A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists

Led by Marina Egorova, Empate Architectural Bureau is launching a series of discussions with professional urban planners. The first meeting took place during Arch Moscow 2025 and focused on the relevance of urban planning theory today.

The conversation was wide-ranging, touching on a variety of topics: remembering the “founding fathers” of urban planning theory, examining in detail how models work through the example of the Kazan agglomeration, posing awkward questions to the developers, and reflecting on “ownerless” lands. We’ve gathered all the key points and, for convenience, divided them into sections:

Roadside Picnic: why urban planning theorists should gather at all
Atlases: Gutnov, Glazychev, and other figures of the “New Urbanism”
The Axiology of Brusnika: a developer’s perspective
Agglomerations of the Republic of Tatarstan
The cytoplasm of undivided land

The participants in these discussions will form the basis of a new association – the “Urban Planners’ Club”. The next event is planned to take place in St. Petersburg as part of the Architekton festival.

zooming — Discussion “Relevance of urban planning theory” at Arch Moscow, 2025

Copyright: Photograph © Ekaterina Batalova, special for Empate Architectural Bureau

Roadside Picnic: Why Gather?

Marina Egorova
Architect/urban planner, founder and head of Empate Architectural Bureau

The architectural community is constantly in search of new meanings and ideas, and is engaged in ongoing conversations about “the city of the future”. Conferences are held, and numerous publications are released. We see more and more examples of strategic development programs for cities, agglomerations, and even entire countries.

However, all this seems to lack a scientific approach and depth. The immediate has pushed the intelligent and complex to the margins of discourse. Strategies are becoming increasingly similar to one another, often ignoring location and the ethno-cultural specifics of a region. Trends have replaced profound meanings and the understanding of how the primary beneficiary of creating and developing the urban environment – the human being – will live and work.

There is a certain flaw in the way ideas are currently generated and decisions are made. In Soviet times, we had a clear understanding: here is the master plan, with a specific expiration date, and here is the production plan, whose implementation depends on the pace of factory construction and resettlement. But instead of developing the Soviet legacy, we are feeding off it and giving it a superficial facelift – in the form of public space improvements and the construction of “modern residential complexes”.

The concept of sustainable development, which has been talked about at forums over the past ten years, does not work in Russia. I sincerely welcome the strategic development programs now being implemented in the Far East, in the Baikal Area, and in the Arctic. However, they must include other components that do not compromise the integrity of Russia’s territorial development.

At the same time, the world is changing, and the economic model that our developers have grown accustomed to – and which has indeed worked well, mind – will no longer function; something new will emerge. The logic of city development will change, and there will certainly be an element of state governance in all that happens. But in what form will this state governance take shape? I thought it was important to start discussing this today with specialists who have something to say.

Regretfully, the situation in Russia today is such that only a handful of specialists are able to talk about this. Our session today is indeed a “roadside picnic”. And my thought on the usefulness of our meetings is this: we are creating groundwork for the future, laying the prerequisites for the emergence of new urban planning ideas.

Kirill Gladky
Architect, partner and deputy general director of GA Architectural Bureau, advisor to RAACS, corresponding member of MAAM

Several years ago, it began to feel as though professional discussions of urban planning theories had dried up. As a professional community, we are fragmented: each person is in their own specialized niche, and we rarely step out of it. We do not discuss the problems and objectives of development projects; we do not look for a common denominator between project practice and theoretical research. Instead, master plans and marketing studies are nearly always offered by the developers. In their world, the algorithms of commercial success and parameters of economic efficiency are all that matters. And there is a sense that urban studies based on big data are beginning to replace fundamental theory.

There is a lot of talk about the future of cities. In my view, this is a form that so far has no real substance: scattered idealistic reflections, analytical marketing calculations, visual or PR provocations, works of publishing art, or business plans. However, what happens to these projects afterward – their life cycle, their eventual implementation, and what follows – is something that we do not entirely understand.

The scope has also changed: if in the 2000s and 2010s we talked about long-term strategies, now the scale of our work and concepts is shrinking. These days, these are projects for integrated public space improvements, infrastructure development, or identifying urban potential for placing certain functions – mostly residential – but not a holistic understanding of a new environment. Some of this is happening because of external shifts in governance, but not as a result of movement from within the territory itself – I mean the principle of participatory planning, which was brought into our lives by Strelka KB through the Moscow Urban Forums, as well as by the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism.

