The Town in the Snuff-box

The new academic building of Cooperation School in Moscow’s Taganka, designed and built by ASADOV Architects, is a compact volume, at the same time filled with functions and impressions. It easily combines classrooms, a theater, a cafeteria, a gym, and a double-height atrium with an open library and an exit to the terrace – virtually everything that you expect to see in a modern school.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

13 October 2021

Object

“Cooperation School” has been in existence since 1990; since 1993 it has been functioning as a private one. Its main building – a school building four stories high, constructed in 1936 – is situated on Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street, directly behind an office and shopping center that is being built right now by the project of Aleksey Ginzburg, across the Garden Ring opposite the Taganka Theater, and next to a fitness center built in 2007-2009 by a SPEECH project – and the school students are using the fitness center’s swimming pool. In a word, the architectural context around the school, located next to one of Moscow’s central squares, is quite decent, and one can only be happy about the fact that, looking to expand its premises, the school commissioned the project of its new building to ASADOV Architects – but then again, a few years ago, in 2016, this architectural company already completed the construction of a kindergarten, belonging to Cooperation School, in the Maly Poluyaroslavsky Alley, not far away from the Kurskaya metro station.

The new school building was completed in the fall of 2020, and recently it won a Grand Prix of the BuildSchool special award of the Union of Architects. The new educational center increased the capacity of the school by about half: if the old building could barely accommodate four hundred and fifty students, now it is possible to comfortably teach about seven hundred. The new building hosts: a large cafeteria, a second gym and specialized classrooms for the junior and senior high, both large ones and smaller ones for dividing classes into groups. The school is private, the classes are for 16 students, and language groups are for 3-4 kids.

zooming — The location plan. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects

The 1936 school building is located deep in the block between two streets: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Bolshoy Drovyanoy Alley, with its side wall facing the Garden Ring. The other side wall (the eastern one) gives a start to the school yard – in this sense, the school has been lucky again because not always the school students get such a big schoolyard in the center of the city. The new building is located near the north corner of the old building, at the beginning of the yard; the architects were also able to preserve much of the green space. In addition, Taganka is widely known for its hilly terrain – there are staircases and slopes all around – and the new building is also partially “buried” in the slope, the height difference being about 7 meters, so in its northern part it has four floors, and in the southern part three. There are several ramps on the western corner, which use the height drop, and entrances and exits at different levels.

The main entrance to the new building, however, is made in the hanging glass passage situated on the level of the 2nd floor of the old building.

The passage connects the corners of the two buildings diagonally and leads the students into a small double-height atrium, very well lit, since its right part (counting from the entrance) faces southeast. As is known, the atrium is one of the key parts of modern school buildings: it serves both for relaxation and for communication /socialization of the students. The atrium also noticeably lifts your spirits when you enter – thanks to the sun glares and a significant height, it just makes you take a deep breath and somehow take a look around.

The atrium is not exactly large but it nevertheless has enough room for four steps of the amphitheater, a string of ring lights, enhancing the height of the space, and a balcony with a few bookcases of the open library. The second tier running along the glass façade is accessed by a staircase, which also leads to the terrace balcony that stretches along the east façade above the school yard. It is fenced by an impost-less glass barrier, and it will be used for both walks and school events.

The connection of the atrium with the external space, in addition to the exit to the balcony and stained glass windows, is also marked through the use of fiberglass concrete slabs with relief vertical stripes similar to the ones on the façade – they decorate the western wall in the interior, emphasizing that a volume is “docked” on this side, the external texture of which is exactly the same.

1 / 4

The atrium. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
2 / 4

The atrium. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
3 / 4

The atrium. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
4 / 4

The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects

Since the building faces the entrance at an angle, the paths diverge from the atrium in a fan-like manner; to the right, there is a corridor that runs along the doors of small classrooms, to the left, there are laboratory rooms. The ceilings of the corridors are quite high; the exposed ventilation structures are painted in their own color for each floor, which, like the general difference in tone in the interiors, facilitates intuitive navigation.

