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​New York in Itself

Archimatika has presented the first project that it did for Manhattan, in which the company fully implemented all of its PRO-housing principles. The premium class residential complex with expressive architecture is designed in such a way that its residents will feel secure, yet by no means isolated.

Alyona Kuznetsova

Written by:
Alyona Kuznetsova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

26 August 2019
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Designing a project for the city of New York is quite an achievement for any architectural company, much more so for one from the post-Soviet territory. There is a popular opinion that our architects are not exactly welcome guests in the western countries – they are generally perceived as falling short of the world standards, because “they need to learn how to build in their homeland in the first place”. However, there are a few recent projects of this kind: Sergey Tchoban is now building in Germany, and Meganom has designed an ultra-slim skyscraper for Manhattan, to name but two. These first “expansion steps” are interesting to examine: what is it that these architects have to offer to the western world? What makes it different from ours? How do they adapt to a different bureaucracy and a different legal environment?

In the case of Archimatika, we can assume that its competitive edge was the company’s philosophy that was eventually transformed into a method: all of the projects designed by this Kiev-based company are based on fundamentally developed concept of housing individuality that the authors are constantly perfecting.

Here is what their method is about. Before getting into the design stage, Archimatika performs a rather serious sociological survey: what kind of target audience will the future complex be designed for? What do these people want? Where do they work? What habits do they have? After which, the company comes up with floor plans that will suit specifically these people, then combine the apartments to form a house, then design the façade. This method has a lot in common with context-based architecture but what is taken into consideration here is not just the history and the surrounding buildings but, more importantly, the needs of the modern users. Proceeding not from some accidental flashy image but “from the inside”, Archimatika creates houses that really reflect the hero of our time. And it takes architecture to its logical conclusion because it is not just the outer shell that is creatively developed but also the environment around it.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika
Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


Anyway, Manhattan. Its average resident is a slightly neurotic type, like Woody Allen, a little of James Bond, and a little bit of the heroine of Amy Schumer from “I Feel Pretty”. A lone wolf, a successful upbeat manager, he is always in a hurry, doesn’t cook at home, and generally is not into doing much housework – he will happily delegate it to hired assistants. He doesn’t like to have guests in but he keeps a dog. In addition, he is polite to the point of paranoia – if he accidentally bumps into you in the city crowd, he will immediately apologize profusely, although probably because of his desire to extinguish this accidental contact and forget about you forever. He needs to have a shelter – an island of peacefulness amidst the never-ending hassle, a quiet lagoon, a shell, a den, after all, where he can hide from the world outside and focus on himself and his problems, a place where he can make a pause. Yet, at the same time, you need to make sure that he won’t feel lonely in his cocoon. Is some respects, this description may seem like a stereotypical one for any megalopolis, but, when taken in its entirety, it’s a very Manhattan-specific portrait. 

Based on this “composite portrait”, the company developed 16 floor plan types for 30 apartments of the future complex. These 30 “modules” ranging from 27 to 170 square meters, like some volumetric Tetris pieces, come together to form the rectangular block of the entire building.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex. Apartment plans
Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex. Section views
Copyright: © Archimatika


The first two floors are public ones; we’ll get to them later. The lower residential floors are occupied by small studios. These include a tiny kitchen with a front a little more than a meter long and two stove burners – to warm up your food, have a quick bite to eat, be on the go all day, and then crash down to sleep. The workplace is the perfect match for the kitchen: a laptop, a freelancer’s weapon of choice, doesn’t need much space. This planning hierarchy is reigned by the closet and the bed – they occupy most of the useful floor space. Generally, it all looks like a high-class hotel room. And, in order to make sure that one can comfortably spend a longer time inside the house under various circumstances, the architects provided for a large public-use kitchen, one per each floor, where one can cook a full-fledged supper, as well as a lounge, where you could visit with your friends or simply chat with your neighbor. Complemented with such an addition, the lower block starts looking, typology-wise, like a co-living hostel.

