Mental Image

We wrote about the building of repository museum of the cognac house “Alliance-1892” in Chernyakhovsk back in 2011, when it was still in the design stage. Today, the project has been implemented virtually with zero deviation from its original design; this summer it was shortlisted by WAF-2017. I don’t think I will be mistaken if I say that for Levon Airapetov and Victoria Preobrazhenskaya this building is now one of their favorite architectural projects – thought out to the last detail and implemented exactly the way the architects wanted to see it.

Cognac

zooming — Repository museum of "Alliance-1892" cognac house. Photograph © Gleb Leonov

The city of Chernyakhovsk (the former Prussian Insterburg) is a small city that did not grow much larger during the soviet times. The cognac house is situated almost in the center, or, rather, a little south of the border of the city’s historical center, immediately behind the railroad line leading to the main city terminal. This is convenient: the railroad delivers to the distillery a French spirit to be treated in accordance with the French technology. The alcohol is then poured into oak casks and matured in them for the appropriate period of time – during this time the spirit loses its strength and takes on the desired taste, then it gets blended and ultimately bottled. The building of the distillery itself is situated closer to the railroad line; it is essentially a large, almost square, hangar of a light brown color, sporting a neat yet still industrial look.

Quite different is the cask storage building designed by the architects of TOTEMENT. It is situated a little further away from the railroad track, before the main and only entrance to the factory premises, immediately after the checkpoint: it meets everyone who comes in here and at the same time signifies the presence of “Alliance-1892” in the green semi-urban space that the southern part of the former Insterburg presents. It is simply impossible to overlook it – the architects say that, in spite of the fact that he personally approved all the project draughts, the director of the distillery was somewhat surprised when he saw the actual result; the locals have made it their pet sport coming up with names for the unusual building. Surrounded by three-story houses with tall hipped roofs, the repository museum looks indeed unusual yet, at the same time, very European: I would even go as far as to say that such an iconic building would be quite a regular thing if it stood at the edge of the historical center of any small German town.

Next to the repository museum, there is a checkpoint through which people enter the distillery; it echoes the two towers but it is smaller and more reserved, combining achromatic black and gray.

Chernyakhovsk, regretfully, is not exactly a rich town, and currently it looks rather shabby. The territory of the plant stands out against this territory with its neatness, while the distillery that provides jobs for many of the townspeople has a well-coordinated production cycle. The fact that its territory got a high-profile “compensation” building is quite a logic step in the distillery’s development. All the more so, because, as the “masters of cognac” (not a figure of speech, there is indeed such a specialty) explain, the casks, in which the noble spirit is matured, are very sensitive to the surrounding atmosphere, i.e. they are also “living beings”. But then again, all the masters of culinary arts claim something in these lines…

Besides the artistic legends of the “living” spirit, whose quality is affected by absolutely everything, cask storage is indeed subject to a whole range of rigorous rules. One of them is that the room must be constantly aired because the oak casks breathe letting out alcohol vapors. The spirit inside gradually loses its strength, while the air gets saturated with these vapors and even becomes explosive. So at this point we will at once share about one of the architects’ ingenious findings – they were able to avoid the necessity to create a complex and expensive ventilation system by calculating the vectors of the air flows: the top part of the repository has outlet ventilation installed in it; in the bottom part, there are inward draught grilles. This way, the ventilation expenses were cut down almost by a hundred times. Besides, the building is not heated: the repository itself is sunken into the ground, and its temperature is relatively stable, about 10 degrees Centigrade, with minor seasonal differences.

Image

However, no matter how much you speak about pragmatic things – and each function, be that storing and maturing the spirits or showcasing them, has its own pragmatic requirements – still the main thing about the building that the architects ultimately got is its image and its form. Small and production-oriented as it may be, this is still a museum, and the architects approached it the way they should approach the task of designing a public building: they filled it with plastique and associations. This building is acutely associative – although far from literal, all the allusions are well and many times thought out and expressed by the architects in words, drawings, models and sculptures. “We can say now that this thing signifies this and that but it would be interesting to show it to different people and ask what they see” – critically meditates Levon Airapetov.