Atlases and the Life of Theories

Oleg Baevsky
Honored Architect of the Russian Federation, Professor, Academic Supervisor of the “Urban Planning” program at the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism, HSE University

Our country was fortunate to have giants. The environmental approach of Alexey Gutnov, Vyacheslav Glazychev, Alexander Vysokovsky, and Grigory Kaganov formed the entire theoretical framework for understanding the development of spatial structures.

Alexey Gutnov’s “frame-and-fabric” evolutionary model explained the mechanism of self-organization in spatial systems of any scale. There is a fundamental relationship between the accessibility of a territory and the intensity of its use – a simple concept worthy of being called “Gutnov’s constant”. This is what determines the evolutionary development of an urban planning system and what, in a remarkable way, formally links spatial structure to human behavior. As Gutnov discovered, the main trigger for the development of a city – for territorial growth, expansion, and the saturation of its framework – is a change in human behavior.

What Gutnov also did was identify two super-characteristics. The first one is “cohesiveness” – how a given territory interacts with other territories and defines its role within that structure. The second one is the question of how intensively the territory is used. By comparing these two characteristics, we can identify existing imbalances in the structure of a city and suggest ways to remedy them. This is evolutionary development – a policy of soft power. You do not demand that a territory become something it cannot be.

Alexander Vysokovsky’s uneven zoning model provided a more detailed version of Gutnov’s model. This “upgraded” model made it possible to identify specific nodes of systemic centers and elements within the framework. In parallel, models were being developed at the Genplan Institute of Moscow, such as Alexey Kaverin’s polycentric model. This was followed by work on the territorial/communication model. Unlike its predecessors, it was not an imitative model but an optimization one, because it was created to suggest solutions. We scaled this model up and applied it to the Kazan and Kama agglomerations, and it worked beautifully: the model allows forecasting the city’s development and optimizing its parameters.

There is another direction as well. Anastasia Potapenko, a young researcher from Vladivostok, proposed using a set of models – the uneven zoning model, the territorial/communication model, and a few foreign models, such as Space Matrix and Space Syntax. At the same time, undergraduate students at the Higher School of Economics are working on creating a territorial/communication model for any city using open data. Even the poorest municipality today can afford to have this optimization model to help guide its development.

To make it clear that behind these quantitative characteristics there is also a value system, I will give but one example. The territorial/communication model follows a very simple logic: the better a territory is connected to its population, the more attractive it is for locating workplaces and service facilities. And the better a territory is connected to workplaces and service facilities, the more effective it is – both economically and socially – for placing housing stock.

Following this logic, one can derive a differentiation of territories by comparing accessibility and cohesiveness characteristics across several policy types. The first policy type features high levels of both density and connectivity – an exemplary environment, essentially the framework. This is, of course, a preservation policy. The second type is when one indicator is high (good transport accessibility) but the other is low (poor density), or vice versa. This is a development policy: there are unused resources. The third type features low values for both indicators. This is a protection policy – the territory must be provided with a socially guaranteed minimum. And in the center cell of this simple matrix are the “middle” territories. They are fine as they are, balanced, and can become whatever they choose – a policy of non-interference.

These policies have a very clear ethical interpretation. Preservation policy – respect for elders. Development policy – demanding more from the strong. Protection policy – care for the weak. Non-interference policy – tolerance toward those who are different.

Alexey Muratov
Urbanist, publicist, partner at Strelka KB, former editor-in-chief of Project Russia magazine

The foundation on which today’s urban planning rests is the base of “new urbanism”: from the American school – Christopher Alexander, Andrés Duany – to the European – the Crie brothers, Aldo Rossi. And, of course, the Soviet/Russian branch – Gutnov and Glazychev. I do not see any serious theoreticians emerging who could challenge this line associated with the contextual approach and the idea that we must learn from the historic city: it is resilient in every sense of the word, allows the creation of a continuous evolutionary field, and enables gentle, careful development of the environment.

The city is a complex phenomenon, and there are many theories of the city. What Oleg Artemovich spoke about is more in the realm of formal theories based on mathematical models. But there are also critical and positivist theories whose applications extend to many different areas: urban society, urban economics, transport, territorial planning, and so on.

The connection between theory and practice is often nonlinear. Theories that evolve into mathematical models acquire their own toolkit and are applied by specialists who may not even know where these theories came from or who developed them. Those who now, using GIS tools, identify the key points of the urban framework and then model the density and types of land use may be unaware that this subject was theorized in Russia by Gutnov and his colleagues, and in the UK by Bill Hillier, who developed the concept of Space Syntax. This is simply unnecessary, because GIS tools now provide “factory-packed” answers quickly – and you don’t need any theory to get them.

