Garage-Garage

Recently, Moscow saw the presentation of a project by Yuri Grigoryan, devoted to turning the truck garage on Novoryazanskaya Street, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, into the Museum of Moscow Transport. The project involves restoring the monument of architecture, adding a new underground floor and a new entrance, as well as a whole park. The implementation is already underway.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

07 June 2023

News

This city has a habit of “presenting” architectural projects when they are in fact completed or nearly completed. This case is no exception – the reinforced wall underneath the monument has already been built, the restored structures are being assembled in their proper place – and we were shown a “sketch” project of transforming the truck garage, designed by Konstantin Melnikov at Novoryazanskaya Street, 27, into the Museum of Moscow Transport.

zooming — Moscow Transportation Museum, conceptual design, 2020-2023

Copyright: © Meganom/ provided by Moscow Transportation Museum

The museum is planned to be open in 2024; the project of the first stage of restoration was approved by the Department of Cultural Heritage still in 2019. The work on the “adjustment project” began in 2020, and the decision to hand the garage over to the museum, according to its director, Oxana Bondarenko, was made in 2015-2017, even though the mayor only signed the appropriate decree in 2022. The banner “Nam po puti” (“We’re on the same road”) has been hanging for years now, and the work is underway.

The garage is a cultural heritage site of regional importance; according to the chief architect of the Transport Museum, Natalia Vorontsova, the protected status has been granted to the “composition of the architectural ensemble, materials and the composition of the facades, and the architectural and planning solutions”. The restoration is performed by the studio “Faros”; the museum exposition by Planet9 (design), Pitch (multimedia), and Solarsense (content).

The main hero of the show, however, is the project of adjusting the building authored by Yuri Grigoryan and AB Meganom. We asked the author, and, yes, the Project and Project Documentation stages are also done by Meganom.

The project includes 9,027 m2 of new construction: the Melnikov garage is essentially a horseshoe-shaped semicircle where the trucks were parked. The “semi-bagel” of the garage is one story high; it rests on the ground; the axis of circumference includes the building of the repair shop, it is two stories high, with an underground tier.

According to the project, there is a new underground tier that is built underneath the “horseshoe” of the garage, and it will include a foyer, and the part devoted to the metro, which makes perfect sense. The visitors to the museum will get to the bottom tier through the new entrance – a triangular structure with an imposing attic, which is added to the garage from the east side. The former repair shop will host the museum’s media center.

There will be no entrances to the upper tier of the permanent exposition – i.e. to the garage – from the ground; the visitors will ride escalators, which Yuri Grigoryan places in narrow spaces between walls.

There are stairs too – they stretch along the inner arc of the semicircle, and are also present in the sector-like communication node of the central part. The stairs are also delimited by a laconic “shell” wall – it actively builds the plastique of the interior space of the museum, distancing the attention of the viewer ascending to the upper hall from the foyer and the exposition of the lower tier. A little daylight will also get down through the stairs, but since there is a “subway” down there, then a lot of light is probably not that necessary according to the logic of the original design.

The elevators and stairs take the visitors upstairs, into the space of the “monument” garage itself. The bridges above, under the floor structures here are historical, but the spiral staircases leading to them are an addition by the architects. The exposition can thus also be viewed from above.

At the back of the yard, a pentagonal (temporary) pavilion of educational vehicle workshops is planned for conducting master classes and children’s education sessions.

Let’s return to the new entrance group, however. The auto workshop pavilion is pentagonal, while the entrance, which, I remind you, leads underground to the new ground floor, is triangular – in both cases, the simple but energetic geometry serves as a paraphrase of Melnikov’s work, who, as we remember, loved bold shapes.

In addition, the architect plans to cover the facade of the attic with specially made dark bricks of concave shape, which will yield a surface of laconic “flute” grooves – because (and I quote Yuri Grigoryan’s words here) Melnikov is essentially an Art Deco architect.

Basically, the entrance turned out to be a modernist “beam”; such a solution is quite imaginable in some 1970s museum, but here I want to see concrete or metal for some reason. I wonder how the bricks will ultimately look.

My colleagues were somewhat confused by this Art Deco statement, but to me it seemed largely correct. Melnikov, of course, is far from being the most typical representative, but he loved Art Deco (or did at some point), and he was always interested in the art of plastique. Looking for hereditary grooves, I opened Melnikov’s album – I found at least the Gosplan garage. Why not add grooves from one garage to another? And the half-grooves of the Intourist garage come to mind too.

The restoration of the historical part is being done according to all the rules under the supervision of the Department of Cultural Heritage. According to Yuri Grigoryan, the brick repair covered about 7-8% of the masonry in the upper part, only where the masonry was severely damaged. In addition, when inspecting the building, the architects found wooden side windows somewhere upstairs under the trusses, which had been closed for a long time – it is planned to open them.