The most interesting of the specialized classrooms is the biology study with a tall double-height space, a stained glass window, a skylight, and yet another internal window that allows you to look down from the school space into the study from above. Its white walls are decorated with volumetric semblances of DNA spirals, and inside the school is planning, using a well-lit double-height space, to make a winter garden (some of the plants in the tubs are already there).

1 / 5

The biology study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
2 / 5

The physics study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
3 / 5

The chemistry study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
4 / 5

The chemistry study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
5 / 5

The biology study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru

The northern part of the building includes: (at the bottom) a tall gym with a balcony, and (at the top) a canteen with a thin slit of the skylight, and a small theater hall above its western part. The eastern walls of both the gym and cafeteria are made of glass and overlook the garden. The theater hall is darkened by curtains, but when the curtains are open, you can look from it to the east into the canteen, and to the north towards the Bolshoy Drovyanoy Lane – it should be noted that there are generally quite a lot of opportunities to look from one space to another, starting from the glass doors of all the classrooms and ending with stained glass windows of all large rooms and several skylights.

1 / 3

The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
2 / 3

The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
3 / 3

The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects

All these functions are “packed” in a compact volume, which, as we remember, is inscribed into a slope. This volume, however, is far from simple; it is livened up by two, not excessively big, but rather expressive cantilevers and designed on the outside as composed of three parts made of different materials. The simplest one of them is made up of golden-red aluminum panels in its bottom part, another, the most volumetric one, is made of striped fiberglass concrete: it appears on the northwest corner, where the biology study stands out in a two-level cantilever, as well as on the southern and eastern facades, also in a cantilever but with a rounded corner, where it marks the main mass of the small to midsize classrooms, and neighbors on the glass wall of the gym and the cafeteria.

The most spectacular part of the facade – a kind of “lace” – forms the entrance corner and atrium, from which we began our story, emphasizing, already from the outside, the entrance from the building. Fiberglass is also used here, not grayish-brown, as in the main part, but bright-white, with an openwork pattern, see-through in the windows, and with relief on the outside. The pattern combines stylized diagonal geometry of tree branches, letters and numbers. In the corner recess of the floor under the atrium there is another entrance with an open two-step staircase.

Thus, the building is perceived differently from the outside: it looks like a construction set of several parts joined together, and the “entrance” part adjacent to the passage turns out to be the most solemn – although this “representativeness” of the entrance is solved by atypical means, it is felt due to the abundance of glass, whiteness, openwork, the height of the atrium – and probably puts the students in a positive mood when they move from one building to another, serving not only as a compositional/spatial, but also as an emotional “hinge”. Or at least it looked to me that way.

Needless to say, the new school building reflects many of the design principles of modern schools – which is not surprising, since school buildings have become one of ASADOV’s specializations in recent years: public space with an open library and an amphitheater, access to the terrace, skylights and stained glass windows, compact “packaging” of volumes for optimal use of space and variously planned “rays of vision”, the ability to peek somewhere, for example, in the gym or the biology room, from above – all these are signs of an unconventional and cutting-edge approach. In this case, these design solutions are applied not to a giant, but to a relatively small – 2060 m2 – school building, which both inside and outside seems to be a kind of “treasure box”, in which a lot of effort, time and love have been invested, both by designers and the management of this private school.

1 / 6

The western facade. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
2 / 6

Plan of the 4th floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
3 / 6

Plan of the 3rd floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
4 / 6

Plan of the 2nd floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
5 / 6

Plan of the 1st floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
6 / 6

The cross-section view. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects

13 October 2021

Headlines now

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

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.

Object

Gold in the Sands

A new office for a transcontinental company specializing in resource extraction and processing has opened in Dubai. Designed by T+T Architects, masters of creating spaces that are contemporary, diverse, flexible, and original, this project exemplifies their expertise. On the executive floor, a massive brass-clad partition dominates, while layered textures of compressed earth create a contextually resonant backdrop.