Do you remember “Team Ten” – an association of late modernists that included Georges Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, and others who opposed the early modernists? They proclaimed: “Do as Le Corbusier writes, but not as he builds!” – thus highlighting the fundamental contradiction between everything related to manual labor and the reflective activity aimed at understanding abstract and general phenomena.

That’s why I believe that the social, market, and political context of design influences urban planning more than any theories.

And if we are talking about theories that influence professionals, then any project is a theory. When my colleagues from DOM.RF and Brusnika and I developed the standard for comprehensive territorial development, guided by the principles of “new urbanism”, what we ultimately created was essentially a theoretical work. However, the scope of its practical application turned out to be very limited because sustainable development directions are currently anything but a priority. The absolute priority was to build 100 million square meters of housing per year. Accordingly, our main task was to ensure the pace and volume of housing construction. This is, in principle, also a worthy goal, but it conflicted with ours, and that made life harder for us: in practice, we could not work with the developers. When we made master plans according to the standard we had developed, they would just go and say: “No, the density here is too low, there are too many streets and other public spaces. This option is a no-starter; we’ll go to someone else”.

As you can see, theory can be both a plus and a minus for an architect, planner, or urbanist, for that matter. Sometimes it significantly limits one’s freedom of choice. And now, I must admit, we are already moving away from this standard a bit – life forces us to be more flexible and adaptive.

Axiology of Brusnika

Vasily Bolshakov
Head of the Master Plan Department at the development company Brusnika, graduate of the Архитекторы.рф program.

Brusnika steadfastly implements in its projects the solutions set out in the comprehensive development standards: we both participated in the creation of these standards and are constantly improving them in practice. For us, this is an unquestionable value that we bring to life in the urban environment. At the same time, we are open to experimentation. In this sense, Brusnika is a kind of urban planning laboratory on a national scale: we are already present in thirteen regions.

Within Brusnika, there is a values document called the “Product Policy”, which company architects are expected to follow. Five points in it are dedicated to urban planning issues.

The key point for us is spatial integrity. When a developer takes on a particular site, they often think only within the boundaries of that site, and not an inch beyond it. In the rush to develop their own piece of land, they overlook the context and forget about integrating the development into its surroundings, and creating a coherent environment. Brusnika takes a broader view and never focuses solely on its own plot. We think out of the box. Literally.

Second is segregation and division. We try to avoid putting up fences or other barriers between land holdings whenever possible. We see our task as stimulating integration processes within the area being developed. For this, we also use topology. People should be able to move freely across the territory, meet, and communicate with each other.

Third is seamlessness – creating a barrier-free environment.

Fourth is infrastructure. It is important to create it in advance. Today, we prioritize building infrastructure facilities, not only essentials like kindergartens and schools but also those that provide recreation and jobs. All this is so that the new block or district can develop a life of its own.

Finally, fifth is density – not at any cost! We always look for a balance between density and the aesthetic qualities of the development. Density is not a qualitative characteristic; it is an economic indicator.

Agglomerations of the Republic of Tatarstan

Oleg Grigoryev
Architect and urban planner, Director of the State Budgetary Institution “Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan”

Several years ago, I began organizing the Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan. It is responsible for the master plans of all the region’s agglomerations – Kazan, Kama, and Almetyevsk.

It was obvious that without relying on a solid theory, achieving the desired balanced development of a sustainable territory would be impossible. That is why we assembled a strong team: theorists Oleg Baevsky and Alexey Kaverin, plus a group of mathematicians and programmers. As a team, we managed to bring to a software product the theory that goes back to Gutnov, was developed by Oleg Baevsky, and had long been practiced at the Moscow General Planning Institute. Now we are applying it in Tatarstan.

In the end, we obtained three models: the territorial/communication model, the multi-criteria model, and the polycenter. The territorial/communication model provides a general assessment and development policy for districts. The multi-criteria model evaluates territories based on the development of residential and non-residential functions. The polycenter provides specific recommendations for the volume of residential and non-residential construction in each calculated district. All of this works in conjunction with the transport model, but that is a separate theoretical field.

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Terrotorial/communication model. Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Multi-criterion model. Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Polycenter. Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

The polycenter works closely with the transport model and addresses a simple question: how to optimize the placement of jobs and housing across large territories? This is a non-trivial task: one can spend a long time calculating and optimizing the transport network in the transport model, but it is also necessary to approach it from the other side. How can we optimally distribute the population across the territory so that the transport system functions well and sustainable development occurs?