A drone video of flying over the complete museum building

But then again, the main idea of the project is hard to disagree with: above the earth we see two volumes: one, broad and made of wood, crowns the sunken-in storage room, and looks like a woman, calm, and looking pregnant with all the casks it contains. The other volume – a glittering metallic tower with a cut-through – is installed above the glass ceiling of the museum’s tasting room. “This is a “man”; he runs around, he hunts for the mammoth, and he protects the woman from everything – says Levon Airapetov – But it’s also sort of broken, though tall, still empty inside. He cocked his head wondering what to do next”. When, in order to elaborate on the façades, the architects made their development drawings, it turned out that the two towers looked like two origami figures, male and female. Which brings us to the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, the sign that describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

Slanted at different angles, the two towers indeed look like generalized silhouettes of male and female figures. Devoid of any podiums, they look as if they shoot up through the ground, together but apart, similar yet contrastive. As if they are quietly speaking to each other in a unique language of their own – the way a husband and wife could speak to each other, using words that only two of them know and almost inaudibly, stealing a sneaky glance around from time to time.

The hollow-bodied metallic stela glitters with its metal covered in zigzag grooves – it generally looks like a blade. The sheets of the outer covering are mounted on metallic framework, completely opened and not masked in any way on the inside. It is likely that in the future they will project to the framework some sort of moving pictures like birds or clouds. The broad opening of the entrance looks like a mountain cleavage: as if the metallic wall split in two or simply parted opening a gateway to somewhere that no man could walk – because once you step inside you see the insides of the metal structures. One can see here a metaphor of a production facility that has been open to the public eye. But then again, no matter how “hollow” the metallic tower might be, it is still the centerpiece, the main entrance, and the portal of its kind. Inside the tower, there is a glass floor that reveals an underground tasting room, which this way gets a certain share of ambient light and an eccentric ceiling. They even discussed an idea of going even further and replacing the glass ceiling with a swimming pool so as the rays of sunlight would get inside, refracting through the water, but ultimately the architects opted out of it.

The second volume is semi-reclining, going underground with the “womb” of the repository: on the west side, it forms a small hill, as if the building had fidgeted around a little making itself comfortable under the ground duvet.

The walls of the repository are brutalist concrete, with traces of decking; the ceiling, on the other hand, is made of light metallic girders. The casks lie on the shelves not in a symmetrical array but in a slightly staggered fashion, and the architects liken them to a clutch of eggs. The “clutch” is lighted by lamps: these are safe LED’s but they are executed in the form of traditional old-fashioned bulbs; they are also suspended from the ceiling on cords of different length. In the glittering lights, the architects see allusions to the autumn grape harvest festival: “when they tread out the juice from the grapes, they sing, play music, and usually this happens in the evening, candles glow, and fireflies swirl around them”.

There are no openings in the “female” building but it has panoramic windows and a “head” – the upper part of the volume looks upon those who enter the territory with a wide embrasure as if checking them for ID’s. Behind this big “eye”, there is a “tail” that makes a sharp turn upwards and looks up into the sky with a panoramic window of the same kind; this way, standing on the ground below, one can see peek-a-boo people on the balcony and the sky beyond. In the old times, such turrets were called watchtowers. Besides its doubtless likeness to an animate creature, the wooden tower also looks like a metaphor of a wooden cask: its walls are covered with 3-millimeter veneer sheet of a mahogany color. One should hardly mention the fact that the wooden panels are horizontal, while the metallic detailing of the neighboring tower is vertical: they have nothing in common yet there is no doubt that they are kin to each other.

