Nikolay Smolin

ABOUT

I design buildings for a living, and I put the rest of my energy into books, music, sport, and code. Running is the habit that stuck — trails, mostly, the rougher the better.

Somewhere along the way that turned into coaching a handful of people in running and dog agility, and into a small club, Hike!RC, that exists mostly because I wanted training partners. I've got two Shelties of my own, and they're obsessed with agility — it's basically mutual.

I also write short, unpolished dispatches in the gonzo tradition — trip reports, races, things that happened on a run — published on Telegram rather than here. And when I'm not designing a building, I'm usually building a small site or tool. This one, for instance.

I practice Zen Buddhism, which probably explains why wabi-sabi and the tea ceremony appeal to me — the attention to material, the value placed on repetition, the comfort with things being unfinished. It maps neatly onto both the buildings I design and the loop I run every morning. I'm vegan too, for much the same reason: restraint as a daily practice rather than a statement.