real until today. It will take Nastya another month confined within four walls to study the market of Karlovy Vary for her to comprehend what had been gained and to produce a well-composed and organized text.
    Heroes
    May 28, 2016, Shurik arrives at Sakharov Avenue, goes up to meet the guys on the eighth floor and, seeing the freshly poured floors, recalls one huge construction in the Soviet Union where concrete was poured which now is the foundation of the radio telescope: when inside the business of concrete mixers, the MAZ car was failing and, in order to not interrupt the steady pouring, the glass imploded and broke into the cabin and the machine, together with the concrete, was dumped into the pit. Shurik, inspired by Mama Ro’s many years of experience, offered the guys his space to open two more studios. A five minutes walk from the main office, the guys favorite, Chistye Prudy. Anton, Volodya, and Tolya confirm and Shurik's proposal gives rise to a new, fourth Mama Ro construction site.
    Heroes
    Volodya wanted to work with Alice since the time of the third construction, when together with Kostya, he created the “Bauhaus” studio. The social network offered to view several works by an unknown artist, and, “having overcome this shyness,” Volodya added her as a friend. “These were graphic pictures that immediately captivated me with its dynamics, simplicity and skill. I wanted to offer Alice work in the studio.” However, “Bauhaus” was almost complete and Volodya returns to the correspondence two years later, together with the start of the new studios. Andon June 13, 2016, Alice in Veliky Novgorod completes and sends Volodya her first work. In the process of this discussion the theme of the studio is born: a retro-futuristic Moscow from an alternative past. Alice’s first trip to present Moscow is ahead.
    Heroes
    June 6, 2016, Anton again writes to Sasha in Siberia. He needs a small HTML-letter and at the same time decides to check if Sasha could recommend a programmer to create their website: “At that time I just finished the page-proof and didn’t even think of addressing it to Sasha. For some reason, our discussion when Sasha said he didn’t work on websites remained in my head.” Sasha specifies some work points with Anton, Anton sends Sasha's some layout examples, and Sasha, after taking a pause for reflection, answers two days later that he’s ready to start working from July 1. Anton for the first time learns that Sasha is not a hermit-programmer from Siberia but rather he is from the Urals, and lives and works in a village in the Tver region and Anapa.
    Heroes
    June 9, 2016, Tanya in Paris, walking through the Luxembourg Garden, calls Marcin and offers him work on the translations with her. Over the year, with the work on the website the volume of texts has increased to 350 thousand characters. Tanya and David decided to offer proofreading of the translations to Marcin as David is busy with work and exams and became difficult for him to check the large volumes of texts at night. “I had to wait for a while: Marcin then lived for a year in China, taught English there, studied Chinese. He loves Asian culture and very quickly learns new languages. So, I was able to contact him only after his return to the US "- recalls Tanya. Marcin, in Los Angeles, responds to Tanya’s call and a week later Anton collects and sends them the first block of the texts for translation.
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    “I know Marcin as well as David thanks to the exchange program between the O’Neal Center and the Moscow Art Theater School. Our friendship started with the fact that he tried to speak Russian. Marcin is half Colombian, half Polish, and since Polish and Russian languages are quite similar, Russian was easier for him than for other Americans. However, sometimes he would mistakenly speak Polish, and in the end, would end up mixing English, Russian and Polish: we spoke an incomprehensible language together <...>. I was astonished by Marcin’s hard work: at that time, I didn’t speak much English, while Marcin was fluent in Polish, English, Spanish and continued to study more. Everything was easy for him. I saw him open to everything new, his big deep world, and it was so inspired that I also wanted to speak different languages. It was his openness and hard work that inspired me to go abroad, work there and learn new languages. Therefore, when that story appeared [with a large volume of translations], he was happy to take it as a new challenge and the opportunity to work on something interesting. We organized the workspace in Google doc and began to translate. We would make comments there directly in the text and send messages to each other in there. We would joke and laugh at different words, learn about their etymology, compare meanings in different languages. It was interesting and funny.”
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • David
      Russell

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    June 27, 2016, Sasha Marusheva greets a new guest, signs the contract with him and discovers the “Pollock” signature on the last spread. It turned out that the grandson of the artist, Jason, booked an apartment at Mama Ro. A year ago, Sasha was inspired by Jackson Pollock's paintings when she suggested calling Studio 7 "Street Art", and then together with Sonya she created a painting for it. Sasha and Jason finish up with the contract and go up to the third floor to “Street Art”: “Wow! It’s really very similar to his style! It’s impressive guys, great work!” Sasha shows the grandson of her favorite artist the result of her last year’s work.
    On August 16, 2016, exactly three months after the start of the construction, the new office of Instat is ready. It looks absolutely in line with the visuals from the design project. Volodya arrives at Krutitskaya Embankment (the company has already partially moved to the new address) to help the installers set up the logo light at the reception desk and meets Sasha Ivansky in the office. “We strolled quickly around Instat. Sasha was very inspired by the cinema as we installed a huge retractable screen with a projector for the staff to work with statistics. He began to dream organizing silent movie cinema evenings for the whole international Instat team once the move in was complete,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    “Actually, Sasha also liked the furniture that we made from scratch.” The question of the furnitures high cost arose at the stage of the design project’s completion, and Volodya suggested Sasha Ivansky use the Mama Ro furniture workshop as a resource. Within a few days, Oksana creates drawings on Volodya’s first sketches and Danya, in Ivano-Frankivsk, models the future furniture in 3D. A month later: “It was morning, there was a meeting with the master and a visit of the paint shop located in the territory of a former textile plant. The glass blocks of huge walls and long industrial boulevards was why they said, “The plant spread to a territory comparable to a small town.” The serial production of the designed furniture required factory-made production, and after several unsuccessful calls which Volodya made to several Moscow factories, Sasha Ivansky offered him a contact in his hometown “A couple of days later I was already flying on a small motor plane to Cheboksary,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    • Danya Gavriluk