Snail Apartments housing complex. 2nd and 3rd floor
Copyright: © Archimatika


The next level are single-bedroom apartments, with a floor space of 40+ square meters. Here each functional zone gets clearer borders: the kitchen and the bedroom are separated, and there is even a small study. Further on – meaning, higher up – there are five apartments one and a half stories high: the “loft” contains a study that commands a city view; below, there is a bedroom and a kitchen. One of these apartments has access to a terrace: it appeared because of height difference, which is required by the local construction requirements.

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    Snail Apartments housing complex. Apartment plans
    Copyright: © Archimatika
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    Snail Apartments housing complex. Section views
    Copyright: © Archimatika
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    Snail Apartments housing complex. Apartment plans
    Copyright: © Archimatika
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    Snail Apartments housing complex. Section views
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    Snail Apartments housing complex. The plans of the 4th and 5th floors
    Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


The topmost part is the penthouse, an indispensable element of any American house. There is a bathroom in each of the three bedrooms, as well as a dedicated study and a walk-in wardrobe. All the bulky seasonal stuff can be stowed away in the storage room – it is definitely too big to be called a closet. The dining room is situated in the bay window, from where you can see New York spread out before you.

Snail Apartments housing complex. Apartment plans
Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex. The penthouse on the 10th floor
Copyright: © Archimatika


The diverse floor plans make it possible to fill this house with people of different ages, family and social status, yet all with a similar life outlook. In theory, the neighbors will not be getting in each other’s way, yet they will soon meet each other, maybe even make friends, or will at least maintain more or less regular contacts. At any rate, this is one of the tasks that the architects set for themselves when they were designing this house. The solution to this task lies in the common-use areas.

The entrance group is marked by a giant – at least, by the scale of this building – brass marquee, upon which a sculptural family of snails is crawling up. The image has not been finally approved yet but it still expresses rather adequately the idea of perseverance: one immediately feels like saying: “Heck, this is my story, the story of us all!” – most of us are such snails, who slowly but surely move towards their goals. At the same time, these clams are large and sudden enough to be perceived as the author’s bright gesture; they have some Lewis Carroll quality about them – yet, on the other hand, this image of harmless “slow movers” is uniquely comforting in its own way, as if saying that here is your home, the “shell” or “shelter” for everyone who lives in it, you don’t really need to carry it around on your back, but you are more than welcome to come inside. The volumetric marquee boldly turns inside, “pulling in” everyone who comes in and creating an impression of you getting into the shell of the house – many of us, as children, probably examined a seashell, wondering how the calm gets in there, beyond the turn of its spiral, into the safely of its home. Oh, by the way, speaking of spirals – one is just within a hand’s reach: next to the entrance, the “spiral” theme (which is what many shells are essentially based upon) is supported by the staircase standing behind the transparent bay window – as if we are seeing a section view of a shell, like in a biology textbook, perceiving the shell as a whole and at the same time as the sum of its parts. The lobby, as opposed to the Manhattan tradition, is not very large, yet cozy – it also picks up the “shelter” narrative, however brittle and transparent, but still dependable. After all, a snail may mean either a screw, or a clam, so the image is developed still further, in unobtrusive bionic details, such as unexpectedly bulging windows – but first things first.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


The first two floors are the “home” public space, to which you can come “with your slippers on”. The area will include a café, a cigar room, and a barbershop, which in the evenings will turn into a bar by a simple turnaround of the armchairs. Other recreational activities are represented by a workout gym, a yoga room, a massage room, and a sauna. There is also a bicycle parking, the already-mentioned joint-use kitchen, and a quiet room for an occasional important meeting. What is interesting is the fact that all of these zones can be joined together: there is a possibility to pull up the soundproof partitions and throw a grand old party here. And, of course, there is a special designated room for dogs, in which every pet can wait for its master and even, should such need arise, get a few kinds of service. Also, the residents and their guests will have at their disposal a little green yard, the ideas for the landscaping project of which, according to the long-standing tradition, Archimatika commissioned to the children studio Arch4Kids.

Snail Apartments housing complex. The public space
Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex. The first floor
Copyright: © Archimatika


It is quite an unconventional way to write about an architectural project spending the first half of the article on the description of floor plans of the apartments and public areas. But – this is what Archimatika is all about. And, in spite of this, the “architecture” as such – if we are to speak about the outward appearance of the building – is still quite impressive.