It was decided to restore the metal trusses not on site, but in the workshop; now, I remind you, they are being installed. According to the chief architect of the Museum of Transport, about 10% of new metal had to be added in the process of mending, the rest was preserved, “including rivets”. It turns out that the public in December 2022 was worried for nothing.

There is another, additional, story about the trusses. They are universally spoken of as the work of Vladimir Shukhov. This information goes back to Selim Khan-Magomedov’s book (1990), but according to Mark Hakobyan, who curated the 2019 Shukhov exhibition at the Museum of Architecture, there is no confirmation of Shukhov's involvement either here or in the Bakhmetev Garage – in the latter case, historians have studied the materials in the archive of the Central State Archive of Moscow, and the drawings there are signed by Melnikov, while Shukhov’s signature is nowhere to be found. Shukhov’s post-revolution works, Mark Hakobyan explains, are generally difficult to document: the sources are scarce, and you have to determine them by the type of construction: the mesh vault patented by Shukhov is more likely to be associated with him, but the great engineer was also engaged in calculations of simpler truss structures – like the cargo garage on Novolyazanskaya. Meanwhile, such a calculation could have been made by some other engineer.

The constructions of the garage are quite simple: there is no special engineering beauty, which could be seen in the exhibition pavilions of the XIX century – after all, the task was rather technical, and the main advantage of the structures was that they covered the span of 35 m without supports and allowed trucks to maneuver more freely. By the way, at first 5-ton German trucks were parked in the garage, then Soviet “1.5-ton-trucks”, then, during the war, it served as a repair shop, and finally, after the war and until its closure, it was the 4th bus park.

Another part of the project is landscaping. As it is customary nowadays, there is a special emphasis on it, especially since the museum is a public place and requires the appropriate space around it. To the east of the garage a park called Milyutinsky is planned – let’s not forget about the legendary Commissar. Besides, the alley-circumference between the “garage” museum and the former workshop (now the media center), will be opened for walks – and not to surround the museum with any fences at all. “The city will receive”, as they say nowadays, a new park, a quiet street, plus the improvement of Novoryazanskaya Street running near the museum.

Thus, the fears of the public turned out to be largely groundless: the garage is a monument, it is being restored, and the difficulties associated with the poor quality of technical construction (after all, the garage is just a garage) are being overcome. On the other hand, there is a lot of new construction in the project, a little less than half of the original area. It is not very clear why the project was shown so late – it would have been possible to calm everyone’s misgivings from the very start, wouldn’t it?

One more thing. I think it would be nice if the Museum of Transport allotted a special room for an exposition devoted to Melnikov’s other garages, because – let’s not forget it – garages were one of Melnikov’s most frequently done projects. He designed two garages for Paris, one of them with cantilevered ramps over the bridge over the Seine – in both of them, back in 1925, he proposed the famous one-way traffic. No, it’s not the first time Melnikov had it on Novolyazanskaya; it’s the core idea in all of his garages – not to make the car egress. The words written by Melnikov while designing a garage for English buses on Ordynka (not implemented) are remarkable and very textured: “... it was neither caprice nor autocratic, but the daring power of beauty to stop wasting millions on ugly things”.

In Moscow, Melnikov designed five garages, four of which were actually built: bus Bakhmetyevsky, cargo Novovyazansky, Intourist garage on Suschevsky Val, and Gosplan garage on Aviamotornaya. All of them were with straight-through traffic (or essentially one-way), only organized differently: Bakhmetyevsky garage for the sake of convenience of buses’ movement received slanted contours, and Novobiazansky – a horseshoe-shaped plan, which, by the way, if we look at the map of the district as a whole, is very similar, in shape and size, to the steam locomotive circular depots of the XIX century. For example, 300 meters from the Novoryazansky Garage, a slightly smaller, but very similar in parameters, depot of the 1890s – was it the source of inspiration that helped the great architect Melnikov to cope with the triangular shape of the site? Who knows? It is clear that there were locomotives, which were placed along the radii to reconnect to trains, and here were trucks, but still: the garage on Novoryazanskaya is quite in line with the search for transportation architecture.

Another thing that comes to mind here is the museum of the Oktyabrskaya railway, which Nikita Yavein designed in the railway depot in St. Petersburg (open since 2017 ). You can still feel some rhyme arising between the two large transport museums.