      3D modeler
      3D-illustrations, 3D-modeling for the interior design Mama Ro agency.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Sasha Ivansky

      Partner
      Client of the Mama Ro interior design agency, co-founder of Mama Ro 5, partner.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    September 27, 2016, Galya in St. Petersburg finishes transferring the Tree of Legends into vector format and sends it off to Anton: the picture drawn by Nastya Timofeeva in the graphic editing program is adapted for retina display and in the course of the work on the website, it became clear that it is better to transform all graphic material into this format: Nastya’s jewelry drawings significantly lose in raster graphics. “Especially on the retina! And then, we’ll need them once again for engravings and souvenirs - all this won’t be in vain,” explains Anton. Galya again helps the guys in everything that concerns the vector, and she also helps it parallel Zhenya Remizova’s work on the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Anton downloads the file and asks Galya to help sketch out, in vector form, a map of Moscow for the Investor’s section: “Over the course of two years we’ve become friends but I couldn’t expect what she said: Galya wrote suddenly, that she fell in love with Moscow due to working on these maps and drawings..."
    Heroes
    On the night of October 6, 2016, a year and four months later, Zhenya Remizova, in Saint Petersburg, finishes work on the graphic route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Two square kilometers of unique architecture, 828 units of construction, water and automotive equipment, 1598 pedestrians and an incalculable number of scenes are more than half complete and brought by Zhenya to a victorious end. “I still wonder how Zhenya refused me. I was ready for this after Nastya Timofeeva came out of this work. It was all a really crazy idea. We argued, set deadlines, after which Zhenya would give up everything but, nevertheless, this girl would return anyway and with a new force to take up work. She is a true hero! Why, Zhenya wrote later, I should go to Moscow - I already saw everything there..."
    Heroes
    “It was, of course, very interesting for me to work with Zhenya, Nastya and Galya – our three girls from Saint Petersburg. We were creating the visual content for a project in Moscow and about Moscow, i.e. our future site, but I was looking at it with the eyes of people from St. Petersburg. And I had all different opinions: Nastya fell in love with the city from the first day, even when she visited us in April 2014; Galya struck me with a change in her attitude; and Zhenya, finally, came once I gave her a tour and heard something like: I thought it was big and modern, but it turned out to be an ordinary Russian city. It was interesting to get to know my dear Moscow in a new way. And many of the ideas and perspectives from which the material was submitted came in the process thanks to this very experience. Therefore, I (from Moscow) thank St. Petersburg in the personage of Zhenya, Nastya and Galya: the city for the first time saw itself in a perspective from which no one had ever seen it before,” says Anton.
    Heroes
    On October 10, 2016, a year and three months later, Zhenya Stakhanova finishes and sends to Anton the last eleven essays. The texts for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin are ready. Anton transfers the texts to the Chistoye village and Sasha proceeds to build an interactive route with 56 geotags in the Moscow Kremlin and 16 more on the way to it from Chistye Prudy. “The most difficult thing was to create a story of 700 characters. Zhenya shoveled a huge amount of material and somehow managed to fit it into a sketch for the smartphone screen. And this was the main criterion: that the Mama Ro guest could go along the route drawn by St. Petersburg Zhenya’s namesake and read about what they see right on their feet. And you know what? Once, when I was in the Alexander Garden, I unknowingly pulled out a phone out of my pocket and read the description of the Trinity Tower. There was no limit to my delight!” Anton recalls. Another 55,000 characters are sent to Paris and Los Angeles by Tanya and Marcin for translation.
    Heroes
    October 15, 2016, Dima begins to work on another proof for Mama Ro. While Sasha in the Chistoye village creates a desktop version of the website, Anton asks Dima to help with developing a mobile version. Dima comes to Chistye Prudy for the first time in two years. “We had argued and didn’t talk to each other for some time. And it was a new Dima who arrived. I was surprised at the beginning of his answer: he wrote something like he was ready to do anything if we asked him. I heard this from Dima for the first time. And then, when we began to work, the feeling was confirmed: Dima had changed a lot during these two years. If earlier there was a temperamental guy with a tenacious mind and a loose tongue (a tongue without bones as Russians would say), now his qualities had a complete new tonality. This new quality of sacrificing himself for the sake of the team (which was so far only dimly guessed as a new quality of his) and his eagerness to help I later will be able to admire in all its glory several times over,” Anton says.
