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.

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

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
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The atrium. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
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The atrium. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
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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).

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

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
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The physics study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
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The chemistry study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
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The chemistry study. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru
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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.

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The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
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The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: Photograph: provided by ASADOV Architects
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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.

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

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
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Plan of the 4th floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
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Plan of the 3rd floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
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Plan of the 2nd floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
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Plan of the 1st floor. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects
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The cross-section view. The academic building of the “Cooperation School” on Taganka

Copyright: © ASADOV Architects

13 October 2021

Headlines now

The Mirror of Your Soul

We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.

Part of the Ideal

In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.

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The Fortress by the River

ASADOV Architects have developed a concept for a new residential district in the center of Kemerovo. To combat the harsh climate and monotonous everyday life, the architects proposed a block type of development with dominant towers, good insolation, facades detailed at eye level, and event programming.

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In the Rhombus Grid

Construction has begun on the building of the OMK (United Metallurgical Company) Corporate University in Nizhny Novgorod’s town of Vyksa, designed by Ostozhenka Architects. The most interesting aspect of the project is how the architects immersed it in the context: “extracting” a diagonal motif from the planning grid of Vyksa, they aligned the building, the square, and the park to match it. A truly masterful work with urban planning context on several different levels of perception has long since become the signature technique of Ostozhenka.

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Generational Connection

Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.

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Three Dimensions of the City

We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived

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New “Flight”

Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.

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The Yauza Towers

In Moscow, there aren’t that many buildings or projects designed by Nikita Yavein and Studio 44. In this article, we present to you the concept of a large multifunctional complex on the Yauza River, located between two parks, featuring a promenade, a crossroads of two pedestrian streets, a highly developed public space, and an original architectural solution. This solution combines a sophisticated, asymmetric façade grid, reminiscent of a game of fifteen puzzle, and bold protrusions of the upper parts of the buildings, completely masking the technical floors and sculpting the complex’s silhouette.

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Architecture and Leisure Park

For the suburban hotel complex, which envisages various formats of leisure, the architectural company T+T Architects proposed several types of accommodation, ranging from the classic “standard” in a common building to a “cave in the hill” and a “house in a tree”. An additional challenge consisted in integrating a few classic-style residences already existing on this territory into the “architectural forest park”.

Overview

The U-House

The Jois complex combines height with terraces, bringing the most expensive apartments from penthouses down to the bottom floors. The powerful iconic image of the U-shaped building is the result of the creative search for a new standard of living in high-rise buildings by the architects of “Genpro”.

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Black and White

In this article, we specifically discuss the interiors of the ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh. Interior design is a crucial component of the overall concept in this case, and precision and meticulous execution were highly important for the architects. Julia Tryaskina, head of UNK interiors, shares some of the developments.

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The “Snake” Mountain

The competition project for the seaside resort complex “Serpentine” combines several typologies: apartments of different classes, villas, and hotel rooms. For each of these typologies, the KPLN architects employ one of the images that are drawn from the natural environment – a serpentine road, a mountain stream, and rolling waves.

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Opal from Anna Mons’ Ring

The project of a small business center located near Tupolev Plaza and Radio Street proclaims the necessity of modern architecture in a specific area of Moscow commonly known as “Nemetskaya Sloboda” or “German settlement”. It substantiates its thesis with the thoroughness of details, a multitude of proposed and rejected form variants, and even a detailed description of the surrounding area. The project is interesting indeed, and it is even more interesting to see what will come of it.

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Feed ’Em All

A “House of Russian Cuisine” was designed and built by KROST Group at VDNKh for the “Rossiya” exhibition in record-breaking time. The pavilion is masterfully constructed in terms of the standards of modern public catering industry multiplied by the bustling cultural program of the exhibition, and it interprets the stylistically diverse character of VDNKh just as successfully. At the same time, much of its interior design can be traced back to the prototypes of the 1960s – so much so that even scenes from iconic Soviet movies of those years persistently come to mind.

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The Ensemble at the Mosque

OSA prepared a master plan for a district in the southern part of Derbent. The main task of the master plan is to initiate the formation of a modern comfortable environment in this city. The organization of residential areas is subordinated to the city’s spiritual center: depending on the location relative to the cathedral mosque, the houses are distinguished by façade and plastique solutions. The program also includes a “hospitality center”, administrative buildings, an educational cluster, and even an air bridge.

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Pargolovo Protestantism

A Protestant church is being built in St. Petersburg by the project of SLOI architects. One of the main features of the building is a wooden roof with 25-meter spans, which, among other things, forms the interior of the prayer hall. Also, there are other interesting details – we are telling you more about them.

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The Shape of the Inconceivable

The ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh brings to mind a famous maxim of all architects and critics: “You’ve come up with it? Now build it!” You rarely see such a selfless immersion in implementation of the project, and the formidable structural and engineering tasks set by UNK architects to themselves are presented here as an integral and important part of the architectural idea. The challenge matches the obliging status of the place – after all, it is an “exhibition of achievements”, and the pavilion is dedicated to the nuclear energy industry. Let’s take a closer look: from the outside, from the inside, and from the underside too.

