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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.

13 October 2021
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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.

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


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


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


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


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


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.

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


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


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


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 Power of Lines
The building at the very beginning of New Arbat is the result of long deliberations over how to replace the former House of Communication. Contemporary, dynamic, and even somewhat zoomorphic in character, it is structured around a large diagonal grid. The building has become a striking accent both in the perspective of the former Kalinin Avenue and in the panorama of Arbat Square. Yet, unfortunately, the original concept was not fully realized. In 2020, the Moscow ArchCouncil approved a design featuring an exoskeleton – an external load-bearing structure, which eventually turned into a purely decorative element. Still, the power of the supergraphic “holds” the building, giving it the qualities of a new urban landmark with iconic potential. How this concept took shape, what unexpected associations might underlie the grid’s form, and why the exoskeleton was never built – all this is explored in our article.
Resort on the Kama River
Wowhaus has developed a project for the reconstruction of Korabelnaya Roshcha (“Mast Grove”), a wellness resort located on the banks of the Kama River.
Nests in Primorye
The eco-park project “Nests”, designed by Aleksey Polishchuk and the company Power Technologies, received first prize at the Eco-Coast 2025 festival, organized by the Union of Architects of Russia. For a glamping site in Filinskaya Bay, the authors proposed bird-shaped houses, treehouses, and a nest-shaped observation platform, topping it all with an entrance pavilion executed in the shape of an owl.
The Angle of String Tension
The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.
How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future
Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.
St. Petersburg vs Rome
The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.
On the Wave
The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.
Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”
The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.
​The Keystone
Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.
Perpetuum Mobile
The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.
Water and Light
Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.
Champions’ Cup
At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.
Semi-Digital Environment
In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.
History never ends
The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.
A Deep, Crystal Shine
A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.
Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”
Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.
A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists
Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.
Perspective View
CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.
Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech
The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.
Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!
After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.
​Materialization of Airflows
The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.
The City as a Narrative
Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.
A Garden of Hope for Freedom
In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.
A Laconic Image of Time
The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.
The Flower of the Lake
The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.
Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue
The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
An Interior for a New Format of Education
The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.
Penthouses and Kokoshniks
A new residential complex designed by ASADOV Architects for the Krasnaya Roza business district responds to its proximity to 17th-century landmarks – the chambers of the Hamovny Dvor and St. Nicholas Church – as well as to the need to preserve valuable façades of a historic rental house built in the Russian Revival style. The architects proposed a set of buildings of varying heights, whose façades reference ecclesiastical architecture. But we were also able to detect other associations.
Centipede Town
The new school campus designed by ATRIUM Architects, located on the shores of a protected lake in the Imeretian Lowland Ornithological Reserve, represents an important and ambitious undertaking for the team: this is not just a school, but a Presidential Lyceum for the comprehensive development of gifted children – 2,500 students from age 3 through high school. At the same time, it is also envisioned as a new civic hub for the entire Sirius territory. In this article, we unpack the structure and architecture of this “lyceum town”.