​Gothic Panorama

Object

​Full-Cycle Art

A school requires order, regulations, and discipline, while creativity calls for freedom, experimentation, and improvisation. In the building of the Siberian Higher School of Musical and Theatrical Arts in Kemerovo, MV-PROEKT made an attempt to reconcile these contradictions: to contain a complex and ever-changing creative life within a strict, rationally organized architectural form.

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The Romance of a Saint Petersburg Courtyard

Studio 44’s approach to the redevelopment of the Liviz winery site appears to be an important precedent for Saint Petersburg: the architects are adapting not only designated heritage buildings but also other more-than-a-century old structures, revealing their distinctive character and giving them new public or residential uses. New architecture is interwoven with the old, creating a range of clearly defined or deliberately complex urban spaces. Blocks of different typologies are complemented by a pedestrian promenade that makes the environment much more permeable and lively. And all of this is framed by a sense of romance and nostalgia for the historic city.

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The Voice of the Amur

MV-PROJECT has won a competition for the façades of the Khabarovsk Regional Academic Musical Theater. The architects took a bold approach, proposing a striking wave-like envelope inspired by the waters of the Amur, along with landscaped rooftop terraces. The concept won an absolute majority of the public vote. We take a closer look at the proposal, its feasibility, and its rich imagery, which invites associations with the work of Ivan Aivazovsky and Katsushika Hokusai.

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A Theater for Figure Skaters, or Cherchez La Femme

Ice arenas are typologically close to industrial buildings: enormous windowless halls with minimal architectural embellishment. In designing Navka Arena, Yuliy Borisov and the UNK architects did not try to fight the utilitarian nature of the structure. Instead, they concentrated all of its expressive elements in one place – the central façade. A parabolic canopy, a monumental sculpture of a figure skater, and her shadow rendered in perforated metal transform an ordinary sports “box” into an architectural statement about ice, movement, and theater.

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The Soft Forms of a New Enlightenment

The school that will rise amid the new high-rise neighborhoods of Set and Veer can fairly be called a landmark of the future district. The educational environment was designed by IMAGO, a firm specializing in learning spaces, while the façade concept was selected through a competition. The winner, GAFA, proposed a regular grid of three-dimensional modules that creates an intriguing effect of “soft” architecture. The imagery of this solution appeals to children of different ages and suits the stature of the educational complex, which will be handed over to the highly rated School No. 1329 upon completion.

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Projection of a Spiral, Projection of a Wave

Architects from Mezonsproekt have designed a high-rise residential complex of four towers near the intersection of Novaya Riga Highway and the Moskva River. Its landmark status is motivated both by the proximity of Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye and its SberCity development, and by the theme of two intersecting flows: water and traffic. The architects have organized the façade pattern around the supergraphic image of a pixelated spiral, intended to animate – and perhaps even transform – the perception of the buildings’ prismatic volumes.

​The Ever-Changing Mist

T+T Architects has developed a concept for a premium business center featuring “living” façades that change their configuration depending on weather conditions, time of day, and the occupants’ needs, transforming the building into an urban-scale installation. The idea of endless variability continues inside, with interiors designed to accommodate different scenarios of use. Some of the engineering solutions proposed for the project are being introduced to the Russian commercial real estate market for the first time.

Review

​A Small Book of Farewell

The book dedicated to Valery Kanyashin, published by his colleagues at Ostozhenka Architects, is remarkably small. It fits comfortably in the palm of your hand, more like sketchbook than an actual architectural monograph. Combined with its tiny print run, the result is an intentionally unglamorous, decidedly non-representational publication – one that is made “for friends”. Yet the way it weaves together projects, texts, photographs, and drawings is remarkably subtle. Perhaps this is precisely how one comes to understand a person, at least a little, by tracing the course of their creative life.

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Win-Win

For Perm, the opening of the new home for its Art Gallery – guardian of the famous collection of Perm wooden sculpture – marks the end of a 35-year search for a building worthy of a collection that had long outgrown the city cathedral that had served as its only home. Sergey Tchoban considers the project one of the most important of his career in Russia and emphasizes that it deliberately avoids “iconic” architecture in favor of contextual appropriateness. We traveled to Perm to explore both the building and its extensive new exhibition, and found that, much like Tchoban’s other museum projects, it is conceived in a distinctly contemporary way: the old and the new do not merely coexist but reinforce one another through contrast, sharpening the visitor’s perception of the museum.

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A Score for 12th Line

“Amo”, a residential complex designed by Stepan Liphart on Vasilyevsky Island, brings together three architectural ideas: the cour d’honneur, a piazzetta-like courtyard, and imagery borrowed from Renaissance architecture. Together, these elements make a contemporary apartment complex feel more humane, extending the theme of individuality in residential design. The effect is achieved through a carefully calibrated vocabulary of moderately standardized components: recessed façade panels enriched with sgraffito ornament, a disciplined hierarchy of cornices and moldings, and a series of bespoke decorative details. The development combines residential and hotel sections that frame the restored wooden mansion of the Brömme brothers.