The land site, upon which Snail Apartments is built, is essentially a lacuna between a fire station and a five-story housing project, both buildings being made of red brick with cast-iron staircases and cute little balconies – the classic New York, the way we know it from the Hollywood movies. Archimatika picks up this “loft” style, which is abundant here in other buildings of this area as well, and reinterprets it in new materials and new images. What remains unchanged, however, is the equality of the cornices: the height of the lower volume, which is standing out into the street, is aligned with the neighboring building, with the next six floors noticeably standing back into the depth of the land site, forming a large ledge with a terrace resting upon it in full accordance with the above-mentioned construction requirements.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


Snail Apartments housing complex. The sixth floor
Copyright: © Archimatika


The main detail is, of course, the bulging windows that look like the cylinders of pneumatic mail. The massive piers of the part of the building that meets the red construction line are a habitual way of creating an image of a shelter necessary to protect oneself from the enemy’s arrows or from the chilling winds. And the glass bubbles that are bulging out from the concrete framework look as if they are about to burst – this obviously has something to do with how fragile our spirits are, fatigued by the crazy pace of modern life. On the other hand, the opacity and the thickness of the bent glass gets one fantasizing about how the electronic waves may crash against this window that protects the residents against the information flow. The border turns out to be transparent yet palpable: one can keep on watching the world go by but it’s up to him whether or not to let it inside. And, if we are to envision the bulging windows and piers in a section view, we will get a pattern that looks like the cut of some spiral shell, consisting of a multitude of revolving partitions. The thing is that this elegant pattern is not twisted into a spiral but is “unrolled”, in a more human-friendly fashion, upon the façade that goes parallel to the street red line. The bulging windows create yet another association, the classical one – namely, that of arrays of arches of different width, which is a very popular architectural technique nowadays.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


The cylindrical windows are not meant to be opened; for ventilation, the architects are planning to use a lateral profile with adjustable ventilation, developed by SCHUCO, as well as a system of artificial ventilation, rather common in the North America. The curvilinear windows are to be washed from the outside, much like modern glass façades. Thanks to its shape, the bent glass is a lot harder to break than the straight kind – the architects explain – but even if you do break it, the hardened glass, covered by protective film, will make it possible to avoid dangerously sharp fragments. 

The dark-red brick of the façades, traditional in New York, is replaced by chocolate-colored concrete with inclusions of marble of two colors. In combination with glass and brass, it pays homage to the traditions of Art Deco and the modern skyscrapers. 

All of the above obviously yields a house with a custom-designed appearance that puts one in the mind of Vienna experiments by Hans Hollain, at the same time reinterpreting the image of a traditional New York building in a modern lexicon, technologically more advanced – you can take as an example these curvilinear frameless bay windows that look really expensive, like some one-of-a-kind boutique thing. The flashy elements – the spiral staircase enclosed in a transparent cylinder, the golden surface of the wavy ribs of the “entrance to the home shell” underneath the marquee, the alternation of piers with rounded corners and semicircular windows – come together to form a nontrivial image, not devoid of some philosophical symbolism: it is about abidance, perseverance, love for small details, and an urge to display them on an artistic hyper-scale. The sculpture of the entrance grows into the house and defines its “genetic code”, finding rhythmic responses in its façades. It is a “sculpture” of a house, yet it is still akin to the neighboring “just” brick houses, combining designer technique and contextual tact, the bravery of modernist plastique of the sixties and seventies and the authors’ love for romantically reinterpreting everything they lay their hands on – everything that’s inside, outside, and everything that you can think about in this connection. What we ultimately get is a very curious kind of alloy, noticeable and integral at the same time, even though it does require a high-quality technical execution, which is, we assume, is quite possible in New York.

Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


New York can be described by many words, one of them being “lonely”. There is a wonderful book written by Olivia Laing, which is named as much – The Lonely City – where she shares about various characters, from Edward Hopper to Andy Warhol, scrutinizing their feelings of being lost and lonely in this specific megalopolis – and she had plenty of material to go by. In many respects, Snail Apartments is resonant with this feeling; it addresses the topic of some brittleness and pathetic vulnerability, inherent even to the most successful people.

