Framework in Space

Developed by "Studio 44", the project of a judo school is based on the opposition of the modernist principle of point support and the openness of deconstruction - with their sources lying in the traditional Japanese architecture. A fair share of abstraction helps to add some stylistic discourse to the necessary level of generalization.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

29 August 2016

Object

The judo school whose design "Studio 45" completed a few months ago will be built on the Vyborg side in the district of Polyustrovo - an area that was once occupied by large Dukes dachas, then factories, and now predominantly by Soviet-type apartment buildings with an odd fraction of smaller dachas and spots of die-hard industrial parks. The judo school will occupy a large rectangle on the borderline between the Academic Sakharov Park and a residential area that consists predominantly of the 1970's panel nine-story houses interspersed with later additions. The city backdrop here is a habitual checkered gray; anyone who was born in the Soviet Union would recognize this view from a mile away. And, as for the park, it is not just any park, but a descendant of the Abamelek-Lazarevs' dacha, which pretty much turns it into a piece of the preindustrial suburbs that were later merged with the industrial Saint Petersburg. Later on, it was renamed into a "Young Pioneer" Park, and its northern park has kept this name to this day, the southern part having been renamed into the "Sakharov" Park and getting a monument to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a copy brought all the way down from Japan. And, not so much by design as by coincidence, it turned out that this Japanese theme took root here: across from the monument, a new school of a Japanese martial art will be built. The school will have in it training and performance halls - not only for judo but for gymnastics as well; it will also have a highly developed infrastructure that will include, among other things, about a dozen rooms for guest athletes. This is going to be a great up-to-date school the height of a nine-story house (28.8 meters), the height measurements of the building fitting in nicely with the surroundings.

zooming — Sports and recreation complex of the judo school. Project, 2016 © Studio 44

The school building consists of a voluminous "grid" framework with a large cell span of 7.2x7.2 meters. It is planned that the framework will be coated with wood that will bring out the wood construction both on the inside and outside, following its structural logic. To an outside observer it will look - just as it looks now on the project visualizations - that the building's framework is indeed made of wood. In an odd checkered pattern, it is at some places covered in glass and at some places is coated with panels but still mostly it is transparent, viewable, and is designed prominently on the outside. The walls recede into the depth of the building forming on the facade an intermediate space that is akin to shallow stanzas - but still uninhabited. The outer plane of the facade is touched by the "legs" of the glazed stairwells. Just like all the other pillars, they support the bowl of the main competition hall - an inverted stepping pyramid whose volume is partially readable from the outside. The entire building turns into a support for the bowl of the main hall elevated 12 meters above the ground, its edges "resting" on the outside framework, and its basis - on the volumes of the minor halls of the bottom floors that are still pierced with point supports, just as they should be in accordance with the tradition of the architecture of today. The narrow verticals of the stairwells are evenly placed, like buttresses of a gothic temple, and, coupled with the crowning band of panoramic windows, they form on the facade a composition that reminds, on the one hand, a horizontal skyscraper on slender pillars, and, on the other hand (especially when viewed from a distance of the park) - a temple portal of the Far East architectural tradition: an array of colums that support a beam with two long protruding "tails" of the cantilevers. The likeness is still further enhanced by the steps of the spectators’ stalls which add characteristic bulges to the silhouettes of the cantilevers. The whole façade is turned into a portal - a gate to sport, which is more than symbolic. This portal is, however, far from classic - it has a pillar in its middle which made the architects shift the entrance with its broad marquee to the left: the geometry of the main façade took on some "irresponsible" quality, while the likeness to the hyper portal stopped being literal. Behind the top glass horizontal, there are cafes that circle the stalls along their perimeter that will command, just like the stairwells, a great panoramic view of the park and the city.