    Heroes
    October 31, 2016, Volodya and Sasha Ivansky, in Cheboksary, walk out of the airport into the airfield and head towards the ladder. The day before, Sasha Ivansky offered Mama Ro to create another design project for the Instat branch. Volodya and Sasha went to Cheboksary to see the space for the new office. “We were approaching the ladder. Sasha had been interested in our project for some time and was asking about my work.” Volodya tells Sasha about Mama Ro, about the design projects for the Revelton apartment hotels, and for the first time wonders if Sasha is interested in working on such a project together. “This is how, for the first time in Sasha’s usual simplicity and directness, we agreed to work together”. Volodya and Sasha Ivansky enter into a gentlemen’s agreement. The search for a new space for Mama Ro is ahead and the fifth construction.
    Heroes
    On November 6, 2016, the fourth construction was completed. Alisa finishes the time-consuming process of painting the “Neo Moscow” studio and goes to “Sarai” to help Tolya with the cleaning. Tolya did the design of the second studio. Volodya starts the "Neo Moscow" shoot. There is an augmented reality in black and white on the studio's walls. At the very beginning of the work, Volodya rented a helicopter to take photos of Chistye Prudy from a bird’s eye view. Thus, Alisa could do the paintings of the “Neo Moscow” walls in a way that transmit exactly the perspective of the Academician Sakharov Prospect with the panorama of the Kremlin and Chistye Prudy in the distance. So now “a guest could see themselves in the walls through a parallel dimension”. On the next day two new Mama Ro studios open their doors to guests. In contrast to the “Neo Moscow” studio, the guys rename the “Moscow” studio into “Old Moscow”.
    Heroes
    December 10, 2016, Danya gives Volodya the Skype contact of Masha Darmoros. The amount of work on the Revelton apartment hotels increases exponentially, and Danya, together with Dima Krivenko, start to fall behind schedule. They need an assistant. “For some reason, Danya fenced me off in every possible way as long as he could from working with Masha, Danya’s girlfriend, and therefore, also, a 3D-professional,” Volodya recalls. Worrying that the inclusion of a new person in a streamlined process will take time, Volodya starts Skype, and Masha’s voice is heard in the managers room for the first time. Masha writes down Volodya’s changes in detail (somewhere in Ivano-Frankivsk, a pencil rustles on the paper), takes a pause, and says goodbye until tomorrow.
    Heroes
    “She called in the morning and asked if I could see the screen. I responded positively and the download icon appeared on the monitor, which hung a little longer than expected, to which I even managed to mumble that I could not see anything. When suddenly a picture appeared in front of my eyes, in which everything was exactly as we discussed. Everything was in its place: light, color, textures! My speechlessness returned immediately after the inner skeptic was defeated by the reanimated optimist. I saw an amazing result faster than expected and done with soul. That day it became clear to our team of visualizers that a new person had arrived,” Volodya recalls.
    Heroes
    Masha Darmoros is the only 3D artist in the team who enters all the workflows of the interior design agency without any need for adaptation. In the photo: Masha and the cat Richard.
    On December 24, 2016, Marcin, in Los Angeles, landed at Starbucks on 12313 Jefferson Boulevard completes the edits of the remaining translations — the essays of Zhenya Stakhanova for the route from Chistye Prudy to the Kremlin. Tanya in Paris saves and sends the finished texts to Moscow. The work on translations is completed. “I mostly remember the descriptions of the rooms, like the room with the big rock and I remember the room with the trees! I really like the story of how difficult it was to bring the trees back. I also remember how they found the old mosaic for the Byzantine behind the plaster, I really liked that. The image of having coffee in a French like room looking out into the streets of Russia with a clear glass shower also has stayed with me. I remember Tanya and I speaking to each other trying to figure out what the best way to edit the documents were especially being so far from each other, that was an interesting thing to try and figure out,” Marcin recalls two years later.
    Heroes
    • Tanya
      Kozlova

      Interpreter. Muse of the project
      Support, helping friends in the beginning, translation of the printing materials and Mama Ro's website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Marcin Pawlikiewicz

      Translation editor
      Proofreading, editing translations for printing, Mama Ro website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    • Zhenya Stakhanova