Museum

For modern breweries and distilleries, showcasing their production cycle is basically a fashionable trend of today: the clients, partners, and vendors must be impressed not only with coordination but also with artistry of production. And, in order to achieve this, you need to organize demonstration and tasting that work together to create an image and a legend. This is why, although it stands on an employee-only territory, this repository is a museum open to pre-organized guided tours and in-company events. On the other hand, it is a museum, a place of presentation, meditation, and showcasing the production to its best romantic advantage. This is why an important part of the building is its viewing balconies and platforms. The museum has specifics of its own: its entire exposition consists essentially of stacks of casks and a tasting room; therefore, the building itself turned into a showcase, and instrument of meditation and contemplation considering of a string of perception points. It’s not like they let you in and allow you to walk around as you please – the architects stay and dose the impressions, gradually uncovering the nuances of the subject matter. This process is akin to enjoying a glass of cognac, yet more abstract and meditative.

As for Yin and Yang, the authors mention them for a reason. Speaking about the two different volumes, one can think that they exist independently – but this is not the case. Contrastive yet cast in the same mold, the towers stand on one common pentagon podium that, when viewed from above, looks a bit like a slightly skewed but still recognizable Soviet quality sign: “Yes, of course, we saw this. We had no deliberate intention to draw this sign but we are quite happy that it turned out this way” – says Levon Airapetov. Between the two volumes, there is a small yard accessed by slightly sloping stairs that are “strung” like power lines, between the entrance to the “male” tower, and the sunken-in cantilevered entrance to the “female” one. The lines of the stairs are tied in a “knot” and it may seem that the host of strings issuing from the metallic tower “made a hole” in the opposite wall, thus closing the contour of the building.

At the same time, this place gets its first outside viewing route. Even before entering the yard, moving along, and not across the stairs, we can see both the tasting room (through the window in the floor of the metallic tower) and the repository (through the window on the left) – it shimmers with festive fireflies of the repository’s bulbs, and at once an impression is created that it’s fun and that something good is afoot inside.

Then the route splits in two. Inside the yard one will see the largest entrance to the repository, while in the far corner of the metallic tower one can get down to the “museum” space of the tasting room. Beneath the yard, there is yet another repository hall of a smaller size, the windows of the tasting room showing its casks that harmoniously complement the display of the bottles on the wall. The tasting room is situated on a level with the repository, and, getting outside of it, one can pass the second hall and get into the third, towards the stairway of the first entrance which connects most of the viewing platforms. The stairway stretches along the north wall inside the wooden tower from the repository’s wall towards the entrance, and then higher up it forms the balcony above the viewing cantilevered structure – the one that intrudes into the space of the repository and through which one can peek inside. Then the stairway leads to the head of the wooden tower one can walk out onto the upper balcony that overlooks both the entrance road and the upper stained glass. The silhouettes of people standing here are quite viewable from the ground.

As we can see, the viewing route can be easily divided into several fragments; but if one walks the whole of it, his way spins like some voluminous spiral, “screws” into space, and becomes its conceptual axis – so one may even suspect that the seemingly sophisticated movement of the volumes is strung upon the main space spiral of the route of the guided tour, is motivated by it, and, hence, is integral inside.

This immanent motivation is yet another important narrative of the building, possibly its conceptual nucleus, and not just a “literary” story of a dialogue between man and woman. At first sight it may seem that the architecture of the repository museum is conditioned by the search for an effective gesture but this is not exactly the case or, rather, not the case at all. One can only get the right understanding of it if he knows that the powerful energy of the form that is undoubtedly present here is strictly conditioned and limited by the context, the function, and the form of the land site. Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya speak about the key points that they find in the process of doing the pre-design survey; then, connecting the dots they come up with the form that is conditioned by the circumstances – and then this form can be creatively thought out and “animated”. However, each line and surface remains motivated, and not arbitrary. Besides, this form is not as complex as it may originally seem to be: it becomes complex in the process of arranging the volumes in respect to one another and opening up the viewing angles but in actuality – as Valeria Preobrazhenskaya explains – two walls of each of the volumes are parallel, i.e. the form itself is rather, even necessarily, simple. And I want to add at this point: just in our life, everything that’s complicated arises from interaction of simple things.

