Life around the Freezer

In the city of Vladivostok, ABD architects are reconstructing the historical cold storage warehouse, are designing the culture and business center, and are organizing the comfortable public territories between these two buildings.

Written by:
Anna Starostina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

10 June 2015

Object

Architect:

Firm:

ABD architects https://www.abd-architects.ru

This sophisticated multitask project is currently in its approval stage. In spite of the fact that, by the standards of ABD Architects, this work is unusually small-scale, the proposed solutions can have a considerable impact on the set routine of the city's life in this part of Vladivostok. The rectangular plot in the very center of the city has such a complex terrain that finding the successful location of the building was quite a tough call. As difficult was inscribing it into the context of the local urban texture.

zooming — Culture and business center "Union" © ABD architects

Originally, a few tasks were posed before the architects, the first of them being returning to the city the now-derelict building of the cold storage. Exactly one hundred years ago it was built by the company "Union" for keeping the frozen meat brought in from Australia. Supposedly, one of the participants of that project was one of the key figures of Vladivostok, architect and engineer Vladimir Planson. So, this is indeed an important monument for the city. Handling the specific issues that the building, totally unfit for contemporary needs and many times rebuilt, presented was also quite a chore.

The rectangular volume, with a clearly readable on the plan administrative part at the side end and the added later "outstanding" substation (total area about 2700 square meters), will be stuccoed and painted the historically correct white. The freezer, in fact, has completely blind walls: the windows were only there in the office premises situated in the north part of the building. Making new openings in the walls that had the official status of an architectural monument was out of the question. As a result, only one wall, the one that is turned to the yard, upon the approval of the historical monuments conservation committee, will have any windows in it - really large ones. However, thanks to the small depth of the building they will be quite capable of providing the sufficient level of ambient light. The top floors will be occupied by the quite unusual for Vladivostok type of office space - the creative co-working: the work tables will be placed near the windows, and the meeting rooms will be moved over to the blind wall, along with the kitchen, the restrooms, and other premises that do not require the ambient light.

The dark basement floor will house extra expo spaces. The original metallic structures of the historical building will be by all means preserved. The outdated frequent rhythm of the supports, on the one hand, makes the inside space slightly inconvenient for the usual office but, on the other hand, adds to the building's historical authenticity.

In its shape and size (practically the same 2700 square meters, the same four floors, and the same gable roof), the new building to its historical neighbor. Their interrelation are about a respectful dialogue, and close mutual work, and some argument, and even a bit if competition. "We wanted the new building to be as laconic as possible and not really bold in color: the buildings around it look too motley as it is, and they are different in height, too. When we came to this place, absolute chaos ruled here, and we needed to bring it to order, organize it somehow" - says one of the authors of the project Anton Savelyev. The two underground tiers occupying the space under the paved courtyard are the parking garage. The first floor will house a restaurant, small shops, and the exhibition gallery of Vladimir Lanin - the famous local photographer of the late XIX century. The top three floors will be completely rented out as the office of one company.

The shape of the building was practically dictated by its surroundings - the architects simply "listened" to it carefully. For example, besides the cold storage warehouse, there is also the historical water tower standing next to the land plot. There was no task of highlighting this object or take its dimensions into consideration in any way but nevertheless the architects deemed it necessary to pay homage to it lowering the height of the new building's roof in its direction. The result is a subtle, almost invisible, "courtesy". For the same reason, the attractive-looking cutaway of the side wall appeared: it was just "turned" a little bit in the direction of the tower. Part of the "empty" casing of the building, however, the architects preferred to keep intact. The resulting asymmetrical "marquee" and the interesting-looking "screen" wall accentuate the entrance still more, protecting the territory of the courtyard from the wind and the rain, and help to separate and organize the pedestrian flows.

The "screen marquee", however, is by far not the only element of this visual play that the architects introduced into the neutral and calm image of the new building. First of all, the size of the windows changes all the time. While on the main facades, as one's gaze goes up, they grow wider, turning from the narrow slit-like kind to large, almost panoramic, windows, on the side walls, conversely, they grow narrower, threatening to disappear completely. The authors of the project say that they ultimately got quite a jigsaw puzzle here. The second technique is combining two differently textured materials on the facades. Initially, it was planned that in the main facade a cozy type of wood would be used, the type that would look like the soft warm "undergrowth" covered on top by the coarse fur of the natural stone, with the "undergrowth" showing through it. However, on second thought, the architects considered this solution too rash, and opted for the more reserved but as contrastive and sophisticated combination of metal of a warm tone on the main facade and stone everywhere else.