Currently, Archimatika, together with its clients and its partners, is doing the SWOT analysis – there is also a chance that the project will be revised.
Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika
Snail Apartments housing complex
Copyright: © Archimatika


26 August 2019

Alyona Kuznetsova

Written by:

Alyona Kuznetsova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov
Headlines now
Our Everything
Who is Alexey Shchusev? In the last couple of weeks, since the architect’s 150th birthday, different individuals have answered this question differently. The most detailed, illustrated, and elegantly presented response is an exhibition held in two buildings of the Museum of Architecture on Vozdvizhenka. Four curators, a year and a half of work performed by the entire museum, and exhibition design by Sergey Tchoban and Alexandra Sheiner – in this article, we take you on a tour of the exhibition and show what’s what in it.
Gold Embroidery
A five-story housing complex designed by Stepan Liphart in Kazan, responds to the stylistically diverse context with its form, both integral and agile, and as for the vicinity of the “Ekiyat” movie theater, the complex responds to it with a semblance of theater curtain folds, and active plastique of its balconies, that bear some resemblance to theater boxes. Even if excessively pompous a little bit, the complex does look fresh and modern. One will have a hard time finding Art Deco elements in it, even though the spirit of the 1930s, run through the filter of neo-modernism, is still clearly felt, just as a twist of the Occident.
Reconciliation
The restoration of the Salt Warehouse for the Zvenigorod Museum, on the one hand, was quite accurately implemented according to the design of the People’s Architect, and, on the other hand, it was not without some extra research and adjustments, which, in this case, was quite beneficial for the project. The architects discovered the original paint color, details of the facades, and studied the history of rebuilds of this building. As a result, the imposing character of the empire building, the oldest one in the city, and the differences of later additions were accurately revealed. Most importantly, however, the city got a new cultural and public space, which is already “working” in full swing.
From Moscow to Khabarovsk
This year, the works submitted by the students of the Genplan Institute of Moscow included a proposal for revitalizing Moscow’s “Pravda” complex with its structures designed by Ilia Golosov, landscaping an East Siberian town, located a 12-hour drive away from the nearest big city, and three versions of turning a derelict “pioneer camp” into an educational hub, similar to “Sirius”. Two sites out of three have an interested client, so chances are that the students’ works will be ultimately implemented.
Harmonization of Intentions
We met and talked with the chief architect of Genplan Institute of Moscow Grigory Mustafin and the chief architect of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Maxim Efanov – about how the master plan of the city is formed. The key to success: gathering data, digital simulation, working with the city people, thinking infrastructure, and presentation.
​Cité for Naro-Fominsk
The new neighborhood on an island in the center of Naro-Fominsk continues the ideas of developing the territory of the silk-weaving factory, around which the city actually formed. The authors skillfully mix different formats of mid-rise development and make the most of the island location, offering a variety of formats of interaction with water, available to all citizens. No wonder that the project is considered exemplary and worthy of duplication in the region. It is also an example of rare synergy between the client and the architects.
A Tower and a Manor House
The concept of a high-density residential district replacing a set of outdated privately owned houses in Yekaterinburg preserves the street grid and, in some cases, even the scale of construction. OSA Architects combine towers with townhouses and other types of housing, orienting the silhouette composition towards a pedestrian boulevard. Through non-linear routes and spatial diversity, the residents will see their neighborhood in a new way every day.
​The Warm Stone
The housing complex in Zelenogorsk is interpreted by Mayak architects as a scatter of stones. The unconventional outline of houses with a pentagon plan not only helped to form the image part of the project, but also facilitated the architects’ work with the density of construction and insolation of the apartments.
For All Times
The modular technology combined with the building material of glued wood allows the architectural company Rhizome to create quick-mount hotels (no less!) that are highly rated by the architectural community: last week, the new hotel “Vremena Goda. Igora” scored three awards. Below, we are examining the project in detail.
The Other Way Around
