Saturating the Landscape

In Vissarionov’s project, the Federal Sports Centre looks either as if it has landed from outer space and grew into the soil or as if it has hatched from the ground. One thing is clear, though: the authors’ wish to inosculate three cities: a small-scale district, a big, slightly abrupt industrial one – and the city of the future, in this case a sports city.

Written by:
Anna Gorodinskaya, Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

15 April 2015

Object

Architect:

Firm:

Architectural bureau of Yuri Vissarionov http://www.pamvissarionov.ru

The town of Kashira near Moscow today is known more as a summer resort by the Oka river, not because of the several factories situated here, one of which is actually a brewery, and not even because of Kashira power plant built under the personal direction of Lenin back in the day. One must say that a name “urban locality” assigned to many areas today suits Kashira much better than actually “a town”: a town as such, in the typical urban view, is not that easy to find here. Kashira is a historically torn, a “crossing” town: after the Time of Trouble it was moved to the right bank of the Oka from the demolished left one, where the ancient settlement is still preserved in Staraya Kashira (rus. “old Kashira”). The town had existed on the right bank as a suburban district with wide streets and low-rise houses until it was decided to start developing it as an industrial center, and several rail tracks were laid towards the Oka – which is very convenient allowing to use two types of transport at the same time – and a small town “Kashira-2” was founded two miles to the east of Kashira beyond the field and the railroad, with the factories and the power plant. Later, a microdistrict of “Kashira-3” was built in the eastern outskirts of the old (well, relatively old) Kashira. Today the network users tag it as the “natural ghetto”: five- and ten-story blocks of flats, “nowhere to go”, but, according to the Soviet norms, there are schools and kindergartens. Nearby, just at the border with the field and by the roadway leading from highway “Don” towards Kolomna, in late 80s the building of City Hall was built from the rose brick – associated with the regional committee but for an individual project. Even though the administration building turned out to be technically in the center, in seemed to be on the very outskirts of old Kashira, pitched to a hardly developed microdistrict. And in the middle – or to say, between the suburban district and the industrial town – nothing, a breach, that the city-machine started to fill with “Kashira-3” in the 70s, but stopped short, unable to pull it through.

zooming — Sports and education complex "Academy of Team Sports" © Vissarionov Studio

Here, on the field east of the town hall offices, plans call for a “Competitive Sport Academy”, which on a scale of Kashira – a place with a population of about forty thousand people – is a very big project, practically of a federal level, with a total area of all the planned rooms – 900 000 square feet – which means an average size for Moscow, but a lot for Kashira. The project is very multifunctional: apart from the two halls for sporting events – a big one and a small one – one training complex, a swimming pool and the rest sport infrastructure, the authors are also planning a boarding school, housing for the teachers and an inter-university center (there are several branches of Moscow universities in Kashira), and also three shopping malls, that will take after the shop situated now at the roadside by the City Hall. The civil servants are talking about the importance of the new “Academy” for the development of the town and for “enhancing the region’s investment attractiveness”. The project has been approved by the City Council of Moscow Region; the architectural design of the Academy was developed by the Architectural Bureau of Yuri Vissarionov, that demonstrated it among its new projects at Zodchestvo festival, on a stand a la 20s (by the way, the stand of the Bureau was awarded the “Golden diploma” of the festival).

Now, as mentioned above, the site of the future “Academy” represents an open country with a small grove at the background, where the housing for the teachers is planned. According to the city development plan, however, the Academy is to be “cut” by a road, that will extend Centrolit street leading through the fields from Kashira to the foundry, situated a bit to the south – then it will be possible to get to the foundry straight from the city. On the one hand, the new road is an advantage for the “Academy”, since it will provide a convenient approach to the sporting complex itself, as well as to its public and administrative center. But on the other hand, it is a disadvantage, because the transport artery will inevitably divide the ensemble in two. That is why the architects suggested “covering” the transport watershed with a green avenue-bridge. The wide boulevard serves as the public center and the green core of the complex. Taking this way, for example, you can walk from the old micro district “Kashira-3” up to the central part of the “Academy”. Actually, the main sporting center looks like an oval donut, or reminds a space ship from a fantastic novel that has landed onto the grass, a bit on the cross, and as a result has grown into the soil. It is, however, tightly pressed to the ground by five flat triangles that admit a fitness-center, a training complex and the extension of the main sporting complex. It results into something reminding a giant octopus (or so to say a “pentapus”) or even a button that, if you look from above, looks as if it aims to connect the parts of Kashira, scattered about the landscape. A sort of a space paperclip…