      Copywriter
      Excursion texts for the "Mama Ro - Kremlin" route on the current website.
      In the chronicles:
      Act:
      Mention:
    On the night of December 31, 2016, Sasha, in Anapa, is on the home stretch for the website. There will be an upload for the public to access the Mama Ro domain. “The New Year was coming. The work still had no clear end. All last week we were working together non-stop on the website with four hands: I brought it, Sasha charged. Without literally ever getting offline, he’s in Anapa having spent his birthday working on the layout and I’m on the mezzanine in the managers room, sleeping under my desk for the third day. At some point, we realized that today we would work until morning. There was no way to delay to tomorrow: we planned to give a present to the guests - to open the website. I remember how at some point Sasha glanced at our spreadsheet in Google Sheets and there was only five hours of work there, and he only responded with: ‘I’ll go and pour myself some cognac.’ I still laugh at it,” Anton laughs.
    Heroes
    Time flies. Morning is coming. Finally, at six in the morning, setting the last attribute (the Christmas
    This refers to the Orthodox Christmas celebrated in Russia on January 7.
    tree in the header of the website), Sasha suggests starting to upload the website. “It was exciting! I thought for a moment how much effort was spent this year, how many different people helped to make this colossus. I made a direct analogy with a ship taking off into the ocean: ribbons, rope, and a fountain of splashes.” Anton solemnly offers Sasha to “cut the rope.” The comrades exchange courtesies and on December 31, 2016 at 6:31am, Sasha uploads the Mama Ro website to the network. “The way I worked during these last few days can be compared only to the work at the first construction site. I think it explains why both of these periods are now so dear to me. And there was a strong feeling of a shoulder next to you in front of a big task. And pressure. Sasha, of course, is a powerhouse! I was proud to work with him.” Anton and Sasha congratulate each other on the New Year and, hit the sack, and say goodbye to Christmas – the work on the design agency page is now in the future.
    Heroes
    The pre-New Year fuss passes Sasha as it is the last month of the final assembly. The upload of the website is planned on December 31st. In the photo: Sasha celebrates his birthday reading PHP code.
    On January 18, 2017, the guys meet with Vartan Vartanian at Petrovka and go deep into the back streets of the city. Vartan picked out several locations for the new Mama Ro project with Sasha Ivansky and invited the guys to come check them out. The search for a place begins. “Vartan is a true genius in his field: he is pedantic in the questions where it is needed, and extremely gentle in others. He has tact, sensitivity. It's all about him. From my experience, he’s the only realtor who has a trusting relationship with all his clients,” says Volodya. Ironically, Volodya met Vartan in the same house on the Vodootvodniy channel where the story of Mama Ro started five years ago thanks to Yulia Krasnova. Volodya, by accident, found a rental offer, moved there to live and then met his neighbor from the floor above.
    Heroes
    Having finished showing them one option, Vartan and the guys go to the opposite side of Petrovka and again go deep into the backyard to watch the next one. “I remember the moment when we first went to look at the options. That moment when we went up to the apartment of some academician. Vartan was our new realtor and it wasn’t very clear to him what we wanted. And suddenly he began to very carefully get into our approach: the way it works, and the height of the ceilings, why we needed such things, what kind of atmosphere, in what areas, and what is the ratio of the parts. The guy absolutely, sincerely and consciously began to delve into what we need <...>. It seems to me that Vartan has a good sense of beauty, which allows him to do the work of a realtor very subtly - not only from the point of view of the seller, but also from the point of view of the buyer (and more precisely it concerns our creative specifics). It was the first realtor in my life who did the really necessary work,” Tolya recalls.
    Heroes
    The place that Vartan finds on February 14, 2017, having studied the market based on the wishes of the guys, is a former apartment house of 1876 right near Chistye Prudy. It’s the nineteenth century! In the 20th century here, as elsewhere, communal apartments existed. At the beginning of the 21st, some communal apartments were still left. In them one could see pre-revolutionary stucco, three-meter ceilings, shingles exposed under shattering plaster, and a leaking roof. This place is something the guys never could have dreamed of due to the fact that it’s an exact copy of the Mama Ro mansion that is on the same side of the street on Gusyatnikov Lane, with only one house in between them. The guys start preparing for the fifth construction.
    Heroes
    April 1, 2017 Marina, Volodya and Anton come to Monino to the Air Force Museum, walk through the aircraft exposition and, having chosen the turboprop Tu-114
    Soviet long-haul passenger aircraft.
    in the backyard, start setting up easels against its background. Marina unpacks the canvases: there are portraits of pilots, scenes aboard military aircrafts and landscapes of the Kubinka closed airfield… “My acquaintance with Marina began several years ago due to these works of art. When I came upon these pictures on Facebook, I was so impressed that I wanted to meet with the author and wrote a lot of compliments to Marina. She decided that I was crazy and didn’t answer anything,” Anton recalls. “But a few years later, in August 2014, when I invited everyone to the opening of the new Mama Ro, I saw Marina online and sent her an invitation. As a result, we suddenly began to communicate for no reason at all.” Anton dreams of creating an Art Store and asked Marina to take part in a shoot, alongside with Kubinka’s paintings either in Kubinka or in an atmosphere close to aviation.
    Heroes