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Riverfront Façade

The Premium residential complex, designed by KPLN, has been built in the town of Pushkino, just outside Moscow, on the banks of the Serebryanka River. Its two towers reinforce the scale of the high-rise development that emerged here in the 2000s, while introducing a bolder architectural form that reads more effectively from a distance, along with a system of contrasts and design strategies responding to the site’s waterfront setting. One of the project’s distinctive features is a series of metal discs that conceal air-conditioning units while serving as an additional decorative layer.

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A Construction Set for Adult Life

In the project by Atrium, the new building for Moscow’s School No. 2107, designed to accommodate 1,100 students, is above all a carefully organized system of learning and recreational spaces. On the one hand, it is complex and highly articulated; on the other, it remains intuitive, safe, and conducive to personal growth. In a sense, it serves as a model of life in the city – a place where one must communicate, make decisions, plan ahead, and find a balance between work and leisure. All of these scenarios are reflected, to varying degrees, in the building’s architecture.

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Axis of Rotation

One of the installations in the Masters exhibition at Arch Moscow featured a futuristic yet entirely feasible project by Vladimir Plotkin and TPO Reserve – a tower that could be assembled from prefabricated factory-made modules. The concept even incorporates the possibility of slow rotation (!). Using the same module, one could create a residential block, a giant cantilevered “arrow”, or virtually any other configuration you could possibly think of. Let us take a closer look at the module itself.

A New Magazine and a New Ranking

The magazine Expert.Urban has only just appeared, apparently timed to coincide with Arch Moscow. It is published with the support of VEB.RF and Strelka KB. We have not yet had time to read it cover to cover, but the impression so far is that it consists of about eighty percent interviews. It also features a distinctly “Strelka-style” initiative: a ranking of the “Best Architect of Moscow in the 21st Century”. So, who came out on top? Sergey Skuratov. Yuri Grigoryan took second place, and Sergei Tchoban came third.

Interview

Oleg Shapiro: “We design life as a whole, in all of its diversity”

Wowhaus has long since outgrown its association with “urban improvement” projects alone. One of its newer directions is neo-industrialization. Another is large-scale master planning. Yet work on Gorky Park is once again underway – only now on a more systematic and far-reaching level. In this interview, we simultaneously revisit Rem Koolhaas, Strelka, and the history of attention to the “urban environment”, while also exploring what exactly Wowhaus is working on today and how the company operates – with its nine divisions and approximately 160 employees.

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Red Card for Copyright

The development concept for the territory of Shinnik Stadium in Yaroslavl, prepared by PI ARENA, took second place in an open call competition. The architects proposed a unified structure combining a football arena, a hotel, and the headquarters of PSB Bank, with carefully considered usage scenarios. However, the competition was organized in such a way that the team ultimately chose to forgo the prize money in order to retain their copyright.

News

CinemaHologram

Not long ago, the Moscow authorities approved the project for a new House of Cinema complex by Kleinewelt Architekten. The original 1968 building could not be preserved – yet the architects managed to save its stained-glass panels, metal reliefs, and even the volumetric parameters of the structure, which will continue to house the Union of Cinematographers and cinema halls. The project’s main focal point, however, will be a residential tower. We examine its sculptural qualities and its allusions within the Moscow context.

Contest Results

Form as Method: TPO Reserve

At the core of the concept developed by Vladimir Plotkin and TPO Reserve lies an unconventional morphology that addresses functional challenges beyond purely formal concerns. Above all, however, it serves expressiveness and creates a rare kind of spatial and emotional experience, as becomes evident when examining the project’s key solutions. We studied it in detail, and it was all worth it. Our interpretation is that what drives this project is neither style nor even metaphor, but rather a method.

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Mound of Memory

The competition proposal for a memorial complex on the Pulkovo Heights by Studio 44 will not be realized, yet it deserves attention as an intriguing example of how architecture can symbolize traumatic events and thereby contribute to their processing and integration into human experience. The architects also succeed in combining memorial and recreational functions without slipping either into excessive dramatization or oversimplification. The project develops ideas explored in two earlier competition entries that likewise remained unbuilt – the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad and the Tuchkov Buyan park. It also recalls the mound-like hill that Alexander Nikolsky embodied in the form of the now-lost stadium on Krestovsky Island.

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Home Base

Working on the new building for Letovo Junior School – opened to students in autumn 2025 in the MSU Valley – the architects of UNK, following the client’s vision, subordinated both façades and interiors to the theme of “home”. Multiple variations of pitched roofs, a city skyline traced across glass balustrades, wooden textures, and a whole series of micro-spaces for retreat within public areas are all at the disposal of primary and middle school students. We take a closer look at the new school building – and at how it interprets current trends in educational environments.

