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Invited to the Ice Are…

Seven ice arenas with a capacity from 500 to 14,000 spectators and with a geography spreading from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Tashkent – all designed by ARENA Project Institute. In this article, we show how a complex function is combined with an expressive architectural image.

Alyona Kuznetsova

Written by:
Alyona Kuznetsova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

09 June 2023
Object
mainImg
In Russia, sports are a “normal way of life”, and hockey and figure skating are hardly any less popular than soccer is. ARENA’s portfolio includes more than ten ice arenas and indoor skating rinks; we selected seven most flashy ones, in which designing an already sophisticated project was made even more difficult by having to solve some location-specific task. In Sochi, for example, the architects had to calculate the “post-Olympics” use of the complex; in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, they had to inscribe the project into the already existing downtown scenery, and in Nizhny Novgorod they had to augment the architectural ensemble of the Spit of Nizhny Novgorod, at the same time preserving the dominant role of the cathedral.

An ice arena is a complex object that has to meet a multitude of requirements that are posed by federations of various sports, television that broadcasts live, as well by the regular fire safety agencies and other institutions. On top of it all, there is a specific task of ensuring high-quality ice in any season, which adds to the project a cooling plate with refrigerators, a whole complex of ventilation measures, units for water treatment and premises for ice filling machines. 

Since ice arenas are designed for practice sessions and competitions in hockey, sledge hockey, short track, figure skating, and curling, you need to include team locker rooms, rooms for drying tracksuits and sharpening skates, doping control facilities, rooms for the judging panels, as well as press and support teams. You also need to provide the spectators with sound and lighting systems that will ensure excellent performance regardless of the sector the ticket was bought for.

(No, we’re not finished yet!) Further on, such a grand-scale building cannot be single-functional – it must become a public center that includes sports clubs for children, fitness centers, cafes, exhibition spaces, and even offices. This makes the logistics component even more complicated because you need to separate not just the fan sectors, but also the athletes, spectators, press, service personnel, and, ultimately, boys and girls. Not the least issue is the profitability of a sports facility, which is often ensured by its ability to quickly transform into a concert venue.

We suggest checking out how the architects managed to link all these points in one object, while giving it a memorable look.

Designing large sports facilities is a traditional specialization of the Arena Design Institute, which dates back to Mosproject-4, from which we are descendants. The selection presented today reflects an individual approach to the design of such facilities, because, as a rule, they become the “visiting card” of the region. Also, arranged in chronological order, the constructions and current projects clearly show the trend of the last decades of transformation of ice arenas from exclusively professional mono-objects to publicly accessible multifunctional complexes.

Megasport Ice Palace

Architect
Studio
Mosproekt-4
Author collective
architects: Bokov A., Bush D., Chuklov S., Valuiskih V., Romanova L., Gak O., Burchuladze Z., Zolotova A., Timohov A.; architect-technologist: Shabaidash A.; engineers: Livshin M., Kelman M., Eremeev P., Bekmuhamedov E., Starikov O., Naumocheva A., Subbotina E., Starikova N.
Where
Russia, Moscow
Date
2004 — / — 2006
Function
Sport / Sports complex
The arena has a capacity for 14,000 spectators; it was built for the World Hockey Championship 2006, when the territory around the Khodynskoe Field started taking the mottled and pretty sci-fi look the way we know it today. Even today, “Megasport” successfully holds its own against a whole galaxy of high-profile projects: towers, shopping malls, grand-scale housing complexes, and cathedrals. The arena is shaped somewhat like a spinning propeller – as Grigory Revzin notes, this is homage to the former airfield, upon which this ice arena has been built. In the center of the composition, there is a white cylindrical volume with a diameter of 120 meters and a height of almost 50 meters, with a purposefully sagging membrane of the roof. The cylinder belts the spirals of the ramps with awnings: the red ramp leads to the spectator seats of the red sector; the blue one predictably to the blue. As you go higher up, the width of the ramp shrinks from 30 meters to five, making the flow of spectators thinner. Thanks to the heating system, ice does not form on the ramps in the wintertime. The arena hosts more than 100 events a year: both sports ones, including boxing matches and gymnastics competitions, and concerts. Also, a few movie scenes were shot inside the arena.
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“Iceberg” Palace of Winter Sports

Studio
Mosproekt-4
Andrey Bokov Studio
Where
Russia, Adler
Date
2009 — / — 2013
Function
Sport / Sports complex
The arena’s capacity is 12,000 spectators; it was built for the Olympics 2014. This is Sochi’s only indoor skating rink that allows you to conduct practice sessions, mass skating events, and figure skating / short track competitions all year round. Ice is another aggregate state of water, so in a southern city it seemed appropriate to interpret a wave on the facade, referring to the proximity of the Black Sea and echoing the silhouettes of the mountains. In the lower part of the building, the volumetric facade is raised, revealing the stained glass windows of the foyer and main entrances. The cladding uses transparent and colored glass of several shades of blue, which overlap each other like tiles, creating visions of ripples, sun glares on the water, or foam on the waves. In total, more than 600 tons of double-glazed windows are used on the facades of the Iceberg. Inside, the color helps spectators navigate between tiers and sectors. The problem of post-Olympic use was solved in a revolutionary way: the prefabricated type of construction allows the building to be dismantled and then moved to another city. This, however, was never required.
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Ссылки

