A City by the Water

The concept of a large-scale housing development at the edge of Voronezh, near the city reservoir, or “the sea”, as it is locally called, uses the waterside height difference to create a sophisticated public space, paying a lot of attention to the distribution of masses that determine the look of the future complex if viewed from the opposite bank of the river.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

06 April 2020

Object

The grand-scale housing complex with a romantic name of Zurbagan will be built at the edge of Voronezh, on the left bank of the namesake river, which floods here into a manmade lake. The historical center of the city is situated on the opposite bank of the river; the left bank is industrial and is dominated by prefabricated houses, but the developed land site is situated to the north of the nucleus consisting of old industrial parks. There is a sand bar stretching to the north of it, where a children’s yacht club will be built; behind the sand bar, again, to the north, over the gulf, the “Lazurny” housing complex is being built, a rather dull prefab affair. The actual territory of Zurbagan occupies around 20 hectares and is arranged along the arc of the gulf about a kilometer long. Along the water age, about 150-200 meters from the bank, runs the Dobrolubova Street, now consisting of small private houses. As for the sand bank, it is rather unkempt, overgrown with trees and overridden with ruts from the anglers’ SUVs. This area has two names, Koldunovka or Otrozhka, after the township that has been known since the XVII century.

The silhouette of the complex, designed by KPLN architects, unlike the “micro-district” that is being built nearby, is anything but “standard”. It puts one in the mind of New York, or Chicago, or, most likely, Dubai, yet not in a straightforward way – rather, it explores the very idea of a textbook example of towers by the water. It barely marks the recognizable archetypes without putting too much focus on them: here is an Art Deco Chicago couple, here is a modernist slab with dark spots that makes one think about Rotterdam; here is a string of sections of different height and colors, treated as towers that got “stuck” together, and here are towers that are sharpened as giant pencils, and here are again three “Wright” parallelepiped skyscrapers, yet black and slender, and here is a “mirror” couple of two triangular “sail” buildings.

zooming — “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN

Each of the themes brings in its own color, emotion and association-wise, setting the change of impressions and ideas, yet in a very general way, not the way it is done in Las Vegas, but as a set of symbols that make you compare what you see with some high-profile architectural projects – and it yields something like an ABC of town planning images, given to us in sensations.

The “associatively sharpened” towers are placed along the bank; the city blocks are grouped a little bit further away from the water, behind the Dobrolyubova Street, “on the continent” – these are further development plans. “The central blocks of this housing construction, due to the height difference of the territory, are fundamentally divided into two levels: the upper one that faces the embankment and the lower one facing the Dobrolyubova Street” – Sergey Nikeshkin specifies.

All the houses rest on podiums, which essentially arrange them into groups. Using the height difference of the river bank – it is about 10 meters here – KPLN architects arrange the podiums along the river bank in such a way that from the outside they are sunk into the hill, which presents the main space for the underground parking garages, while the outside contour, facing the water, is occupied by local businesses – cafes, stores, and other rentable premises, which form a waterfront filled with city functions.

The roofs of the podiums will have private yards on them, and one will be able to enter these yards from the Dobrolyubova Street on the ground level, and, taking a few steps forward, one will find themselves one story higher than the waterfront.

1 / 3

Section view 1-1 of buildings 1 and 2. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
2 / 3

Section view 2-2 of the buildings 1 and 2. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
3 / 3

Plan of the parking garage at elevation 0.000. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN

Due to the fact that the construction front is not continuous, from the city side it is also accessed by driveways; there is also a street that runs in front of the houses, yet the pedestrian spaces are quite large, and make it possible to place enough tables and cafe umbrellas before the shop windows.

There is also enough room for trees and lawns, while the paving pattern is designed in such a way that it is generally of the “city” type and descends to the water in a stone slice, like Venetian waterfronts do, i.e. on a rather high level – yet at some places it gets broken, encircling the islets of nature: for the sandy beaches – there are a few of them here – and for the existing trees that the architects tried to preserve during construction.