Few awards instead of many, the award ceremony conducted on the first day instead of last, projections instead of sketch boards, trees inside and art objects outside – the renewal of the Architecton festival seemingly took the sure-fire path of turning all the professional traditions upside down – or at least those that happened to be within the scope of the organizers’ attention. There’s certainly a lot to pick on, but the exhibition does feel fresh and improvisational. It looks that pretty soon these guys will set trends for Moscow as well. We shared with you about some elements of the festival in our Telegram channel, and now we are examining the whole thing.
ArchiWOOD-14: Building Bridges
This season, the festival’s jury decided not to award a grand prize: judging by the fact that the shortlist included several projects that had not reached the award in previous years, and the “best house” was pronounced to be an undoubtedly beautiful but mass-produced model, the “harvest” of wooden buildings in 2023 was not too abundant. However, there were many unusual typologies among the finalists, and restoration and revitalization projects received their share of recognition. Let’s take a look at all the finalists.
The Chinese Symphony
The construction of the Chinese center “Huaming Park” has been a long story that came to fruition relatively recently. The building is adjacent to a traditional Chinese garden, but it is very modern, laconic and technological, and the simple-in-form, yet spectacular, white lamellae promise to someday be incorporated as a media facade. This complex is also truly multifunctional: it contains different types of living spaces, offices, a large fitness center, conference halls and restaurants – all wrapped in one volume. You can comfortably hold international forums in it, having everything you may possibly need at your fingertips, and going outside only to take a walk. In this article, we are examining this complex in detail.
Ensemble of Individualities
Construction of the first phase of the INDY Towers multifunctional complex on Kuusinen Street, designed by Ostozhenka, has started. The project opens new angles of similarity between the column and the skyscraper, and we examine the nuances and parallels.
Black and Red
Kazakov Grand Loft received its name for a reason: responding to the client’s brief and proceeding from the historical industrial architecture of its immediate surroundings, Valery Kanyashin and Ostozhenka architects proposed a new version of a modern house designed in the fashionable “loft” style. What makes this building different is the fact that the bricks here are dark gray, and the facades of the romantic “fortress” towers blossom with magnificent glazing of the windows in the upper part. The main highlight of the complex, however, is the multiple open air terraces situated on different levels.
Icy Hospitality
Mezonproject has won the national architectural and town planning competition for designing a hotel and a water recreation center in the city of Irkutsk. The architects chose hummocks of Baikal ice as a visual image.
The Mastery of Counterpoint
In the sculpture of Classical Greece, counterpoint was first invented: the ability to position the human body as if it were about to take a step, imbuing it with a hint of the energy of future movement, and with hidden dynamics. For architecture, especially in the 20th century and now, this is also one of the main techniques, and the ATRIUM architects implement it diligently, consistently – and always slightly differently. The new residential complex “Richard” is a good example of such exploration, based on the understanding of contrasts in the urban environment, which was fused into the semblance of a living being.
Countryside Avant-Garde
The project of the museum of Aleksey Gastev, the ideologist of scientific organization of work, located in his hometown of Suzdal, is inscribed in multiple contexts: the contest of a small town, the context of avant-garde design, the context of “lean production”, and the context of the creative quest of Nikolai Lyzlov’s minimalist architecture – and it seems to us that this project even reveals a distant memory of the fact that Aleksey Gastev learned his craft in France.
On the Hills
In the project by Studio 44, the “distributed” IT campus of Nizhny Novgorod is based on well-balanced contracts. Sometimes it is hovering, sometimes undulating, sometimes towering over a rock. For every task, the architects found appropriate form and logic: the hotels are based on a square module, the academic buildings are based on a “flying” one, and so on. Modernist prototypes, specifically, Convent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette, stand next to references to the antique Forum and the tower of a medieval university – as well as next to contextual allusions that help inscribe the buildings of the future campus into the landscape of the city hills with their dominants, high slopes, breathtaking river views, the historical city center, and the Nizhny Novgorod University.
The Magic Carpet