The last but not least constituent part of the work was the task of forming comfortable city territories between the two buildings of the complex. Such territories are practically non-existent in Vladivostok now. Every day, this area has people going through it towards the central railway station located nearby, and back again, so the architects had to, first of all, divide the pedestrian flows: because what kind of "comfortable" territory can you create in a pass-through yard? It was possible to achieve by using the complex terrain of this territory, supplying it with a sophisticated system of stairs and landings. As a result, the space between the two buildings turned into a practically isolated courtyard.

Securely protected from the wind, the paved territory that provides a separate entrance to the restaurant, will allow for organizing an open-air terrace in the summertime; it will also give the office workers an opportunity to go out for a breath of fresh air. And the steep green slope can be used, for example, as an open-air movie theater, of course, weather permitting. The noise of the big city life and the local strong sea winds are additionally fenced off by that same fragment of the new casing of the building that forms this cozy and protected micro-world.

The saturated functional program in combination with the surrounding houses and the challenging terrain made the architects deftly navigate through a lot of underwater stones. And, as strange as it may seem, it was this necessity of navigating that prompted the most interesting and bright solutions. And the seeming lack of logic in some of the applied techniques goes a long way to draw close attention to the building. "This project is not at all as simple as one might think at first sight. Yes, you can criticize some of our solutions, for example, the fact that the location of the entrances to the new buildings is not really obvious, but we are quite certain that all of our solutions are the best possible under the given circumstances. I think we have been able to create a balanced project and solve all the issues we had to solve" - says Anton Savelyev.

Architect:

Firm:

ABD architects https://www.abd-architects.ru

10 June 2015

Headlines now

The Big Twelve

Yesterday, the winners of the Moscow Mayor’s Architecture Award were announced and honored. Let’s take a look at what was awarded and, in some cases, even critique this esteemed award. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?

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Above the Golden Horn

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Nuanced Alternative

How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.

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Blinds for Ice

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Campus within a Day

In this article, we talk about what the participants of Genplan Institute of Moscow’s hackathon were doing at the MosComArchitecture booth at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition. We also discuss who won the prize and why, and what can be done with the territory of a small university on the outskirts of Moscow.

Overview

Vertical Civilization

Genpro considered the development of the vertical city concept and made it the theme of their pavilion at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition.

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Marina Yegorova: “We think in terms of hectares, not square meters”

The career path of architect Marina Yegorova is quite impressive: MARHI, SPEECH, MosComArchitectura, the Genplan Institute of Moscow, and then her own architectural company. Its name Empate, which refers to the words “to draw” in Portuguese and “to empathize” in English, should not be misleading with its softness, as the firm freely works on different scales, including Integrated Territorial Development projects. We talked with Marina about various topics: urban planning experience, female leadership style, and even the love of architects for yachting.

Interview

Andrey Chuikov: “Optimum balance is achieved through economics”

The Yekaterinburg-based architectural company CNTR is in its mature stage: crystallization of principles, systematization, and standardization helped it make a qualitative leap, enhance competencies, and secure large contracts without sacrificing the aesthetic component. The head of the company, Andrey Chuikov, told us about building a business model and the bonuses that additional education in financial management provides for an architect.

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The Fulcrum

Ostozhenka Architects have designed two astonishing towers practically on the edge of a slope above the Oka River in Nizhny Novgorod. These towers stand on 10-meter-tall weathered steel “legs”, with each floor offering panoramic views of the river and the city; all public spaces, including corridors, receive plenty of natural light. Here, we see a multitude of solutions that are unconventional for the residential routine of our day and age. Meanwhile, although these towers hark back to the typological explorations of the seventies, they are completely reinvented in a contemporary key. We admire Veren Group as the client – this is exactly how a “unique product” should be made – and we tell you exactly how our towers are arranged.

