«Interpretator» at MUAR

«INTERPRETATOR»

Type: exhibition, installation, research

Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow, Russia

Area: ~

Year: 2025

The «Interpretator» is a collective game, a primitive computer, and an anthropomorphic rendering engine whose central processor becomes the exhibition visitor. It is a bridge between the abstract world of architectural ideas and physical reality, built from nothing more than a sheet of paper, a pencil, and an instruction.

The starting point of the project was the unrealized yet brilliant proposal by Ivan Leonidov: the plan for socialist settlement at the Magnitogorsk industrial complex (1930). Leonidov, one of the founders of the Russian avant-garde and Constructivism, envisioned linear cities directed toward the future. But, as often happens with visionaries, his architecture remained on paper, in a purely drawn world. Yet does this mean that Leonidov’s ideas do not exist? That they are less real than buildings made of stone?

A Game of Reality:

Rokot Studio invites the viewer to reconsider the nature of the architectural image. Inspired by the idea that digital space is an analogue of the Platonic «world of ideas», the authors created an algorithm called «Interpretator». This algorithm translates the geometry of Leonidov’s project into mathematical language, and then from mathematics into a language understandable to humans.

The result of this process is the «Tablets» a set of 24 task cards. Each card contains a series of numbered points. These points represent a projection of one frame from a virtual fly-through of a fragment of Leonidov’s city. The viewer’s task is simple and meditative: following the instructions, to connect the points sequentially with lines.

At this moment, the miracle of materialization occurs. The exhibition visitor becomes the algorithm, the rendering engine that brings the architect’s volumetric dream onto the flat surface of the page.

Meanings:

The project reveals several layers of reality at once. First, it demonstrates that an architectural idea can exist independently of its physical embodiment. A building, a drawing, a digital model, and a visitor’s sketch are merely different carriers of the same information, different projections of a single abstract image.

Second, «Interpretator» is a tribute to Ivan Leonidov. His creative imagination, once labeled «Leonidovism» and criticized in his lifetime, materializes almost a century later through dozens of people guided by a pencil across paper.

Third, it is a manifesto of the studio itself. Rokot Studio sees its role in building bridges between the world of dreams and reality, interpreting its architecture as «frozen titans and waking dreams».

Outcome:

A completed «Tablet» becomes more than just a drawing. It is an archival record, a physical imprint of an abstract idea that has traveled a long path: from Leonidov’s imagination, through mathematical algorithms, to the visitor’s hand. In this way, a digital file acquires material presence, and the museum visitor becomes, for a few minutes, part of a larger mechanism for materializing an architectural dream.

«Interpretator» is a poetic reflection on the computer and an invitation to follow one’s dreams, even if for now they are destined to remain on paper.