The polycenter is based on the standard evaluation of four indicators: connection to the population, accessibility of the population, connection to workplaces, and accessibility of workplaces. Over four iterations – as we transfer data from the transport model to the balance model – we achieve a certain optimization model. As a result, we get a set of specific recommendations for each calculated district of the studied territory: how many people can be accommodated here, how many jobs, and therefore how many enterprises.

And all of this has a direct, I would say “linear” impact on concrete figures for each planning unit. Each such unit – a small patch on the map – receives clear recommendations: for example, here, in this specific location, this many square meters can be built and no more; here, this many enterprises must be placed, which will generate this many jobs. This is the absolute, straightforward application of theory. But it only works in the context of a growing population; with a declining one, it makes no sense.

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Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan
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Application of balance modeling in spatial planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

Copyright: Image © Oleg Grigoriev / State Institution Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan

The model is embedded in the master plans of the agglomerations: figures are transferred into the parameters of functional zones within general plans and into land use and development regulations. From there they trickle down to the level of project planning, and so on, step by step – all the way to the so-called Urban Development Plan for a Land Plot). Parameters for each territory are approved at the republican level. To change them, one must apply to the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic – only it can amend the document.

Since the master plan does not yet exist in the legal framework, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to call it the “Comprehensive Scheme of Social and Economic and Spatial Development of the Kazan Agglomeration”. This is an applied document: not theory, but absolutely concrete requirements for the development of each site, all aimed at achieving balanced growth. Thanks to the “Comprehensive Scheme of Agglomeration Development”, we managed to reduce by more than half the volume of construction that had been planned on the periphery and was creating imbalances.

It is not enough to say that we adhere to a certain ethic – you need to translate it into concrete figures, have it approved by the leadership, and then enforce it strictly. In Tatarstan, a separate law on urban development monitoring was drafted. It allows the institute to request data and monitor the situation. Each year, a report is delivered to the leadership’s desk showing where we are headed and how urban planning policy is being observed.

We had to centralize the entire urban planning function at the regional level. In order to do that, we carried out an expert review of absolutely all planning documentation produced in the republic. Yes, it is a large and serious task indeed, but it has to be done.

The Cytoplasm of Undivided Land

Andrey Gnezdilov
Architect, co-founder and first deputy director of Ostozhenka Architects

The work begun by the Institute for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Tatarstan is needed across our entire country.

However, many people, including both practicing urban planners and think tanks, have overlooked one crucial detail: under capitalism, there is private land ownership, period. And in what we are used to working with and calling our urban planning theory, there was no private land ownership at all – simply because it was initially based on the Soviet economic model. A huge amount of work lies ahead in this cosmos of floating state property, in this whole cytoplasm of unpartitioned Russian land with fragments of someone else’s plots scattered within it.

When Kirill Gladky and I were developing the “Street Design Code” for Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, we encountered the fact that the red lines were somehow drawn along the edges of the roadway. The same thing happened in Novosibirsk: there are red lines 10 meters wide. And beyond those red lines lies terra incognita: literally nobody’s land, completely ownerless. We labeled it “Territory with undefined functional designation and ownership”.

Moreover, the streetbeds themselves, the roadway, still turned out to be in the private ownership of some local “Avtodor” company. That is the miracle of the mismatch between our theories and the reality of the land!

In Moscow, it would seem that the entire territory should be covered by Territory Planning Projects). However, we found out that this is just not the case! Fortunately, now the Integrated Territory Development mechanism has appeared. If the plots continue to be surrounded by this strange unpartitioned land, we will never bring them to order.

We at Ostozhenka began our work in the city with the historic district of the same name. And in that historic district, before the revolution, everything was clear: parceling, house ownership, boundaries, and so on. Now we manage to reproduce this only in unique ways on unique territories, like those designated for renovation, for example. Because no Soviet microdistrict can be overlaid with a proper subdivision grid. And we are simply doomed, most likely, to continue living in this “collective farm”, because a collective farm field is very difficult to divide into private plots.

There is a catastrophic lack of street density – as we know, street density even in Moscow is about 2.6 kilometers per square kilometer. This is directly related to land subdivision, because each boundary must lead to a street. In any organism there is a skeleton, a framework, and there is tissue. And if there is no living cell in the tissue, then it too will be lifeless.