    Marina is a professional painter, she appears in the history of Mama Ro along with aviation. A few years before that, Anton met Marina, having come across the announcement of her exhibition dedicated to the Kubinka airfield. He believes that Marina is no equal in painting among his peers.
    April 5, 2017, Marina, after three days of work, takes pictures and sends to Anton the first stack test
    A tool used by sculptors for artistic modeling.
    which is the plasticine bas-relief of the Mama Ro logo. For the last couple of years, Anton and Volodya have been alternating in attempting to create a three-dimensional version of the logo with 3D modelers and fail again and again. “This is a nightmare! The market is literally overflowing with modelers of all types who worked on video games characters, but who have absolutely no aesthetic taste!” The need to bring the 3D logo came to their minds again and became more urgent together with the start of the fifth construction, and after the third attempt with modelers. Anton decided to seek help from Marina.
    Heroes
    “I can’t explain why, but for me, contacting Marina was an extreme measure. Once in a while she had already helped us on different things, but the bas-relief was something else. I don’t know if this description is accurate enough, but I would call it the fear of a masterpiece. Because inside myself I was sure that when Marina takes a tool in her hands, it is always of a high voltage, that is, a work without compromise. It’s scary to become a culprit of such tension. However, at the same time, it’s exciting as everything lights up from within when you see people working this way. Later, when she would be working on the bas-relief for several months, I, helping her organizationally, would repeatedly experience this sensation of delight,” Anton says.
    April 15, 2017, Anya Zelenskaya in Kiev sends Volodya a zip-archive. Volodya transfers it to Anton and Anya’s furniture renders fly to Anapa (Sasha finished working on the web page of the Mama Ro interior design agency on February 17 and proceeded to work on the furniture workshop). They need to collect the Mama Ro furniture portfolio for the website. Volodya proposes not to take photos of the furniture, but to “assemble it from scratch,” in 3D. “I needed somebody who had experience in working with textures and complex geometry” - Volodya begins to select examples of good quality work in 3D and surprisingly finds out that all the options he selected belong to one author. “Anya turned out to be a stubborn and intractable girl, but her taste allowed her to do really beautiful things. We fought several times. It got so bad that at one point we even stopped working together. However, each time the result came out cooler and cooler.” Volodya starts working with Anya, and the Mama Ro furniture workshop gets a first-class portfolio.
    Heroes
    Anya Zelenskaya, an artist, musician and 3D artist, starts working with the guys and helps build a 3D portfolio for the Mama Ro furniture workshop.
    May 7, 2017, Tolya sends a message on social network to Masha Bochkareva. Nastya decided to make Mama Ro around the clock and asked the guys to offer their friends and acquaintances a job as a night administrator. Tolya recalls Masha: long time ago, before Mama Ro was born, Tolya organized competitions for filming social advertising, and Masha, being among the participants, became his student. “She came as a little girl, sixteen years old, said she wanted to make movies,” Tolya recalls. Masha communicates with Tolya for several years and comes to the opening of the new studios. “I think Masha was in Mama Ro’s orbit because she wanted to make creative decisions from the very beginning. Even then, she seemed to me to be a marginal in the good sense of the word, a white crow with her special vision. Well, we, in turn, always wanted to work with extraordinary people,” Tolya recalls. Masha responds to Nastya’s proposal.
    Heroes
    On the night of June 24, 2017, Marina finishes and sends Anton the result of her three months work: a meter panel with two children on an oak branch made of clay. The bas-relief is ready. “It was a great experience! It was amazing to watch the sculpture come to life in the hands of the painter. I also remember how Marina complained that the material was physically hard for her. And then, when her photos would arrive, I was surprised again and again: it was light and airy and you couldn’t say that the material somehow resisted! And I only had time to drive around the shops and buy tools with obscure names (right along the way, Marina found, read about them, asked to bring them and immediately seized them). As always, everything went well with Marina: quickly, simply and brilliantly! ”- Anton recalls. The purchase of plaster and silicone, the mold casting, the plaster version casting, the plastic version casting, scanning and the transferring of the bas-relief in 3D are now ahead. Along with trials and errors the work will continue until December.
    Heroes
    On September 23, 2017, Tolya in Starbeevo in Khimki carefully puts climbing gear on the guys: straps, ropes and carbines so that no one falls from the branches of the ancient oak tree. Sasha Marusheva plays with the goats that just arrived for a shoot near Yaroslavl. Here, among the goats, Masha Bochkareva plays on the strings on Volodya’s guitar. Volodya takes pictures of Masha as she will have to return to Chistye Prudy so that Anya, along with the rest, can be back at the oak tree by the beginning of the shoot. Nastya consults Dima about her dress (again, Dima is a stylist). Finally, having finished with the straps, Tolya parks the crane-manipulator that has just arrived and, jumping into the cabin, directs the boom of the crane over the oak crown in order to hang the hammock for Sasha. Looking away from the goats, Sasha shouts that she will never climb that high.
    Heroes
    A few days ago, Anton and Tolya drove out here with a crane and spent the day preparing for the shoot: they fixed specially designed harnesses for themselves on the branches; Volodya and Anya tied the fasteners for the hammock and with their own weight they tested a spot for Sasha; and they hung a swing for Nastya. They also rehearsed the fall from the oak with climbing ropes. Since fall suddenly arrived, all the stages for the search of a suitable tree and preparation happened in gloomy weather, and the summer landscape (which was necessary for the guys’ shoot) was gone. The guys read that the upcoming Saturday is the last day of summer for the year.
