Meet Roman Chertkov.

Roman was born in Novosibirsk into a family that had been connected with architecture and art for several generations. As a child he spent time at Sibstrin, the Novosibirsk civil engineering institute, and at MARKHI, the Moscow Architectural Institute. His earliest memories of institute corridors come from there. Later he trained at the Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Fine Arts, in the department of urban planning.

A short Moscow period is also linked to the Kirpichev studio at the House of Architects, where Chertkov went as a boy. There, children turned found and discarded materials into art objects of their own. Roman came away with a mechanised fly and a kangaroo, and with the habit of seeing a new possibility in any material.

In 2004 Roman found himself an «exhibit» at the Venice Architecture Biennale, whose main theme that year was Metamorph. In the Workshop Russia project the Russian pavilion became the working space of ten studios. The group Chertkov took part in was led by the architect Matthias Sauerbruch. For two weeks the students worked inside the exhibition and themselves became part of a living installation. Architecture existed there not as a finished object but as a process unfolding in front of the public.

Professional practice began in Novosibirsk. One of the large projects there was an eight-storey club residence in the city centre, which the team carried from concept to completion. With that team Roman Chertkov twice won the Grand Prix of the ARCH-TAIGA interior award, in 2019 and 2021, and also sat on its jury. Other professional awards include first places at the Siberian SIB DESIGN FEST and a win at the STIL’NOE award. Step by step the geography of the work grew wider.

At first the practice followed its clients. After successful projects in Novosibirsk they bought property in Moscow, Sochi, Germany or Spain and turned again to an architect they had trusted for years. So each new country became not a separate line in the portfolio but a continuation of the trust earned on the previous project.

As a student Roman lived and worked in the United States for a while. He changed a number of jobs and saw for the first time, from his own experience, how differently everyday life can be arranged. Later that experience made moving to new cities inspiring rather than daunting: once you have found yourself on another continent and learned to act without your usual coordinates, the next change stops looking impossible.

For Chertkov, movement was never a rejection of accumulated experience. Working in different cities and countries taught him to reassemble his practice for a new context. The most visible change happened in Dubai: here the entrepreneurial role was added to the architectural one.

Roman first came to Dubai in 2008 as a tourist. The Marina was still being built, many of today’s districts did not yet exist. The city read as a promise: a place one wanted to reach before everyone else, while its future was only taking shape.

The first professional reason to return came in 2014. A client proposed building out a penthouse at Dubai Marina: five levels, a private lift, a separate spa floor and a pool on the open terrace. The team arrived to execute an existing design, but during the work it became clear that execution alone was not enough. The project had to be rethought.

The work took a couple of years and became a crash course in local construction reality: different technologies, codes, contractors, business rhythm and notions of deadlines. Along with the first Dubai project came the company that works in the Emirates today. The early start, however, was not followed by an instant rise. The market turned down, the Dubai direction ran in the background for a while, and the main focus shifted back to Moscow and Siberia.

In Roman’s observation, renewed interest in Dubai began during the pandemic and grew with the opening of EXPO 2020. In January 2022 Roman Chertkov moved the centre of his life and work here for good.

In Russia Roman was first of all a studio head, an architect and a designer. In Dubai he became an entrepreneur, responsible not for a separate creative part but for the product as a whole.

In the UAE property is, as a rule, not forever. A home here is often one stage of life: a person buys an apartment or a villa, lives in it, then moves to a new home and returns to the market. That is why, Chertkov believes, even someone buying a space for themselves remains an investor; financial logic simply joins personal motives.
According to Chertkov, a buyer often makes an emotional decision in the first thirty seconds and cannot always explain why. The architect’s task is to understand which changes will create the right impression, and to design that impression deliberately.

Roman does not try to offer the client everything possible. His principle is the necessary and the sufficient. Every additional element has to justify its presence: strengthen the image, improve the quality of life or raise the value of the property. If the spending pushes the property into a price category where it can no longer compete, design stops doing its job.

The participants in a project rarely start from the same goal. The investor cares about the deadline and the return. The broker, about a strong offer and a clear sale. The designer, about a coherent image. The builder, about a well-organised, high-quality build. The manufacturer, about a precise piece. The future owner, about the feeling that the space was made for their life.
Roman’s role is to connect these motives and keep bringing the team back to the main task. His metaphor is the conductor: every specialist is responsible for their own part, and the result depends on how well they are aligned.

Today NORT.DESIGN brings together a full-cycle team in Dubai: architects and designers, a fit-out division, its own furniture production and delivery specialists. According to Roman Chertkov, combining these directions keeps the idea, the estimate, the construction and the procurement in one system.
Chertkov himself enters a project as the expert: he defines the property’s potential, chooses the tools, approves the visual solution and assembles the economics. He says he tries to delegate more and immerse himself less in every process, while keeping expert control over the projects.

The move demanded of Chertkov not only a new business model but a different way of behaving. By his own admission he is more of an introvert: someone for whom it is natural to sink into a project and stay inside the professional world for a long time. Dubai made him widen that world.

At the start Roman set himself a simple rule: no fewer than five meetings a week. Their immediate commercial use did not matter. He needed to listen, to meet people, to understand how the city worked and to find those who shared his human and professional values.
But a connection has to end in a result. After the first referral there is only one rule: make the client want to repeat the experience. That is why, for Roman, networking is not a technique for collecting contacts. It is a long chain of trust that every project either continues or breaks.

Today Roman Chertkov keeps widening his horizons. He started with architecture and design, then learned to manage delivery, production, people and the economics of a property. The next horizon is to make NORT.DESIGN known beyond Dubai and take the studio to new international markets. This is not giving up the profession for business. It is the requirement to answer for the whole result.

That sentence holds his whole professional path: from creating expressive architecture to understanding how architecture and design decide a project’s success.