This mixture of avant-grade and modernism with a tilt to Japanese postwar metabolic architecture - with references to the traditional Japanese house, and, most importantly, the classic judo halls - are to be found everywhere in this building. One grows into the other, which seems more or less self-explanatory, as one abstracts himself from the form. Just like on a Picasso painting, where somebody's nose can be at the same time an abstract triangle, we can see here, depending on our mood and angle of vision, either a Japanese temple with a broad roof or a wooden pavilion, the kind that is popular today at architectural festivals, or a huge building designed in full accordance with the rules of modern architecture (which it actually is). So - and it comes as no surprise at all - what we see is a curious version of Pompidou Center's Piano&Rogers Pyramid, only tested with squares of wooden structure and changed almost beyond recognition, the masterpiece and the manifesto of the deconstruction architecture. And why not? The staircases are brought forward, behind them, there is the "bustle" of the building works crossed by diagonal metallic beams - the likeness to the famous escalator and the metallic grids on the main façade of the Paris museum is obvious, even though here, in Saint Petersburg, everything is a lot more reserved and farther away from hi-tech, and, even, conversely, sunk in the tradition of wooden construction. Another thing that comes to mind is Nikolai Plissky's "Hadron Collider", a hint at the mechanism of state-of-the-art technologies, built from rough timber - but then again, the distance from the prototype is not so great. And if we are to talk about deconstruction, it is something that is contained inside here - the building does not cast any "protuberances" outside and stays compact; the main façade looks more like a cut or a section of some part of the building's structure. No irony is in sight - quite the opposite, what we see is, for all intents and purposes, quite a serious discourse on the subject of the basics of modernist culture and its origin lying in the traditional oriental cultures.

And that's as true as it's going to get - the bare staircases that are brought forward here can be seen not only in Pompidou but also in many other modernist masterpieces - for example, in Andrew Meerson's "Pilots' House" with its oval stairwell towers. The crossings of sliced verticals and horizontals, on the other hand, put one in the mind of the Fuji Television building designed by Kenzo Tange, as well as some projects done by "Studio 44" itself where a "centipede" beam elevated on a multitude of supporting pillars is one of the favorite techniques; it is to be found, for example, in their contest project of a multifunctional complex on the alluvial land of the Vasilyevsky Island; or in the building of the defense ministry of Kazakhstan.

On the whole, however, the project is immersed in the Japanese tradition. The most obvious prototype is, of course, the Japanese house and the judo gyms with their wooden frameworks, lattices, and partitions covered in rice paper, light, transparent, agile, just as the spirit of a judo school should suggest. To a certain degree, the building of the Saint Petersburg school IS such a gym, only magnified manifold: 72x29 meters,12.6 meters to reach the beams, and 16 meters together with them - strictly speaking, it could contain a couple of 5-story residential buildings. Three tiers of ceiling beams - its main pride - also work to "explore the subject" directly referring us to the prototype of the Japanese red ceilings that in the old houses sometimes occupy a significant share of the home space dividing it into cubes. The ambient light that falls from all sides, including from the ceiling, is softened but still with a voluminous quality to it, and it enhances the Japanese framework feel of the space in which mass is seemingly completely inferior to structure.

But, as was already said, the modernist basis and the Japanese prototypes are closely connected here. The architecture of contemporary history is all about framework, which accounts for 90% of its beauty and success; this is also one of the principles of Le Corbusier. The point supports are derived from the specifics of the technology of reinforced concrete, and they help save building materials and space, as well as make walls light and transparent. But at the same time this technology dates back to all framework houses known to man, less to modernism in its European half-timber form, and more to the framework of a Japanese house that so many classics of the wooden tradition fell for. In other words, this evergreen technology of framework construction that has been around for at least a century has its roots in a tradition. In this case, the theme luckily coincided with the theme of the judo school, making the meaning complete or getting back to the sources at the new helix of development.

One cannot help recalling that "Studio 44" has already done another project built upon a wooden framework - the science museum in the city of Tomsk. Back then, it seemed that the architect revived the sculptural tradition of the early Soviet wooden avant-garde architecture, and that he was going to keep on using that language teetering on the verge of the literal, the recognizable, and the generalized. It is clear now that "Studio 44" views the idea - one of a wooden framework in this case - from many different angles, studying its numerous prototypes suggested by the context. Viewing the building's framework as a voluminous grid whose content is conditioned by the building's function, and, as a consequence, is rather flexible, is interesting in itself, and, besides, all through the XX century a lot was said on the subject, so the architects had a lot of starting points to lean on.

29 August 2016

Headlines now

in memoriam

In Memory of Valery Kanyashin

On Friday, February 27, architect Valery Kanyashin passed away – co-founder of Ostozhenka Architects and the author of many significant buildings in Moscow. We publish a text by Anatoly Belov in memory of Valery Kanyashin.