    Heroes
    Having waited for Anya's arrival, Tolya gives a command to “get on the branches,” and they all gather at the cradle. Anton, Volodya, Nastya, Sasha and Anya are in turn delivered to the crown. Tolya helps everyone to move onto the oak and to fasten the rope. When finished, Tolya climbs onto his branch and fastens himself in as well. This century old oak now carries the Mama Ro team. This shoot was planned by the guys for several years, but the number and dispersion of people who invested their talent and heart into the project every year made the idea all the more fantastic: as a result, it turned out to be almost impossible to gather everyone in one place on one day. The guys found a suitable tree and an elegant way out.
    Heroes
    The shoot has begun. Tolya, dangling his leg, directs the shoot. Volodya, sitting on a thickset branch, photographs the landscape on his favorite camera. Anton is buried in Dostoevsky. Caught in an unusual setting, Anya is calm as never before, and Sasha is on the highest point of the oak in the end. Nastya in a white dress flies on a swing in the rays of the setting sun, from time to time, jumping in and out from the framing of the lens. Dima pushes her in the swing and runs away behind the frame. Nastya was the most successful and most correct here as Tolya notes that “Nastya is the main muse of Mama Ro.” Suddenly, clinging to something on the crown of the oak tree, Nastya loses her balance slips and falls from the swing.
    Heroes
    “It was an interesting moment. Earlier Sasha couldn’t understand why Dima was behind the scenes because he volunteered to help with this shoot and did so much. But we decided that the image of the tree is so spacious that if it’s impossible to gather everyone in one photo (so to speak, the whole Grand Mama Ro, as in that dream of Alikhan, everyone who created the project) then why not just conditionally limit ourselves to the current composition and to look at it symbolically? For example, the roots of a tree or the soil is fertilized by many people’s work which results in a tree that grows stronger which then is taken over by kids playing in treehouses. All this is symbolic for Mama Ro. We are not in this photo literally. So, now back to Dima. Tolya was worried that someone would definitely fall and hurt themselves, so he had to buy and put on mountaineering rope. But this insurance (just as figuratively) is already there in this photo: once Nastya falls, Dima rushes in and immediately catches her. That's why he stayed behind the scenes," Anton recalls.
    Heroes
    November 27, 2017 Vartan Vartanian writes to Volodya. It became clear that the resumption of the fifth construction is not far off. Back in the early summer, Vartan found out that from the winter it would be possible to create the studios on two floors at once, and the guys froze the process for a while to start and finish both floors at the same time. The question on the studios themes raises again. On one floor the deconstructions of the wall partitions has already been completed, and the guys get back to the measurements and design of the space. And suddenly, in the process of working, they remember and begin to discuss the words of Dima: that he and many of his friends would love to one day create a Mama Ro studio.
    Heroes
    December 17, 2017, Masha Bochkareva finishes the retouch of the September “Oak Shoot” stills in a hurry and prepares for her departure. Anton wants to make postcards from individual photos for the opening of the new studios. “She came up to me during one of the night shifts and said, ‘Don't be worried about this retouching. I will help you.’ I, then, had some time management trouble. And indeed, she did everything within a month without asking anything for her work. And then she flew to Paris." Masha decided to get away from the guys and live in a new city for a while. Anton downloads and unzips the file. On the retouched postcards lay Volodya, Tolya, Anton, Nastya, Anya and Sasha on the branches of the Starbeevo Oak and no signs of the rope and special harnesses.
    Heroes
    December 31, 2017, Tolya, Volodya, Anton, Nastya, Sasha and Anya, together with her dog Plyusha, climb onto the second tier in the managers room to take a picture as a souvenir. “At some point, we realized that the six-year story of Mama Ro is two equal halves of three!” Anton says, “When the preparation for the fifth construction resumed, it became interesting to us to see how much time passed from the last one. And suddenly we realized that it was exactly three years. In the first three years, we built all the time, and during the second three years we spent our time in our managers’ room on the second tier. The workflows have gradually moved from the analog world (from the construction sites, trips around industrial zones and construction markets) to the digital one. During this time, we refined our identity, created the website, and launched the interior design agency: everything in the online world. I tried to formulate this observation in one of the conversations with Dima and solemnly proclaimed that after the era of construction in Mama Ro the era of the entresol came, and I received a storm of laughter. It’s a touching and funny moment. There was a slight sensation of detachment, and suddenly we wanted to capture our managers’ room in a photo.”
    Heroes
    The New Year is coming. Guys go home leaving the room until the next morning. The upcoming fifth construction is in the near future. For the first time in the history of the project, the ideas of the new studios are not waiting for the guys, but for their new authors. Having built the Mama Ro foundation, the guys listened to Dima’s words about the authorship of the new studios and suggested it to Nastya, Anya and Sasha. Then to Masha and Nastya Timofeeva. And, finally, to Dima himself. Two more authors are hidden somewhere in the future. Who they are, what studios are waiting for their turn - nobody knows. The Christmas tree becomes dim. The door closes. The wave of history overtakes itself so that, rushing back, in can roll in again with a new force.
    Heroes
    EPILOGUE