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Crystal is Watching You

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The Secret Briton

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The Wrap-Up

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Birds and Streams

For the competition to design the Omsk airport, DNK ag formed a consortium, inviting VOX architects and Sila Sveta. Their project focuses on intersections, journeys, and flights – both of people and birds – as Omsk is known as a “transfer point” for bird migrations. The educational component is also carefully considered, and the building itself is filled with light, which seems to deconstruct the copper circle of the central entrance portal, spreading it into fantastic hyper-spatial “slices”.

Faraday Grid

The project of the Omsk airport by ASADOV Architects is another concept among the 14 finalists of a recent competition. It is called “The Bridge” and is inspired by both the West Siberian Exhibition of 1911 and the Trans-Siberian Railway bridge over the Irtysh River, built in 1896. On one hand, it carries a steampunk vibe, while on the other, there’s almost a sense of nostalgia for the heyday of 1913. However, the concept offers two variants, the second one devoid of nostalgia but featuring a parabola.

Review

Midway upon the Journey of Our Life

Recently, Tatlin Publishing House released a book entitled “Architect Sergey Oreshkin. Selected Projects”. This book is not just a traditional book of the architectural company’s achievements, but rather a monograph of a more personal nature. The book includes 43 buildings as well as a section with architectural drawings. In this article, we reflect on the book as a way to take stock of an architect’s accomplishments.

Inverted Fortress

This year, there has been no shortage of intriguing architectural ideas around the Omsk airport. The project developed by the architectural company KPLN appeals to Omsk’s history as a wooden fortress that it was back in the day, but transforms the concept of a fortress beyond recognition: it “shaves off” the conical ends of “wooden logs”, then enlarges them, and then flips them over. The result is a hypostyle – a forest of conical columns on point supports, with skylights on top.

send.project

Transformation of Annenkirche

For Annenkirche (St. Anna Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg), Sergey Kuznetsov and the Kamen bureau have prepared a project that relies on the principles of the Venice Charter: the building is not restored to a specific date, historical layers are preserved, and modern elements do not mimic the authentic ones. Let’s delve into the details of these solutions.

The Paradox of the Temporary

The concept of the Russian pavilion for EXPO 2025 in Osaka, proposed by the Wowhaus architects, is the last of the six projects we gathered from the 2022 competition. It is again worth noting that the results of this competition were not finalized due to the cancellation of Russia’s participation in World Expo 2025. It should be mentioned that Wowhaus created three versions for this competition, but only one is being presented, and it can’t be said that this version is thoroughly developed – rather, it is done in the spirit of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, the project is interesting in its paradoxical nature: the architects emphasized the temporary character of the pavilion, and in its bubble-like forms sought to reflect the paradoxes of space and time.

The Forum of Time

The competition project for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka designed by Aleksey Orlov and Arena Project Institute consists of cones and conical funnels connected into a non-trivial composition, where one can feel the hand of architects who have worked extensively with stadiums and other sports facilities. It’s very interesting to delve into its logic, structurally built on the theme of clocks, hourglasses and even sundials. Additionally, the architects have turned the exhibition pavilion into a series of interconnected amphitheaters, which is also highly relevant for world exhibitions. We are reminding you that the competition results were never announced.

Mirrors Everywhere

The project by Sergey Nebotov, Anastasia Gritskova, and the architectural company “Novoe” was created for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025, but within the framework of another competition, which, as we learned, took place even earlier, in 2021. At that time, the competition theme was “digital twins”, and there was minimal time for work, so the project, according to the architect himself, was more of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, this project is interesting for its plan bordering on similarity with Baroque projects and the emblem of the exhibition, as well as its diverse and comprehensive reflectiveness.

Report

The Steppe Is Full of Beauty and Freedom

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The Snowstorm Fish

The next project from the unfinished competition for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025, which will be held in Osaka, Japan, is by Dashi Namdakov and Parsec Architects. The pavilion describes itself as an “architectural/sculptural” one, with its shape clearly reminiscent of abstract sculpture of the 1970s. It complements its program with a meditative hall named “Mendeleev’s Dreams”, and offers its visitors to slide from its roof at the end of the tour.

The Mirror of Your Soul

We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.

Part of the Ideal

In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.

Object

The Fortress by the River

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In the Rhombus Grid

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Object

Generational Connection

Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.

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Three Dimensions of the City

We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived

Object

New “Flight”

Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.

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The Yauza Towers

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