The grid of the lines that connect the important dots is the basis of the building, its speculative plan. The architects once even showed this grid at one of their exhibitions; then they “scratched” it through wet concrete on the wall of the tasting room – as a reminder about these meditations that gave birth to a concrete form. This sign looks like a symbol of some archaic deity which is quite appropriate in this case: what else can this repository museum be other than a temple of the god of wine, or, rather, gods of wine who are embodied, to some extent, in the towers shooting up from underground? Then this animation of form (which is very strong in this project) starts to make perfect sense: to semi-abstract creatures literally grow from the cognac vapor becoming the embodiment of both sophisticated production cycle and the architectural meditation about it, concentrated and agile, yet run through the filter of necessity. It’s been about a decade now since the architects started searching for architecture outside of shape: in ecology, economy, statistic, function, and landscaping. Given this background, what TOTEMENT did is a very brave thing to do, even though they did nothing more than find a motivated shape – the kind that arouses emotions, opening up the spectator’s vision, but the kind that is definitely far from excessive. After all, this is what architecture should be about – give shape to the interaction between the human senses and the space. But today those who explore this theme are few and far between – maybe because the task is so challenging.

25 September 2017

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

Headlines now

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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”.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

The Heart Lies Within

The second-phase building of the Evgeny Primakov School already won multiple awards while still in the design stage. Now that it’s completed, some unfinished nuances remain – most notably, the exposed ceiling structures, which ideally should have been concealed. However, given the priority placed on the building’s volumetric composition, this does not seem critical. What matters more is the “Wow!” effect created by the space itself.

Object

Magnetic Forces

“Krylatskaya 33” is the first large-scale residential complex to appear amidst the 1980s “micro-districts” that harmoniously coexist with the forests, the river, the slopes, and the sports infrastructure. Despite its imposing scale, the architects of Ostozhenka managed to turn the complex into something that can be best described as a “graceful dominant”. First, they designed the complex with consideration for the style and height of the surrounding micro-districts. Second, by introducing a pause in its tallest section, they created compositional tension – right along the urban planning axis of the area.

Object

Orion’s Belt

The Stone Khodynka 2 office complex, designed by Kleinewelt Architekten for the company Stone, is built with an ergonomic layout following “healthy building” principles: natural light, ventilation, and all the necessary features for an efficient office environment. On the outside, it resembles – like many contemporary buildings – an iPhone: sleek, glowing, glass-and-metal, edges elegantly rounded. Yet, it responds sensitively to the Khodynka context, where the main theme is the contrast between vertical and horizontal lines. The key intrigue lies in the design of the “stylobate” as a suspended passage, leaving the space beneath it open for free pedestrian movement.

Interview

Grigory Revzin: “It Was a Bold Statement Made on the Sly. Something Won”

In this article, we discuss the debates surrounding the circus competition and the demolition of the CMEA building with the most renowned architectural critic of our time. A paradox emerges in the process: while nostalgia for the Brezhnev era seems to be in vogue in Russia, a landmark building – the “axis” of the Warsaw Pact – has been sentenced to demolition. Isn’t that strange? We also find out that wow-architecture has made a comeback as a post-COVID trend. However, to make a truly powerful statement, professionals still remain indispensable.

Object

Exposed Concrete

One of the stages of improving a small square in the town of Lermontov was the construction of a skatepark. Entrusting this part of the project to the XSA team, the city gained a 250-meter trick track whose features resemble those of land art objects – unparalleled in Russia in both scale and design. Here’s a look at how the experimental snake run in the foothills of the Caucasus was built.

Object

One Step Closer To the Dream

The challenges of getting all the mandatory approvals, an insufficient budget, and construction site difficulties did not prevent ASADOV Bureau from achieving its main goal in the realization of the school project in the town of Troitsk – taking another step away from outdated notions of educational spaces toward creating a fundamentally new academic environment.

Object

Chalet on the Rock

An Accor hotel in Arkhyz, designed by A.Len, will be situated at the gateway to the resort’s main tourist hubs. The architects reinterpreted the widely popular chalet style while adding an unexpected twist – an unfinished structure preserved on the site. The design team transformed this remnant into an exciting space featuring an open-air pool and a restaurant with panoramic views of the region’s highest mountain ridges.