Object

Layers and Levels of Flight

This project goes way back – Reserve Union won this architectural competition at the end of 2011, and the building was completed in 2018, so it’s practically “archival”. However, despite being relatively unknown, the building can hardly be considered “dated” and remains a prime example of architectural expression, particularly in the headquarters genre. And it’s especially fitting for an aviation company office. In some ways, it resembles the Aeroflot headquarters at Sheremetyevo but with its own unique identity, following the signature style of Vladimir Plotkin. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) headquarters in the Moscow agglomeration town of Zhukovsky, supplemented by recent photographs from Alexey Naroditsky – a shoot that became only recently possible due to the fact that improvements were finally made in the surrounding area.

Object

Light and Shadow

In this article, we delve into the architectural design of the “Chaika” house by DNK ag architects, which was recently completed in 2023 as part of the collection of signature designs at ZILArt. As is well-known, all the buildings in this complex follow a design code, yet each one is distinct. This particular building stands out not only for its whiteness and minimalism but also for the refined use of a limited number of techniques that, together, create what can confidently be called synergy.

View

Casus Novae

A master plan was developed for a large residential area with a name of “DNS City”, but now that its implementation began, the plan has been arbitrarily reformatted and replaced with something that, while similar on the surface, is actually quite different. This is not the first time such a thing happens, but it’s always frustrating. With permission from the author, we are sharing Maria Elkina’s post.

Report

Treasure Hunting

The GAFA bureau, in collaboration with Tegola and Arkhitail, organized an expedition to the island of Kilpola in Karelia as part of Moskomarkhitektura’s “Open City” festival. There, amidst moss and rocks, the students sought answers to questions like: what is the sacred, where does it dwell, and what sustains it? Assisting the participants in this quest were landscape engineer Evgeny Levin, artist Nicholas Roerich, a moose, and the lack of cellular connection. Here’s how the story unfolded.

Object

Depths of the Earth, Streams of Water

In the Malaya Okhta district, the Akzent building, designed by Stepan Liphart, was constructed. It follows a classic tripartite structure, yet it’s what you might call “hand-drawn”: each façade is unique in its form and details, some of which aren’t immediately noticeable. In this article, we explore the context and, together with the architect, delve into how the form was developed.

Object

Fir Tree Dynamics

The “Airports of Region” holding is planning to build an airport in Karachay-Cherkessia, aiming to make the Arkhyz and Dombay resorts more accessible to travelers. The project that won in an invitation-only competition, submitted by Sergey Nikeshkin’s KPLN, blends natural imagery inspired by the shape of a conifer seed, open-air waiting spaces, majestic large trees, and a green roof elevated on needle-like columns. The result is both nature-inspired and WOW.

Object

A Brick Shell

In the process of designing a clubhouse situated among pine trees in a prestigious suburban area near Moscow, the architectural firm “A.Len” did the façade design part. The combination of different types of brick and masonry correlates with the volumetric and plastique solutions, further enhanced by the inclusion of wood-painted fragments and metal “glazing”.

Report

Word Forms

ATRIUM architects love ambitious challenges, and for the firm’s thirtieth anniversary, they boldly play a game of words with an exhibition that dives deep into a self-created vocabulary. They immerse their projects – especially art installations – into this glossary, as if plunging into a current of their own. You feel as if you’re flowing through the veins of pure art, immersed in a universe of vertical cities, educational spaces – of which the architects are true masters – and the cultural codes of various locations. But what truly captivates is the bold statement that Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy make, both through their work and this exhibition: architecture, above all, is art – the art of working with form and space.