Report

Hypertext in Space

As part of the exhibition “What We Have We (Do Not) Keep”, Sergey Tchoban, the Museum of Architecture, and the CHART studio experiment with an eco-conscious approach to exhibition design, with thematic cross-references and even with publicistic reflections on the necessity of preserving modernism, the roots of contemporary architecture, and the birth of ideas. All of this makes the exhibition, with its light and transparent design, look quite innovative. The elements – both “material” and conceptual – are familiar, yet their combination is far from conventional.

Object

The Outline of “Foundation”

In their competition proposal for the Fili transport hub, the consortium led by Alexey Ilyin proposed an “inhabited arch” – a form that is simple yet complex. The architects emphasize that even at the competition stage, the project’s feasibility was fully calculated, taking into account the minimal nighttime closures of Bagration Avenue. How was this achieved? With what functions? Let us take a closer look. In our view, the building would have suited the heroes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels perfectly.

Object

The Flying Horizontal

“A house in the spirit of Wright”, as architect Roman Leonidov describes it, pointing to his source of inspiration, was built on a challenging wedge-shaped site. To achieve a sense of intimacy and secure good views from the windows, the entire volume had to be shifted toward the far boundary, turning the house “back” to the neighboring mansions. The main façade demonstrates time-tested techniques often employed by the company: articulated horizontals, a weightless roofline, and a triad of materials – light plaster, dark slate, and warm wood.

Object

Needles of Horizon Contemplation

The “House of Horizons”, designed by Kleinewelt Architekten in Krylatskoye, is carefully thought out at the stereometric level – from the logic of how the volumes interlock (and, conversely, how gaps are articulated between them) to the triangular balconies that give the building its striking, slightly bristling silhouette.

News

The Red Thread

A linear park project prepared by Alexey Ilyin studio for the improvement of a riverbank in one of the residential districts seeks to reconnect people with nature. Two levels of the embankment invite visitors to contemplate the landscape while at the same time protecting the riverbank from excessive human impact. The “aerial street” links functional zones and the opposite banks, creating new points of attraction along the way: balconies, bridges, and even a “grotto”.

Object

Spindle and Thread

The concept of the Waver residential complex in Yekaterinburg draws inspiration from the past of the Parkovy district. In order to preserve the memory of the late-19th-century flax spinning mill once located here, the architectural company KPLN turns to the theme of textiles and weaving. The project’s main expressive device is a system of ribbons made of perforated weathering steel – a material that, in such volumes, has arguably not yet been used in Russian residential projects.

Object

Woven Into Sokolniki

Over the past few years, high-rise residential construction in former industrial zones has become the main theme of Moscow architecture. Towers are springing up here and there – but the question is what kind of towers they are. The residential complex CODE Sokolniki, designed by Ostozhenka Architects, is a project where every detail has been taken care of. The authors are attentive to the history of the site, the continuity of the urban fabric, the skyline, and visual corridors. They also proposed a motif with the lyrical name “scarf”. We take a closer look at the volumetric composition and the large-scale décor “woven”, in this case, out of terraces and balconies.

Interview

Stepan Liphart and Yuri Gerth: “Our Program Is Aesthetic”

The studio of Stepan Liphart, an architect known for his distinctive signature style and one-off projects, now has a partner. Yuri Khitrov, a specialist with a broad range of competencies, will take on the part of the work that distracts one from creativity but drives the business forward. One of the aims of this partnership is to improve the urban environment through dialogue with clients and officials. We spoke with both sides about their ambitions, the firm’s development strategy, shared values, and the need for pragmatism. And why the studio is called “Liphart & Gerth” only became clear at the very end of the interview.

Object

The Copper Mirror

The varied-toned sheen of “unsealed” copper, painterly streaks and fingerprints, exposed concrete, and the unusual proportions – when you study the ZILART Museum building by Sergei Tchoban and SPEECH architects, there is plenty to talk about. However, it seems to us that the most interesting thing is how the museum’s composition responds to the realities of the district itself. The residential district has been realized as an open-air exhibition of façade statements by contemporary architects – but without public access to the inner courtyards of the blocks. This building – that is, the museum – is exactly the opposite: on the outside, it is deliberately restrained, while inside it shines spectacularly, creating its own sunbeams in any weather.