Interview

Sergey Skuratov: “By and large, the project has been realized in line with the original ideas”

In this issue, we talk to the chief architect of Garden Quarters, looking back at the history and key moments of a project that took 18 years to develop and has now finally been completed. What interests us most are the transformations that the project underwent during construction, and the way the “necessary void” of public space was formed, which turned this remarkable complex into a fragment of a whole new type of urban fabric – not just at the horizontal “street” level but in its vertical structure as well.

Object

A Unique Representative

The recently concluded year 2024 can be considered the year of completion for the “Garden Quarters” residential complex in Moscow’s Khamovniki. This project is well-known and, in many ways, iconic. Rarely does one manage to preserve such a number of original ideas, achieving in the end a kind of urban planning Gesamtkunstwerk. Here is a subjective view from an architecture journalist, with an interview with Sergey Skuratov soon to follow.

Object

Field of Life

The new project by the architectural company PNKB (an acronym for “Design, Research, and Advisory Bureau”), led by Sergey Gnedovsky and Anton Lyubimkin, for the Kulikovo Field Museum is dedicated to the field as a concept in its own right. The field has long been a focus of the museum’s thorough and successful research. Accordingly, the exterior of the new museum building is gentler than that of its predecessor, which was also designed by PNKB and dedicated specifically to the historic battle. Inside, however, the building confidently guides the visitor from a luminous atrium along a spiral path to the field – interpreted here as a field of life.

Object

A Paper Clip above the River

In this article, we talk with Vitaly Lutz from the Genplan Institute of Moscow about the design and unique features of the pedestrian bridge that now links the two banks of the Yauza River in the new cluster of Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MSTU). The bridge’s form and functionality – particularly the inclusion of an amphitheater suspended over the river – were conceived during the planning phase of the territory’s development. Typically, this approach is not standard practice, but the architects advocate for it, referring to this intermediate project phase as the “pre-AGR” stage (AGR stands for Architectural and Urban Planning Approval). Such a practice, they argue, helps define key parameters of future projects and bridge the gap between urban planning and architectural design.

Review

Living in the Architecture of One’s Own Making

Do architects design houses for themselves? You bet! In this article, we are examining a new book by TATLIN publishing house. This book – unprecedented for Russia – features 52 private homes designed and built by contemporary architects for themselves. It includes houses that are famous, even iconic, as well as lesser-known ones; large and small, stylish and eccentric. To some extent, the book reflects the history of Russian architecture over the past 30 years.

Object

A City Block Isoline

Another competition project for a residential complex on the banks of the Volga in Nizhny Novgorod has been prepared by Studio 44. A team of architects led by Ivan Kozhin concluded that using a regular block layout in such a location would be inappropriate and developed a “custom design” approach: a chain of parceled multi-section buildings stretching along the entire embankment. Let’s explore the features and advantages of this unconventional method.

Report

Competition: The Price of Creativity?

Any day now, we’re expecting the results of a competition held by the “Samolet” development group for a plot in Kommunarka. In the meantime, we share the impressions of Editor-in-Chief Julia Tarabarina, who managed to conduct a public talk. Though technically focused on the interaction between developers and architects, the public talk turned into a discussion about the pros and cons of architectural competitions.

Object

Terraced Design

The “River Park” residential complex has confidently and securely shaped the Nagatinsky Backwater shoreline. Featuring a public embankment, elevated courtyards connected by pedestrian bridges, and brick façades, the development invites exploration of its nuanced response to the surrounding context, as well as hints of the architects’ megalithic design thinking.

A Kremlin’s Core and Meteorite Fragments

We continue our coverage of the competition projects for the residential district that the development company GloraX plans to build along the embankment of the Rowing Channel in Nizhny Novgorod. ASADOV Architects approached the concept through a deep dive into local identity, using storytelling to pinpoint a central idea for the design: the master plan and composition are imagined as if a meteorite had struck a “proto-Kremlin”. Sounds weird? Find more details below!

​Mental Image

Mental Image