Object

Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity

Luxurious, fluid, large “kokoshniks” and spiral barrel columns, as if made from colorful chewing gum: there seem to be no other mansion like this in Moscow, designed in the “Neo-Russian-Modern” style. And the “Teremok” on Malaya Kaluzhskaya, previously somewhat obscure, has “come alive with new colors” and gained visibility after its restoration for the office of the “architectural ecosystem” as the architects love to call themselves. It’s evident that Julius Borisov and the architects at UNK put their hearts into finding this new office and bringing it up to date. Let’s delve into the paradoxes of this mansion’s history and its plasticity. Spoiler: two versions of modernity meet here, both balancing on the razor’s edge of “what’s current”.

Interview

Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”

It belongs to space, or to the air... It turns out that 3D printing is more effective when combined with a modular approach: the house is built in a workshop and then adapted to the site, including on uneven terrain. Yuri Vissarionov shares his latest experience in designing tourist complexes, both in central Russia and in the south. These include houseboats, homes printed from lightweight concrete using a 3D printer, and, of course, frame houses.

Object

Moscow’s First

“The quality of education largely depends on the quality of the educational environment”. This principle of the last decade has been realized by Sergey Skuratov in the project for the First Moscow Gymnasium on Rostovskaya Embankment in the Khamovniki district. The building seamlessly integrates into the complex urban landscape, responding both to the pedestrian flow of the city and the quiet alleyways. It skillfully takes advantage of the height differences and aligns with modern trends in educational space design. Let’s take a closer look.

Object

Looking at the Water

The site of Villa Sonata stretches from the road to the water’s edge, offering its own shoreline, pier, and a picturesque river panorama. To reveal these sweeping views, Roman Leonidov “cut” the façade diagonally parallel to the river, thus getting two main axes for the house and, consequently, “two heads”. The internal core – two double-height spaces, a living room and a conservatory, with a “bridge” above them – makes the house both “transparent” and filled with light.

Object

The White Wing

Well, it’s not exactly white. It’s more of a beige, white-stone structure that plays with the color of limestone – smoother surfaces are lighter, while rougher ones are darker. This wing unites various elements: it absorbs and interprets the surrounding themes. It responds to everything, yet maintains a cohesive expression – a challenging task! – while also incorporating recognizable features of its own, such as the dynamic cuts at the bottom, top, and middle.

Object

Urban Dunes

The XSA Ramps team designed and built a three-part sports hub for a park in Rostov-on-Don, welcoming people of all ages and fitness levels. The skate plaza, pump track, and playground are all meticulously crafted with details that attract a diverse range of visitors. The technical execution of the shapes and slopes transforms this space into a kind of sculptural composition.

Object

Proportional Growth

The project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential area has been announced. The buildings are situated on an elongated plot – almost a “ray” that shoots out from the center of the area towards the river. Their layout reflects both a response to Moscow’s architectural preferences over the past 15 years, shifting “from blocks to towers”, and an interpretation of the neighboring business park designed by SOM. Additionally, the best apartments here are not located at the very top but closer to the middle, forming a glowing “waistline”.

Object

The “Staircase” Building

In designing the “Details” residential complex in New Moscow, Rais Baishev spiced up the now-popular Moscow theme of a “courtyard” building with an idea drawn from the surrealist drawings by Maurits Escher. He envisioned the stepped silhouettes and descending slopes as a metaphysical mega-staircase, creating a key void within the courtyard that gave the project an internal “spine”. This concept is felt both in the building’s silhouette and on its façades.

Object

Projection of the Quarter

No one doubted that the building that Vladimir Plotkin designed as part of the “Garden Quarters” would be the most modernist of all. And it turned out just that way: while adhering to the common design code, the building successfully combines brick and white stone, rhythmically responding to the neighboring building designed by Ostozhenka, yet tactfully and persistently making a few statements of its own. This includes the projection of the ideal urban development composition “14–9–6”, which can be found right next door, mathematical calculations, including those for various types of terraces (and perhaps the only reminder of the Soviet past of the Kauchuk rubber factory!), and the white “cross-stitch” pattern of the façade grid.