    Thank you

    The story is over, but our memory still holds the names of those who, although are not included in the chronicle, irregardless took an indirect part in the creation of Mama Ro. Some of them we remember just by name, others we forgot and remembered when sorting through contacts, photos and messages. And some couldn’t be remembered. And this is quite sad. Therefore, without relying more on our memory, we print our thanks here:
    Abroskina Sasha, Alferov Serezha, Anisimova Nastya, Belfort Aline, Byigereev Ruslan, Chintsov Vlad, Chugunov Dima (Tiger), Davydov Denis, Dyakovsky Yaroslav, Elaman, Elnura, Eskina Yulia, Faizulo, Fokina Tatyana, Grapova Maria, Gray Chelsea, Grebennik Tanya, Ivanskaya Alexandra, Kadyrova Elena, Karinskaya Ekaterina, Karpovich Sveta, Kim Aram, Kolerov Denis, Kopirov Viktor, Kornilov Sergey, Kornylova Ekaterina, Kozhokin Mikhail, Kozlov Alexander, Krepish Nastya, Krivov Lesha, Kulygina Alla, Kurlov Vadim, Kurlandtseva Nastya, Kuznetsova Kira, Lee Rashoo, Leonova Alla, Lokteva Yulia, Lepeshkin Andrei, Lyaukina Galina, Morgunov Dima, Marsel, Martinelli German, Martinova Nastya, Naumova Alla, Nazarenko Ksenia, Nikolayev Volodya, Nikulina Sveta, Nizaeva Eleonore, Ostankovich Valya, Paramonov Anton, Paskute Nastya, Patronov Grisha, Pavlova Sasha, Pesvianidze Mariam, Povzner Sasha, Praslova Lena, Prokhorenko Sasha, Pustinova Sasha, Sharif, Shugaev Pasha, Puzakova Anastasia, sister Rafaila, Raida Maria, Raiskaya Yana, Rzaly Ramil, Rzaly Farida, Saushkin Sergey, Seregin Vladislav, Sergeyeva Tanya, Sogoyan Artur, Soloviev Anton, Sotnikov Oleg, Sploshnov Sasha, Stadnichenko Tanya, Susova Lena, Susova Natalya, Sychev Eugeniy, Trusov Dima, Tunu Elizabeth, Ukolov Sasha, Ushakov Volodya, Utochka Dasha, Valiullin Aidar, Voronkov Grisha, Yagovkin Dima.
    We also express our gratitude to the guests who once crossed the threshold of the Mama Ro admin area and stayed with us at the same table having become our regular customers and friends:
    Bickman Roger, Varygina Dasha, Koal Melinda, Korolev Sergey, Kunevich Vitaly, Lorenzino Pablo, Magomadov Alan, Majorana Alberto, Pagotto Cecilia, Panzhenskaya Julia, Savichevich Sasha, Stupin Maxim, Ushakov Volodya, Elkin Roman.
    But most of all, we thank everyone who is not mentioned. Unfortunately, the memory is short. While Mama Ro continues its journey, your contribution lives with it.
    F.A.Q.

    Post wtFAQtum

    Assuming that this material will not leave the reader without questions, we immediately answered the most anticipated ones. And for some we did it even to ourselves.

    – Why «Mama Ro»?

    Ro is a historical hero who stood at the origins of the project. Once in July 2011, she brought her mother to our common workshop where we were just finishing one of the first constructions, and unaware of that, she gave a name to the future project. However, none of us suspected anything about the project itself. You can read how this happened in the chronicle: 1.7
    We find the name a symbol of the logo of the project, which appeared only six months later and at first did not correlate with the name, depicting 2 children. We call them now "Mama Ro's children”. Perhaps, for a project based on creating space with a childlike spontaneity for other children of the same kind (of course, this is not about age) there really is no better name.
    In addition, “mama” is one of the oldest words in the history of mankind and is almost universal for all languages. It does not need to be translated for an understanding. As for “Ro,” it is derived from the name “Roxane.” For a project, this is primarily part of our history that we hold dear. But the point is that guests who come from all over the world always try to make sense of the name “Mama Ro,” who receives them at her place, in their own language, in their own way.

    – Why is everyone on the oak in the photo?