The anniversary exhibition of Totan Kuzembaev’s drawings named “Event Horizons” shows both very old drawings made by the architect in the formative 1980’s, and now extracted from the Museum of Architecture, as well as quite a few pictures from the “Weightlessness” series that Totan Kuzembaev drew specifically for this exhibition in 2023. It seemed to us that the architect represented reality from the point of view of someone levitating in space, and sometimes even upside down, like a magic carpet with multiple layers.
​A Copper Step
Block 5, designed by ASADOV architects as part of the “Ostrov” (“Island”) housing complex, is at the same time grand-scale, conspicuous thanks to its central location – and contextual. It does not “outshout” the solutions used in the neighboring buildings, but rather gives a very balanced implementation of the design code: combining brick and metal in light and dark shades and large copper surfaces, orthogonal geometry on the outside and flexible lines in the courtyard.
The Light for the Island
For the first time around, we are examining a lighting project designed for a housing complex; but then again, the authors of the nighttime lighting of the Ostrov housing complex, UNK lighting, proudly admit that this project is not just the largest in their portfolio, but also the largest in this country. They describe their approach as a European one, its chief principles being smoothness of transitions, comfort to the eye, and the concentration of most of the light at the “bottom” level – meaning, it “works” first of all for pedestrians.
Spots of Light
A new housing complex in Tyumen designed by Aukett Swanke is a very eye-pleasing example of mid-rise construction: using simple means of architectural expression, such as stucco, pitched roofs, and height changes, the architects achieve a “human-friendly” environment, which becomes a significant addition to the nearby park and forest.
Ledges and Swirls
The housing complex “Novaya Zarya” (“New Dawn”) designed by ASADOV Architects will become one of the examples of integrated land development in Vladivostok. The residential area will be characterized by various typologies of its housing sections, and a multitude of functions – in addition to the social infrastructure, the complex will include pedestrian promenades, shopping malls, office buildings, and recreational facilities. The complex is “inscribed” in a relief with a whopping 40-meter height difference, and overlooks the Amur Bay.
Agglomeration on an Island
Recently, an approval came for the master plan of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk agglomeration, which was developed by a consortium headed by the Genplan Institute of Moscow. The document provides for the creation of 12 clusters, the totality of which will give the region a qualitative leap in development and make the island more self-sufficient, more accessible, and less dependent on the mainland. We are inviting you to examine the details.
Ivan Grekov: “A client that wants to make a building that is “about architecture” is...
In this article, we are talking to Ivan Grekov, the leader of the architectural company KAMEN (translates as “stone”), the author of many high-profile projects that have been built in Moscow in the recent years, about the history of his company, about different approaches to form making, about different meanings of volume and facade, and about “layers” in working with the environment – at the example of two projects by Osnova Group. These are the MIRAPOLIS complex on the Mira Avenue in Rostokino, whose construction began at the end of last year, and the multifunctional complex in the 2nd Silikatny Proezd on the Zvenigorodsky Highway; recently, it received all the required approvals.
Grasping and Formulating
The special project “Tezisy” (“Abstracts”), showcased at Arch Moscow exhibition in Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor, brought together eight young “rock stars of architecture”, the headliner being Vladislav Kirpichev, founder of the EDAS school. In this article, we share our impressions of the installations and the perspectives of the new generation of architects.
The White Tulip
Currently, there are two relevant projects for the Great Cathedral Mosque in Kazan, which was transferred to a land site in Admiralteiskaya Sloboda in February. One of them, designed by TsLP, was recently showcased at Arch Moscow. In this article, we are covering another project, which was proposed during the same period for the same land site. Its author is Aleksey Ginzburg, the winner of the 2022 competition, but now the project is completely different. Today, it is a sculptural “flower” dome symbolizing a white tulip.
ATRIUM’s Metaverse
The architectural company ATRIUM opened a gallery of its own in a metaverse. Inside, one can examine the company’s approach and main achievements, as well as get some emotional experience. The gallery is already hosting cyberspace business meetings and corporate events.
​From Darkness to Light
Responding to a lengthy list of limitations and a lengthy – by the standards of a small building – list of functions, Vladimir Plotkin turned the project of the Novodevichy Monastery into a light, yet dynamic statement of modern interpretation of historical context, or, perhaps, even interpretation of light and darkness.