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Rays of the Desert

A school for 1750 students is going to be built in Dubai, designed by IND Architects. The architects took into account the local specifics, and proposed a radial layout and spaces, in which the children will be comfortable throughout the day.

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The Dairy Theme

The concept of an office of a cheese-making company, designed for the enclosed area of a dairy factory, at least partially refers to industrial architecture. Perhaps that is why this concept is very simple, which seems the appropriate thing to do here. The building is enlivened by literally a couple of “master strokes”: the turning of the corner accentuates the entrance, and the shade of glass responds to the theme of “milk rivers” from Russian fairy tales.

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The Road to the Temple

Under a grant from the Small Towns Competition, the main street and temple area of the village of Nikolo-Berezovka near Neftekamsk has been improved. A consortium of APRELarchitects and Novaya Zemlya is turning the village into an open-air museum and integrating ruined buildings into public life.

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Towers Leaning Towards the Sun

The three towers of the residential complex “Novodanilovskaya 8” are new and the tallest neighbors of the Danilovsky Manufactory, “Fort”, and “Plaza”, complementing a whole cluster of modern buildings designed by renowned masters. At the same time, the towers are unique for this setting – they are residential, they are the tallest ones here, and they are located on a challenging site. In this article, we explore how architects Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova tackled this far-from-trivial task.

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In the spirit of ROSTA posters

The new Rostselmash tractor factory, conceptualized by ASADOV Architects, is currently being completed in Rostov-on-Don. References to the Soviet architecture of the 1920’s and 1960’s resonate with the mission and strategic importance of the enterprise, and are also in line with the client’s wish: to pay homage to Rostov’s constructivism.

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The Northern Thebaid

The central part of Ferapontovo village, adjacent to the famous monastery with frescoes by Dionisy, has been improved according to the project by APRELarchitects. Now the place offers basic services for tourists, as well as a place for the villagers’ leisure.

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Brilliant Production

The architects from London-based MOST Architecture have designed the space for the high-tech production of Charge Cars, a high-performance production facility for high-speed electric cars that are assembled in the shell of legendary Ford Mustangs. The founders of both the company and the car assembly startup are Russians who were educated in their home country.

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Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor

The so-called “Mytny Dvor” area lying just behind Moscow Railway Station – the market rows with a complex history – will be transformed into a premium residential complex by Studio 44. The project consists of three parts: the restoration of historical buildings, the reconstruction of the lost part of the historical contour, and new houses. All of them are harmonized with each other and with the city; axes and “beams of light” were found, cozy corners and scenic viewpoints were carefully thought out. We had a chat with the authors of the historical buildings’ restoration project, and we are telling you about all the different tasks that have been solved here.

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The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement

In 2022, Ostozhenka Architects won a competition, and in 2023, they developed and received all the necessary approvals for a master plan for the development of Chernigovskaya Street for the developer GloraX. The project takes into account a 10-year history of previous developments; it was done in collaboration with architects from Nizhny Novgorod, and it continues to evolve now. We carefully examined it, talked to everyone, and learned a lot of interesting things.

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A Single-Industry Town

Kola MMC and Nornickel are building a residential neighborhood in Monchegorsk for their future employees. It is based on a project by an international team that won the 2021 competition. The project offers a number of solutions meant to combat the main “demons” of any northern city: wind, grayness and boredom.

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A New Age Portico

At the beginning of the year, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport opened Terminal C. The large-scale and transparent entrance hall with luminous columns inside successfully combines laconism with a bright and photogenic WOW-effect. The terminal is both the new façade of the whole complex and the starting point of the planned reconstruction, upon completion of which Tolmachevo will become the largest regional airport in Russia. In this article, we are examining the building in the context of modernist prototypes of both Novosibirsk and Leningrad: like puzzle pieces, they come together to form their individual history, not devoid of curious nuances and details.

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A New Starting Point

We’ve been wanting to examine the RuArts Foundation space, designed by ATRIUM for quite a long time, and we finally got round to it. This building looks appropriate and impressive; it amazingly combines tradition – represented in our case by galleries – and innovation. In this article, we delve into details and study the building’s historical background as well.

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Molding Perspectives

Stepan Liphart introduces “schematic Art Deco” on the outskirts of Kazan – his houses are executed in green color, with a glassy “iced” finish on the facades. The main merits of the project lie in his meticulous arrangement of viewing angles – the architect is striving to create in a challenging environment the embryo of a city not only in terms of pedestrian accessibility but also in a sculptural sense. He works with silhouettes, proposing intriguing triangular terraces. The entire project is structured like a crystal, following two grids, orthogonal and diagonal. In this article, we are examining what worked, and what eventually didn’t.