    This is a reference to the logo of Mama Ro: two kids sitting on an oak branch. This is how we metaphorically imagined comfort when we opened the very first two studios. And when we started discussing a common photo, the first idea was to translate this image literally. So, this is our common photo in the spirit of Mama Ro's brand identity.
    The first pencil sketch. March 2012
    The answer to the question of why the children are sitting on the oak branch has its own background in which we lose ourselves every time. The fact is that in Mama Ro mythology there are many natural “historical” events: a fire in the bathhouse, the appearance of the name of the project, Alikhan’s dream (in the chronicle: 1.5 1.7 2.89 ), which have long become meaningful. Sometimes it’s even difficult to understand what was primary: the event itself or its meaning. The same situation is with the logo.
    It seems that initially we chose the oak, being impressed by the aesthetics of its branches during one of the walks in the Moscow Kremlin. But at the same time, we knew that in many European mythologies, including Old Slavic, the oak symbolized the World Tree - the center and axis of the universe. This way, still without realising it, in the next more expanded version of the logo a similar motive appears: a young oak tree stretches over the space hemisphere of Moscow.
    A more detailed version of the logo was created on May 6, 2012: under the children there is a laconic branch, and under it is the hemisphere of Moscow. Later, this image will be finalized in the planet of Mama Ro, the full version of the logo to this day.
    And after a while, the eschatological dream that Alikhan Albakov had on June 2, 2014 (in the chronicle: 2.89 ) finally fixed the oak tree as a meaning-forming image of Mama Ro. Following the dream came the concept of the project as an “oak tree” uniting many worlds (thematic studios). On January 21, 2015, the St. Petersburg artist Nastya Timofeeva created the first sketch of the future “Tree of Legends” (in the chronicle: 3.10): the century-old oak as a collective image for all narratives ("legends") accompanying the Mama Ro studio on the website.
    An oak branch with children above the cosmic hemisphere (hereinafter referred to as a planet) was born when not a single studio was yet built in the project. Kids on a branch as a metaphor for ideal space. The dream that Alikhan had in 2014 during the construction of the next six studios (from 9th to 14th) changed everything: there the idea of the oak was born itself, on which the children sit as the image of all the interiors of Mama Ro. Subsequently, this also affected the layout of the website: the kids on the branch and the planet Mama Ro were taken out as the “heading” and “basement” of the website and understood as an idea leading to a common denominator of the ideal space for all present and future projects of Mama Ro.
    So, following step by step the guiding thread of cases and coincidences, we introduced the “oak” line into the identity of Mama Ro. And just like that, the mythological consciousness that we all have post factum, is trying to see in this a certain meaning, a certain predestination. Who knows! One thing is certain: everyone is sitting on an oak tree in the photo because everyone embodies the whole world. And the Mama Ro tree contains the unity of opposites.

    – What is the chronicle?

    This is the story of Mama Ro, which suddenly took shape in the finished text. This was as unexpected for us as for those who came here to make a reservation. Initially, sitting on the oak branch, we planned (as already mentioned in the introduction) to devote this photo-performance to those with whom the project had started. But in the process of working with photographs, archives, memories and memories of the participants, we invented our own in-house historiography.
    The chamberness of this material posed to us a question that the reader themselves would rightly ask: “Why did you need to write this?” After all, when we told ourselves that the objective of this material was not to let the names of those who had created Mama Ro go into the oblivion, we only declared the intention. In fact, turning back to the past, we saw a multitude of events incomprehensible to the outside eye, not connected or connected by a tedious linear sequence. Until unexpectedly, having begun little by little to restore Alikhan’s dream (in the chronicles: 2.89 ) in order to record it at least we saw the whole history of Mama Ro in a completely different, and special light.
    From the message of the dream, it seemed to turn out that all of the space surrounding us was formed by ourselves by means of the game. The game is a subtle fine-tuning that allows us to create incredible things. At that moment, looking at our own studios, we suddenly realized that Mama Ro is really just a projection of the complex, a multi-dimensional space of the game of different people. The past instantly became rippled with meaningful moments that formed a bizarre space, similar to Mama Ro's studios. The only difference is that those who played returned to it.
    To create a text copy from this space was the same as to think of a history as not a way from point A to point B, but as neural connections between all letters of the alphabet at the same time. That is, as a kind of spatial text or a game! We really wanted to try it so that everyone could join. Therefore, this chronicle is written. Alikhan’s dream really contained a prophetic meaning: while we continue to play, there is space, and history is full of meaning.

    – Is that a real photo?

    Of course! To doubt this means to underestimate Tolya Smirnov, one of the co-founders of Mama Ro. He personally made and mounted such seats on a tree so that none of the participants of the shoot would break their neck. Because the height of the highest point turned out to be equal to the height of a three-story building (six and a half meters). He then provided everyone with climbing insurance, and with the help of the manipulator arm delivered them to the crown (in the annals: 3.62). The idea was not to use Photoshop (the only exception being some small retouching).

    Another question? Ideas, feedback?

    Write here, we will read and respond.

      Another question? Ideas, feedback?

      Write here, we will read and respond.

        P.S.

        Post scriptum

        Finishing the shoot, we slightly lowered the swing and left them so that in the future there was always a reason to return. Now, when business brings us to these lands, we make sure to drive by the “Mama Ro Oak”, to say hi and sway on the swings.
        And over time, it turned out that not only we were swinging with pleasure: during the fall, a path was laid through the whole field here and remained throughout the winter. Both old and young were noticed with this fascinating occupation. Feel free to join the club!
        Oak coordinates of Mama Ro:
        55.917141, 37.470267