The roofs of the triangle volumes – the assumed “arms” of our clip – have been turned into hill-boulevards that will be good for skiing in winter. One may doubt the likeness to a space ship: what if, on the contrary, the “donut” has grown out of the ground? And here you can imagine some sort of a secret underground “Kashira-4” – isn’t it odd, that parts of the city had been set so far from one another; there must be a reason – so here you have a secret underground “donut”, some kind of collider, and the tectonic shifts have made it come up onto the surface – an accident, like on some submarine – and it came out, and the massive underpinning, that had kept it down, followed it up – well, and became convenient hills for skiers and children with sleds. There is a similar image of “rising ground” in Dmitry Bykov’s novel “ZhD”. Of course, it is all science fiction, much like space fiction, but the image has turned out to be quite precise.

The green hills on the roofs together with the promenade avenue over the road create a landscape complex, that belongs to the relief and is even park-like to some extent, even though there are not so many trees – mostly there is grass and especially many parking lots: there is no underground parking and the pavement for the cars takes up about 12% of the territory. Splicing the buildings with the landscape, likening them to results of tectonic shifts and cut hills is a popular method in modern architecture, among eco-friendly methods showing regard for the environment. Besides, thanks to the avenues-anchors the sporting complex, that is evidently quite too big for this town and his area, has found its right scale to the nearest and further surroundings – has fit into the urban and natural environment.

The problem of matching with its scale is solved very delicately here. The “Academy’s” position between the corresponding residential development and the picturesque landscape of the nearest suburb defines the reasonable allocation of the administrative, residential, commercial, educational and sporting and other functions around the whole territory of the center. At that, the architects had to find the right proportion solutions, they had to melt, dissolve such an impressive object, “saturate” it with the city. And they managed it: the exaggerated rhythm of large volumes of the middle part of the complex is turning into a spreading of small, prisms with square roofs towards the periphery and forming the exact mapping of the complex. The administrative offices, a hotel and shopping centers are grouped in the western part of the territory, near to the micro district “Kashira-3”. On the East, by the forest, there are family dorms for the coaches and tutors, a rehabilitation facility and a kindergarten. And there, far out, the so-called “back-up” territories are in the future planned for low-rise accommodation: apartments, “bed and breakfast” hotels and care homes. Their sizes diminish towards the borders of the territory reaching a size of a cottage and smoothly growing into the image of Kashira district, trying to overcome the fragmentary nature of the semi-urban texture of this place, to splice it as much as possible in such cases.

Architect:

Firm:

Architectural bureau of Yuri Vissarionov http://www.pamvissarionov.ru

15 April 2015

Headlines now

News

Resort on the Kama River

Wowhaus has developed a project for the reconstruction of Korabelnaya Roshcha (“Mast Grove”), a wellness resort located on the banks of the Kama River.

Object

Nests in Primorye

The eco-park project “Nests”, designed by Aleksey Polishchuk and the company Power Technologies, received first prize at the Eco-Coast 2025 festival, organized by the Union of Architects of Russia. For a glamping site in Filinskaya Bay, the authors proposed bird-shaped houses, treehouses, and a nest-shaped observation platform, topping it all with an entrance pavilion executed in the shape of an owl.

Object

The Angle of String Tension

The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.

Object

How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future

Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.

Object

St. Petersburg vs Rome

The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.

Object

On the Wave

The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.

Interview

Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”

The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.

Object

The Keystone

Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.

send.project

Perpetuum Mobile

The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.

Object

Water and Light

Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.

Object

Champions’ Cup

At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.

send.project

Semi-Digital Environment

In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.

Object

History never ends

The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.

Object

A Deep, Crystal Shine

A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.

Interview

Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”

Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.

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.

Object

Perspective View

CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

Materialization of Airflows

The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.

Object

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.

A Garden of Hope for Freedom

In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.

Object

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”.

Object

The Flower of the Lake

The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.

Object

Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue

The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.

Object

An Interior for a New Format of Education

The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.

Object

New Aeroflot Office: Lightness, Play, Comfort

Even if you have no plans to fly with Aeroflot anytime soon, their new office at 2A 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street is still worth a visit for its interior design alone.

Object

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.

Object

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”.

Object

Warm Black and White

The second phase of “Quarter 31”, designed by KPLN and built in the Moscow suburb town of Pushkino, reveals a multifaceted character. At first glance, the complex appears to be defined by geometry and a monochrome palette. But a closer look reveals a number of “irregular” details: a gradient of glazing and flared window frames, a hierarchy of façades, volumetric brickwork, and even architectural references to natural phenomena. We explore all the rules – and exceptions – that we were able to discover here.