From the waterfront, it’s the same picture as with the silhouette of the houses – typologically, it is a compound structure; it does not feature a single main face, quite the contrary, walking around the complex, you may find yourself sometimes on one level and then on another, sometimes watching the river from a stone elevation, or go down to the green bank under a willow or go barefoot through the sand toward the water’s edge.

The deep bends of the stone part of the paving include the passageways from the “upper” embankment to the “lower” one; sometimes their steps become an amphitheater overlooking the river, gazing west, so people will have an opportunity to admire sunsets here. Oh, and by the way, the river panorama, with its romantic “sunset” factor was by no means neglected by the architects – they designed more windows overlooking the river, and even drew on the 3D simulations, in addition to the inside apartment light, the extra ambient orange light from the sunsets, which provide a very romantic “backlight”.

The other benches on the wavy edge of the waterfront look in the opposite direction, i.e. towards the city promenade before the houses. As a result, a winding (as opposed to straight) line of the stone embankment not just makes it possible to integrate natural elements into it but also helps to ensure a kaleidoscope of impressions.

Thus, the interaction with water here is not only contemplative; one can also come up closer by different routes, not just going to the beach. The central part will feature the main public descent to the water with stairs on both sides, and a couple of piers below protruding into the water. There are also plans for building a quay. In addition, the architects proposed a semicircular boardwalk for taking walks directly above the water.

Getting back to the architecture of the houses proposed by KPLN – it is designed as being modern and diverse, the term “modern” meaning here not just the laconic character of straight lines and the proverbial absence of stylization, but also elements of a more relevant approach that takes into consideration the fact that we as humans strive for recognizable viewing angles, rich textures, and visual comfort. This meaning: light and dark volumes alternate, often in pairs, even though it is not always the case. For decorating the volumes that respond in “conservative” pitched roofs to their central location in the complex, the architects proposed brick of different tones; for the houses on the edges of the territory – fiber cement, which augmented the string of images with yet another narrative: the difference between the center and the periphery.

As for the facades, they are composed of slender piers with an alternating rhythm, supported by the composition of the grilles of the air conditioning units; the recessed balconies are set deep inside, even though you at times go see an occasional bay window. The height of the windows is visually enlarged by dark fills – what it ends up looking is a regular, even if sometimes “undulating” grid, sometimes sparser, and sometimes denser at the corners; the houses are semitransparent in a modern way, yet without the overused vertical window pairs: the grid correspond to the floor division at all places.

All this enormous diversity is meant to ultimately create a magnificent silhouette of the complex seen from the water area – from the side of the historical Voronezh it must look dramatic, and by no means monotonous, which is ensured by a varying rhythm of the gaps between the volumes and alternating contour solutions. The panorama unfolds before the eyes of the observer a certain narrative, a string of stories, readable from afar. And there is also a temptation to add: unlike the nearby prefab houses, new and old alike.

As for the apartment selection of the complex, we can only consider two examples from the central part – the double-section houses, treated from the outside as pairs of towers with a pitched roof.

The first floors include public spaces for the residents of the complex, commercial rentable premises, and apartments too, while the technical floors combine mechanical rooms and variously configured storage rooms for the residents, implementing one of the progressive trends of today. The types of apartments range from studios to three-room ones, most of the plans including a kitchen / living room, yet there are also separate versions for the traditionalists. There are also options with changeable plans. Many of the apartments, starting from the double-room ones, feature two bathrooms.

1 / 8

Building 2. Plans of resindetial floors 20 and 22. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
2 / 8

Building 2. Plans of resindetial floors 2-12 and 18. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
3 / 8

Building 2. Plan of the maintenance floor and the 1st residential floor. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
4 / 8

Building 1. Plans of resindetial floors 20 and 21. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
5 / 8

Building 1. Plans of resindetial floors 16-17 and 18-19. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
6 / 8

Building 1. Plans of resindetial floors 11-13 and 14-15. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
7 / 8

Building 1. Plans of resindetial floors 2-7 and 8-10. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN
8 / 8

Building 1. The plan of the maintenance floor and the plan of the 1st floor. “Zurbagan” housing complex. Concept of territory development in Voronezh, 2018-2020

Copyright: © Architectural Bureau KPLN

In a word, this is a grand-scale concept of construction and development of the area at the edge of Voronezh, solved in the vein of modern trends of focusing on landscaping the public territories, and drawn with keen attention to detail, as well as distributing the masses in the far-end perspective. Towering above the water of the Voronezh reservoir, locally called “the sea”, these new houses do indeed take on the romantic features of a city of towers and sails: as if some universal theater of “city by the water” images got arrested in midair just ready to be implemented.