View

“Strangers” in the City

We asked Alexander Skokan for a comment on the results of 2025 – and he sent us a whole article, moreover one devoted to the discussion we recently began on the “appropriateness of high-rises” – or, more broadly speaking, “contrasting insertions into the urban fabric”. The result is a text that is essentially a question: why here? Why like this?

Interview

Dmitry Ostroumov: “To use the language of alchemy, we are involved in the process of “transmutation...

What we ended up having was an extremely unusual conversation with Dmitry Ostroumov. Why? At the very least, because he is not just an architect specializing in the construction of Orthodox churches. And not just – which is an extreme rarity – a proponent of developing contemporary stylistics within this still highly conservative field. Dmitry Ostroumov is a Master of Theology. So in addition to the history and specifics of the company, we speak about the very concept of the temple, about canon and tradition, about the living and the eternal, and even about the Russian Logos.

Interview

MB-PROJECT: “Every new project is a challenge”

In this issue, we speak with Dmitry and Oleg Shurygin, founders of the company MV-PROJECT, which has extensive experience in designing theater and entertainment buildings as well as working with cultural heritage sites.

Object

A Glazed Figurine

In searching for an image for a residential building near the Novodevichy Convent, GAFA architects turned to their own perception of the place: it evoked associations with antiquity, plein-air painting, and vintage artifacts. The two towers will be entirely clad in volumetric glazed ceramic – at present, there are no other buildings like this in Russia. The complex will also stand out thanks to its metabolic bay-window cells, streamlined surfaces, a ceremonial “hotel-style” driveway, and a lobby overlooking a lush garden.

Report

A Knight’s Move via the Cour d’Honneur

Intercolumnium Architects presented to the City Planning Council a residential complex project that is set to replace the Aquatoria business center on Vyborgskaya Embankment. Experts praised the overall quality of the work, but expressed reservations about the three cour d’honneurs and suggested softening the contrast between the facades facing the embankment and the Kantemirovsky Bridge.

Object

A Small Country

Mezonproekt is developing a long-term master plan for the MEPhI campus in Obninsk. Over the next ten years, an enclave territory of about 100 hectares, located in a forest on the northern edge of the city, is set to transform into a modern center for the development of the nuclear energy sector. The plan envisions attracting international students and specialists, as well as comprehensive territorial development: both through the contemporary realization of “frozen” plans from the 1980s and through the introduction of new trends – public spaces, an aquapark, a food court, a school, and even a nuclear medicine center. Public and sports facilities are intended to be accessible to city residents as well, and the campus is to be physically and functionally connected to Obninsk.

Object

Pearl Divers

GAFA has designed an apartment complex for Derbent intended to switch people from a work mode to a resort mindset – and to give the surrounding area a much-needed jolt. The building offers two distinct faces: restrained and laconic on the city side, and a lushly ornate façade facing the sea. At the heart of the complex, a hidden pearl lies – an open-air pool with an arch, offering views of a starry sky, and providing direct access to the beach.

Object

A Satellite Island

The Genplan Institute of Moscow has prepared a master plan for the development of the Sarpinsky and Golodny island system, located within the administrative boundaries of Volgograd and considered among the largest river islands in Russia. By 2045, the plan envisions the implementation of 15 large-scale investment projects, including sports and educational clusters, a congress center with a “Volgonarium”, a film production cluster, and twenty-one theme parks. We explain which engineering, environmental, and transportation challenges must be addressed to turn this vision into reality. The master plan solutions have already been approved and incorporated into the city’s general development plan.

Object

The Amber Gate

The Amber City residential complex is one of the redevelopment projects in the former industrial area located beyond Moscow’s Third Ring Road near Begovaya metro station. Alexey Ilyin’s studio proposed an original master plan that transformed two clusters of towers into ceremonial propylaea, gave the complex a recognizable silhouette, and established visual connections with new high-rise developments on both right and left – thus integrating it into the scale of the growing metropolis. It is also marked by its own futuristic stylistic language, based on a reinterpreted streamline aesthetic.

Object

A Theater Triangle

The architectural company “Chetvertoe Izmerenie” (“Fourth Dimension”) has developed the design for a new stage of the Magnitogorsk Musical Theater, rethinking not only theater architecture but also the role of the theater in the contemporary city.