Why am I so obsessed with this subject? Because I see that not a single one of our current urban planning theories addresses it! How are we supposed to remake Soviet cities? How do we adapt them to capitalist reality? We don’t! There is no way to do that! But we must admit that our country with such a living tissue is unique in the world. Well, maybe North Korea as well. But nowhere else in the world is there such a miracle, where there exists land with no clear ownership.

14 August 2025

Written by:
Alyona Kuznetsova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

Headlines now

Overview

A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists

Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.

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Perspective View

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Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech

The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.

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Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!

After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.

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The City as a Narrative

Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.

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A Laconic Image of Time

The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.

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The Flower of the Lake

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Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue

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An Interior for a New Format of Education

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New Aeroflot Office: Lightness, Play, Comfort

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Penthouses and Kokoshniks

A new residential complex designed by ASADOV Architects for the Krasnaya Roza business district responds to its proximity to 17th-century landmarks – the chambers of the Hamovny Dvor and St. Nicholas Church – as well as to the need to preserve valuable façades of a historic rental house built in the Russian Revival style. The architects proposed a set of buildings of varying heights, whose façades reference ecclesiastical architecture. But we were also able to detect other associations.

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Centipede Town

The new school campus designed by ATRIUM Architects, located on the shores of a protected lake in the Imeretian Lowland Ornithological Reserve, represents an important and ambitious undertaking for the team: this is not just a school, but a Presidential Lyceum for the comprehensive development of gifted children – 2,500 students from age 3 through high school. At the same time, it is also envisioned as a new civic hub for the entire Sirius territory. In this article, we unpack the structure and architecture of this “lyceum town”.

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Warm Black and White

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Skylights and Staircase

Photos from March show the nearly completed headquarters of FSK Group on Shenogina Street. The building’s exterior is calm and minimalist; the interior is engaging and multi-layered. The conical skylights of the executive office, cast in raw concrete, and the sweeping spiral staircase leading to it, are particularly striking. In fact, there’s more than one spiral staircase here, and the first two floors effectively form a small shopping center. More below.

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The Whale of Future Identity

Or is it a veil? Or a snow-covered plain? Vera Butko, Anton Nadtochy, and the architects of ATRIUM faced a complex and momentous task: to propose a design for the “Russia” National Center. It had to be contemporary, yet firmly rooted in cultural codes. Unique, and yet subtly reminiscent of many things at once. It must be said – the task found the right authors. Let’s explore in detail the image they envisioned.

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Greater Altai: A Systemic Development Plan

The master plan for tourism development in Greater Altai encompasses three regions: Kuzbass, the Altai Republic, and Altai Krai. It is one of twelve projects developed as part of the large-scale state program bearing the simple name of “Tourism Development”. The project’s slogan reads: “Greater Altai – a place of strength, health, and spirit in the very heart of Siberia”. What are the proposed growth points, and how will the plan help increase the flow of both domestic and international tourists? Read on to find out.

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The Colorful City

While working on a large-scale project in Moscow’s Kuntsevo district – one that has yet to be given a name – Kleinewelt Architekten proposed not only a diverse array of tower silhouettes in “Empire-style” hues and a thoughtful mix of building heights, creating a six-story “neo-urbanist” city with a block-based layout at ground level, but also rooted their design in historical and contextual reasoning. The project includes the reconstruction of several Stalin-era residential buildings that remain from the postwar town of Kuntsevo, as well as the reconstruction of a 1953 railway station that was demolished in 2017.

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In Orbit of Moscow City

The Orbital business center is both simple and complex. Simple in its minimalist form and optimal office layout solution: a central core, a light-filled façade, plenty of glass; and from the unusual side – a technical floor cleverly placed at the building’s side ends. Complex – well, if only because it resembles a celestial body hovering on metallic legs near Magistralnaya Street. Why this specific shape, what it consists of, and what makes this “boutique” office building (purchased immediately after its completion) so unique – all of this and more is covered in our story.

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The Altai Ornament

The architectural company Empate has developed the concept for an eco-settlement located on a remote site in Altai. The master plan, which resembles a traditional ornament or even a utopian city, forms a clear system of public and private spaces. The architects also designed six types of houses for the settlement, drawing inspiration from the region’s culture, folklore, and vernacular building practices.

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Pro Forma

Photos have emerged of the newly completed whisky distillery in Chernyakhovsk, designed by TOTEMENT / PAPER – a continuation of their earlier work on the nearby Cognac Museum. From what is, in essence, a merely technical and utilitarian volume and space, the architects have created a fully-fledged theatre of impressions. Let’s take a closer look. We highly recommend a visit to what may look like a factory, but is in fact an experiment in theatricalizing the process of strong spirit production – and not only that, but also of “pure art”, capable of evolving anywhere.