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Doubles Match

The architecture of the Tennis Palace built in Luzhniki Olympic Complex, designed by Arena Design Institute, was shaped by three factors: the proximity of the brutalist Druzhba Arena, the closeness of the Moskva River and the metro bridge overpass, as well as the specifics of the function – tennis courts require large spans, abundant light, yet at the same time protection from direct sunlight. The architects divided the building into several blocks, playing on contrast, which is further emphasized by the façades developed in collaboration with TPO Reserve and Vladimir Plotkin.

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Microdynamics of Macroprocesses

Given the proximity of the multifunctional complex SOLOS to Sokolniki Park and to a major transport hub, Kleinewelt Architekten embedded in the design of the two high-rise towers a sense of dynamism more characteristic of natural phenomena than of man-made objects. Without the authors’ diagrams, this logic is not easy to decipher, although the eye immediately detects a pattern and tries to grasp it. It seems to us that one tower contains the impulse of a bud about to open, while the other evokes the movement of a lithospheric plate. Let us try to unravel it together.

Report

The Space of Post-Cubism

Sergei Tchoban and Alexandra Sheiner, of Studio CHART, created for the exhibition of “post-cubist” sculpture by Beatrice Sandomirskaya – a talented and even “mainstream” artist, yet almost unknown even to art historians – a space akin to her sculptural language: solidly built, confidently stereometric, and subtly expressive. It curves, emphasizing the mass of the sculpture, envelops the viewer, and guides them from one perspective to another, from a generic “shrine” to a “Madonna”.

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The Value of Open Space

For the site near the Barrikadnaya Metro Station, Sergey Skuratov developed five projects between 2020 and 2025. Two of them were ones that won the client’s invitation-only competitions. The fifth was recently selected by the Mayor of Moscow for implementation. The project is vivid and sculptural, expressive, eye-catching, and engaging – very much in line with the spirit of our time. And yet, this project is mid-rise rather than tall. In its northwestern part, near the metro and Druzhinnikovskaya Street, it shapes a comfortable urban environment. On the opposite side, it opens up, allowing sunlight into the courtyard and creating a spatial pause within the dense city fabric. How it is organized, what geometric principles underlie it, and why it takes this form – all this is explored in our article.

Coming From the Cold

The ArchBukhta Festival remains one of the few events in Russia where participants go through the entire process of creating an architectural object – from concept to construction. And they do so on the shores of Lake Baikal, in dedication to it. This year, GAFA took part and shared its experience: a local legend, a team-specific design code, friendship, as well as ice skating and endurance in freezing temperatures all contributed to gaining something more than just an award.

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​Gothic Panorama

The Panorama residential complex is known for the fact that there is no panorama in it, nor is there a panorama of it – instead, there is a “viewing slit” that opens up a glimpse of the Neo-Gothic Polish church. And the opening itself is Gothic, S-shaped. It was also this building that started the fashion for colored pixelated facades and colored glass in Moscow; yet it has remained the best example so far. Anatoly Belov on irony in the Panorama residential complex. In memory of Valery Knyashin.

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Symphony of Water and Brick

The Alter residential complex, designed by Stepan Liphart and built on a bend of the Okhta River, is an example of a “drawn house”: the number of original architectural details is virtually immeasurable. As a result, ribs, projections, and recesses create a picturesque silhouette even without a significant variation in height. Both composition and material respond to the proximity of the river and to the red-brick factory building dating back to the early 20th century. The project was also significantly shaped by recommendations from the city’s chief architect. More details in our article.

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The Penguin House

The building with a curved façade on Brestskaya Street is one of the manifestos of Russian neomodernism of the early 2000s, a sculpture – this is how Anatoly Belov interprets it, speaking of “breaking from the modernist canon and the contextual approach”. We do not fully agree with the author, but his perspective is an interesting one.

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Wave and Vertical

The premium residential complex designed by GAFA for a site in the Khoroshevsky District responds to multiple constraints – the arc of a planned roadway, the water protection zone of the Khodynka River, and insolation requirements – through inventive massing. The composition is built on the interplay of two spatial layers: an elongated perimeter block and three towers concealed behind it generate the silhouette and key viewpoints, while also adding semantic depth reinforced by the façade solutions. Another defining feature is a large private courtyard, complemented by a citywide linear park.

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Office on Trubnaya

We continue publishing projects by Valery Kanyashin. A building once described, a quarter century ago, as an example of “quiet modernism” has remained just that in some people’s memory. According to Anatoly Belov, its main quality is its unobtrusiveness. The architects from Ostozhenka say the leading role here is played by context and landscape – the change in elevation. Yet is it really so inconspicuous?