Interview

Aleksei Ilyin: “I approach every task with genuine interest”

Aleksei Ilyin has been working on major urban projects for more than 30 years. He has all the necessary skills for high-rise construction in Moscow – yet he believes it’s essential to maintain variety in the typologies and scales represented in his portfolio. He is passionate about drawing – but only from life, and also in the process of working on a project. We talk about the structure and optimal size of an office, about his past and current projects, large and small tasks, and about creative priorities.

Interview

Sergey Tchoban: “My ideal model for shaping a museum space is the Uffizi Gallery. In the...

Yesterday, the ZILART Museum opened on the ZILART grounds with three exhibitions curated by well-known curators. We speak with Sergey Tchoban about the concept and its realization.

Object

A Golden Sunbeam

A compact brick-and-metal building in the growing Shukhov Park in Vyksa seems to absorb sunlight, transform it into yellow accents inside, and in the evening “give it back” as a warm golden glow streaming from its windows. It is, frankly, a very attractive building: both material and lightweight at the same time, with lightness inside and materiality outside. Its form is shaped by function – laconic, yet far from simple. Let’s take a closer look.

Architecton Awards

In 2025, the jury of the Architecton festival reviewed the finalist projects through live, open presentations held right in the exhibition hall – a rather engaging performance, and something rarely seen among Russian awards. It would be great if “Zodchestvo” adopted this format. Below, we present all the winning projects, including four special nominations.

send.project

Garden of Knowledge

UNK architects and UNK design created the interiors of the Letovo Junior campus, working together with NF Studio, which was responsible for developing the educational technology that takes into account the needs and perception of younger and middle school children.

The Silver Skates

The STONE Kaluzhskaya office quarter is accompanied by two residential towers, making the complex – for it is indeed a single ensemble – well balanced in functional terms. The architects at Kleinewelt gave the residential buildings a silvery finish to match the office blocks. How they are similar, how they differ, and what “Silver Skates” has to do with it – we explore in this article.

Overview

On the Dynastic Trail

The houses and townhouses of the “Tsarskaya Tropа” (“Czar’s Trail”) complex are being built in the village of Gaspra in Crimea – to the west and east of the palaces of the former grand-ducal residence “Ai-Todor”. One of the main challenges for the architects at KPLN, who developed the project, was to respond appropriately to this significant neighboring heritage. How this influenced the massing, the façades, and the way the authors work with the terrain is explored in our article.

Object

A New Path

The main feature of the Yar Park project, designed by Sergey Skuratov for Kazan, is that it is organized along the “spine” of a multifunctional mall with an impressive multi-height atrium space in its middle. The entire site, both on the city side and the Kazanka River embankment, is open to the public. The complex is intended not to become “yet another fenced enclave” but, as urban planners say, a “polycenter” – a new point of attraction for the whole of Kazan, especially its northern part, made up of residential districts that until now have lacked such a vibrant public space. It represents a new urban planning approach to a high-density mixed-use development situated in the city center – in a sense, an “anti-quarter”. Even Moscow, one might say, doesn’t yet have anything quite like it. Well, lucky Kazan!

Object

Beneath the Azure Sky

A depository designed by Studio 44 will soon be built in Kenozersky National Park to preserve and display the so-called “heavens” – ceiling structures characteristic of wooden churches in the Russian North, painted with biblical scenes. For each of these “heavens”, the architects created a volume corresponding in scale and dimensions to the original church interior. The result is a honeycomb-like composition, with modules derived directly from the historic monuments themselves, allowing visitors to view the icons from the historically accurate angle – from below, looking upward. How exactly this works is the subject of our story.

Object

The Power of Lines

The building at the very beginning of New Arbat is the result of long deliberations over how to replace the former House of Communication. Contemporary, dynamic, and even somewhat zoomorphic in character, it is structured around a large diagonal grid. The building has become a striking accent both in the perspective of the former Kalinin Avenue and in the panorama of Arbat Square. Yet, unfortunately, the original concept was not fully realized. In 2020, the Moscow ArchCouncil approved a design featuring an exoskeleton – an external load-bearing structure, which eventually turned into a purely decorative element. Still, the power of the supergraphic “holds” the building, giving it the qualities of a new urban landmark with iconic potential. How this concept took shape, what unexpected associations might underlie the grid’s form, and why the exoskeleton was never built – all this is explored in our article.