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The Arch and the Triangle

The new Stone Mnevniki business center by Kleinewelt Architekten – designed for the same client as their projects in Khodynka – bears certain similarities to those earlier developments, but not entirely. In Mnevniki, there are more angular elements, and the architects themselves describe the project as being built on contrast. Indeed, while the first phase contains subtle references to classical architecture – light touches like arches, both upright and inverted, evoking the spirit of the 1980s – the second phase draws more distantly on the modernism of the 1970s. What unites them is a boldly expressive public space design, a kaleidoscope of rays and triangles.

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Health Factory

While working on a wellness and tourist complex on the banks of the Yenisei River, the architects at Vissarionov Studio set out to create healing spaces that would amplify the benefits of nature and medical treatments for both body and soul. The spatial solutions are designed to encourage interaction between the guests and the landscape, as well as each other.

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The Blooming Mechanics of a Glass Forest

The Savvinskaya 27 apartment complex built by Level Group, currently nearing completion on an elongated riverfront site next to the Novodevichy Convent, boasts a form that’s daring even by modern Moscow standards. Visually, it resembles the collaborative creation of a glassblower and a sculptor: a kind of glass-and-concrete jungle, rhythmically structured yet growing energetically and vividly. Bringing such an idea to life was by no means an easy task. In this article, we discuss the concept by ODA and the methods used by APEX architects to implement it, along with a look at the building’s main units and detailing.

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Grace and Unity

Villa “Grace”, designed by Roman Leonidov’s studio and built in the Moscow suburbs, strikes a balance between elegant minimalism and the expansive gestures of the Russian soul. The main house is conceived as a sequence of four self-contained volumes – each could exist independently, yet it chooses to be part of a whole. Unity is achieved through color and a system of shared spaces, while the rich plasticity of the forms – refined throughout the construction process – compensates for the near-total absence of decorative elements.

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Daring Brilliance

In this article, we are exploring “New Vision”, the first school built in the past 25 years in Moscow’s Khamovniki. The building has three main features: it is designed in accordance with the universal principles of modern education, fostering learning through interaction and more; second, the façades combine structural molded glass and metallic glazed ceramics – expensive and technologically advanced materials. Third, this is the school of Garden Quarters, the latest addition to Moscow’s iconic Khamovniki district. Both a costly and, in its way, audacious acquisition, it carries a youthful boldness in its statement. Let’s explore how the school is designed and where the contrasts lie.

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A Twist of the Core

A clever and concise sculptural solution – rotating each floor by N degrees – has created an ensemble of “dancing” towers: similar yet different, simple yet complex. The designers meticulously refined a single structural node and spent considerable effort on the column construction – after that, “everything else was easy”. The architects also rotated the core walls on each floor to maximize the efficiency of the office spaces.

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The Sculpting of Spring Forest Matter

We’ve been observing this building for a couple of years now: seemingly simple, perhaps even unassuming, it fits in remarkably well with the micro-district context shaped by the Moscow MCD road junctions. This building sticks in the memory of everyone who drives along the highway, even occasionally. In our opinion, Sergey Nikeshkin, by blending popular architectural techniques and approaches of the 2010s, managed to turn a seemingly simple structure into a statement “on the theme of a house as such”. Let’s figure out how this happened.

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Water and Wind Whet the Stone

The Arisha Terraces residential complex, designed by Asadov Architects, will be built in a district of Dubai dedicated to film and television production. To create shaded spaces and an intriguing silhouette, the architects opted for a funnel-shaped composition and nature-inspired forms of erosion and weathering. The roofs, podium, and underground spaces extend leisure opportunities within the boundaries of a man-made “oasis”.

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Elevation 5642

The Genplan Institute of Moscow has developed a comprehensive development project for three ski resorts in the Caucasus, which have been designated as special economic zones of the tourism and recreation type. The first of these zones is Elbrus. The project includes the construction of new ski runs, cable cars, and hotels, as well as the modernization of stations and improvements to the Azau tourist meadow. To expand the audience and enhance year-round appeal, a network of eco-trails is also being developed. In this article, we provide a detailed breakdown of each stage.

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The IT Town

Taking the example of the first completed phase of the “U” district, we examine how the new neighborhood in Innopolis will be organized. T+T Architects and HADAA formed a well-balanced and ingenious master plan with different types of housing, a green artery, a system of squares, and a park in the town’s central part.