06 April 2020

Headlines now

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!

Contest Results

The Volga Regatta

GloraX plans to develop a residential complex spanning 14 hectares along the Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod. The winning design in a closed-door competition, created by GORA Architects, features housing typologies ranging from townhouses to terraced high-rise slabs, a balance of functions, diverse ways of engaging with the water, and even a dedicated island (no less!) for the city residents.

Object

Life Plans

The master plan for the residential district “Prityazheniye” (“Gravity”) in Naberezhnye Chelny was developed by the architectural company A.Len, taking into account the specific urban planning context and partially implemented solutions of the first phase. However, the master plan prioritized its own values: a green framework, a system of focal points, a hierarchy of spaces, and pedestrian priority. After this, the question of what residents will do in their neighborhood simply doesn’t arise.

Object

A New Track

We took a thorough look at D_Station, a railcar repair depot dating back to 1906, recently reconstructed while preserving its century-old industrial structure, upon the project by Sergey Trukhanov and T+T Architects. Though work on the interiors – set to house restaurants and public spaces – is still underway, the building’s exterior already offers plenty to see. Visitors can explore the blend of old and new brickwork, appreciate the architect’s unique interpretation of ruin aesthetics, and enjoy the newly built pedestrian route that connects the Citydel Business Center’s arches to Kazakova Street.

Report

Four Different Surveys

The “Explore the City” competition, organized this year by the Genplan Institute of Moscow, stands out as a pretty unconventional one for the architectural field but aligns perfectly well with the character of urban planning work. The winning project analyzed contemporary residential complexes, combining urban planning insights with a realtor’s perspective to propose a hybrid approach. Other entries explored public centers, motivations for car ownership, and housing vacancy rates. A fifth participant withdrew. Here’s a closer look at the four completed works.

Report

Scheduled Evolution

ASADOV Architects unveiled the EvyCenter pavilion, a microcultural hub for fostering personal growth, organizing workshops, and doing gymnastics. Additionally, this pavilion serves as a prototype for a scalable country house, drawing inspiration from the “Loskutok” project, and constructed from CLT panels in a factory. This marks the beginning of a developer project initiated by the architectural firm (sic!), which is seeking partners to expand both small Evy settlements and even larger Evy cities, which are, according to Andrey Asadov, aimed at fostering the “evolutionary” development of the people who will inhabit them.

Object

The Golden Crown

The concept for a dental clinic in Yekaterinburg, developed by CNTR Studio, revolves around the idea of a “mouth full of gold”: pristine white porcelain stoneware walls are complemented by matte brass details. To avoid an overly literal interpretation, the architects focused on the building’s proportions, skillfully navigating between sunlight requirements and fire safety regulations.

News

Flexibility and Integration

Not long ago, we covered the project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential complex, designed by APEX. Now, we’ve been shown different fence concepts they developed to enclose the complex’s private courtyards, incorporating a variety of public functions. We believe that the sheer fact that the complex’s architects were involved in such a detail as fencing speaks volumes.

Object

A Step Forward

The HIDE residential complex represents a major milestone for ADM architects and their leaders Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova in their quest for a fresh high-rise aesthetic – one that is flexible and layered, capable of bringing vibrancy to mass and silhouette while shaping form. Over recent years, this approach has become ADM’s “signature style”, with the golden HIDE tower playing a pivotal role in its evolution. Here, we delve into the project’s story, explore the details of the complex’s design, and uncover its core essence.

​A City by the Water

A City by the Water