The multifunctional ice complex “Humo Arena”

Studio
Heerim Architects & Planners
Arena Projwect Institute
Where
Uzbekistan, Tashkent
Date
2017 — / — 2019
Function
Sport / Ice Arena
The arena’s capacity is 12,500 people. It is situated in the central part of Tashkent, and is the biggest ice palace in Central Asia, and a home of four hockey clubs. The concept was developed by the Korean company Heerim Architects. The arena is named in honor of the mythical bird Humo, the harbinger of happiness. The main volume of the building resembles the folded wing of the bird, while the fan of the buildings, ramps and paths of the adjacent park resembles the flapping and spreading feathers of the bird. The halls lined with dark marble are decorated with round panels created by artists Bobur Ismailov based on the poem “The Language of Birds” by Turkic poet Alisher Navoi. The central piece is a golden composition with a stone that was laid when the complex was built. The arena can host more than a dozen sports, but its “specialty” is still hockey. The cooled slab allows to place a hockey court of three different sizes depending on the requirements of different hockey federations, and the main arena is supplemented by a training arena. 
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The multifunctional ice arena in Novosibirsk

Studio
Arena Projwect Institute
Where
Russia, Novosibirsk
Date
2018 — 2019 / 2021 —
Function
Sport / Ice Arena
The arena’s capacity is 12,500 people. It is situated in the central part of Tashkent, and is the biggest ice palace in Central Asia, and a home of four hockey clubs. The concept was developed by the Korean company Heerim Architects. The arena is named in honor of the mythical bird Humo, the harbinger of happiness. The main volume of the building resembles the folded wing of the bird, while the fan of the buildings, ramps and paths of the adjacent park resembles the flapping and spreading feathers of the bird. The halls lined with dark marble are decorated with round panels created by artists Bobur Ismailov based on the poem “The Language of Birds” by Turkic poet Alisher Navoi. The central piece is a golden composition with a stone that was laid when the complex was built. The arena can host more than a dozen sports, but its “specialty” is still hockey. The cooled slab allows to place a hockey court of three different sizes depending on the requirements of different hockey federations, and the main arena is supplemented by a training arena. 
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The ice palace on the territory of the Spit of Nizhny Novgorod

Studio
Where
Russia, Nizhny Novgorod
Date
2018 — /
Function
Sport / Ice Arena
The arena’s capacity is 12,500 spectators. It will complement the architectural ensemble of the Spit of Nizhny Novgorod, which already includes a soccer stadium, restored warehouses, and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. In order to minimize its contrastive influence on the latter, the arena was moved as much as possible towards the Samarkandskaya Street, its height from the city towards the water lowering from 38 to 14.5 meters. The streamlined “pebble” shape and the very position of the building allowed the architects to avoid obscuring the views of the cathedral from the water. The arena faces the city with a media façade and an entrance gallery with an amphitheater on the upper level. The arena is separated from the cathedral by a multi-level landscape composition, in which a cascade of stairs to the second tier is hidden. The area on the shore side will be landscaped and filled with outdoor sports fields. With the help of the stairs, landscaping, gallery and other elements, the “sprawl” of a rather large-scale building is overcome and its integration into the context is achieved. The arena will be the home arena for the Torpedo club, while the lower part of the arena will house a training arena, a four-lane curling hall and two more multipurpose halls. The construction is planned to be completed in 2025.
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The Crystal Ice Palace

Studio
Where
Russia, Moscow
Date
2015 / 2020 —
Function
Sport / Ice Arena
Capacity: 500 people. The arena will be situated on the territory of Luzhniki complex, instead of the skating rink, built back in the 1960s and now recognized to be in an emergency state. The building maintains not just the “posture” of its predecessor, but also the style characteristic for sports facilities of the mid-20th century. It is rather unusual for its typology: it has a rectangular plan, and the glass facades fill the halls with natural light. The ice is protected from direct sunlight by vertical metal lamellae, which like blinds can completely cover the stained glass windows. The main entrance is accented with a stained glass crystal structure. Inside there are two ice arenas with separate entrances for 250 seats each; a 25-meter swimming pool with a view of the park; office premises with windows overlooking the Moskva River; gyms and cafes. A parking lot for 130 cars is located in the underground level.
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Gasprom Arena

Studio
Where
Russia, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Date
— 2022 /
Function
Sport / Ice Arena
The arena in fact includes two ice arenas: one is designed for competitions and has a capacity of 5,500 people, while the second is a training arena with a game and gymnasium and a shooting range. This will allow training and competitions of international level in hockey and other sports, including sport shooting. But the main purpose of the arena is to provide the city’s children with affordable sports clubs. The unified surface of the folded metal roof, passing into the facade, “envelops” the internal structure of the sports facility, manifesting its multifunctionality in the silhouette and opening up with a colonnade at the main entrance. The arena is planned to be built in the center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the site of the bus park, which will be relocated to another place. The adjacent territory will be landscaped: landscaping, pedestrian and bicycle paths will be laid and parking for 183 cars will be organized. The construction is planned to be completed by 2025.
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09 June 2023

Alyona Kuznetsova

Written by:

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