Meanwhile, the project of the Transport Museum in the Melnikov’s Garage is grand-scale, and unique to a large extent. At the same time, however, it does fall in line with modern trends. Today, Novoryazanskaya Street is being actively developed; gradually, it stops being the “backyard” of the “square of three railway stations”, and already a restaurant complex opened on it. The complex is called “Depot” (it is opened in another depot, the tram one, not the steam engine one we talked about before), and the street is being paved with granite – for all intents and purposes, the museum will also soon be completed. And life will be beautiful then. What’s next? A museum of private garage construction?

07 June 2023

Headlines now

Object

Home Base

Working on the new building for Letovo Junior School – opened to students in autumn 2025 in the MSU Valley – the architects of UNK, following the client’s vision, subordinated both façades and interiors to the theme of “home”. Multiple variations of pitched roofs, a city skyline traced across glass balustrades, wooden textures, and a whole series of micro-spaces for retreat within public areas are all at the disposal of primary and middle school students. We take a closer look at the new school building – and at how it interprets current trends in educational environments.

Object

Doubles Match

The architecture of the Tennis Palace built in Luzhniki Olympic Complex, designed by Arena Design Institute, was shaped by three factors: the proximity of the brutalist Druzhba Arena, the closeness of the Moskva River and the metro bridge overpass, as well as the specifics of the function – tennis courts require large spans, abundant light, yet at the same time protection from direct sunlight. The architects divided the building into several blocks, playing on contrast, which is further emphasized by the façades developed in collaboration with TPO Reserve and Vladimir Plotkin.

Object

Microdynamics of Macroprocesses

Given the proximity of the multifunctional complex SOLOS to Sokolniki Park and to a major transport hub, Kleinewelt Architekten embedded in the design of the two high-rise towers a sense of dynamism more characteristic of natural phenomena than of man-made objects. Without the authors’ diagrams, this logic is not easy to decipher, although the eye immediately detects a pattern and tries to grasp it. It seems to us that one tower contains the impulse of a bud about to open, while the other evokes the movement of a lithospheric plate. Let us try to unravel it together.

Report

The Space of Post-Cubism

Sergei Tchoban and Alexandra Sheiner, of Studio CHART, created for the exhibition of “post-cubist” sculpture by Beatrice Sandomirskaya – a talented and even “mainstream” artist, yet almost unknown even to art historians – a space akin to her sculptural language: solidly built, confidently stereometric, and subtly expressive. It curves, emphasizing the mass of the sculpture, envelops the viewer, and guides them from one perspective to another, from a generic “shrine” to a “Madonna”.

Object

The Value of Open Space

For the site near the Barrikadnaya Metro Station, Sergey Skuratov developed five projects between 2020 and 2025. Two of them were ones that won the client’s invitation-only competitions. The fifth was recently selected by the Mayor of Moscow for implementation. The project is vivid and sculptural, expressive, eye-catching, and engaging – very much in line with the spirit of our time. And yet, this project is mid-rise rather than tall. In its northwestern part, near the metro and Druzhinnikovskaya Street, it shapes a comfortable urban environment. On the opposite side, it opens up, allowing sunlight into the courtyard and creating a spatial pause within the dense city fabric. How it is organized, what geometric principles underlie it, and why it takes this form – all this is explored in our article.

Coming From the Cold

The ArchBukhta Festival remains one of the few events in Russia where participants go through the entire process of creating an architectural object – from concept to construction. And they do so on the shores of Lake Baikal, in dedication to it. This year, GAFA took part and shared its experience: a local legend, a team-specific design code, friendship, as well as ice skating and endurance in freezing temperatures all contributed to gaining something more than just an award.

Object

Symphony of Water and Brick

The Alter residential complex, designed by Stepan Liphart and built on a bend of the Okhta River, is an example of a “drawn house”: the number of original architectural details is virtually immeasurable. As a result, ribs, projections, and recesses create a picturesque silhouette even without a significant variation in height. Both composition and material respond to the proximity of the river and to the red-brick factory building dating back to the early 20th century. The project was also significantly shaped by recommendations from the city’s chief architect. More details in our article.

Object

Wave and Vertical

The premium residential complex designed by GAFA for a site in the Khoroshevsky District responds to multiple constraints – the arc of a planned roadway, the water protection zone of the Khodynka River, and insolation requirements – through inventive massing. The composition is built on the interplay of two spatial layers: an elongated perimeter block and three towers concealed behind it generate the silhouette and key viewpoints, while also adding semantic depth reinforced by the façade solutions. Another defining feature is a large private courtyard, complemented by a citywide linear park.

Object

Office on Trubnaya

We continue publishing projects by Valery Kanyashin. A building once described, a quarter century ago, as an example of “quiet modernism” has remained just that in some people’s memory. According to Anatoly Belov, its main quality is its unobtrusiveness. The architects from Ostozhenka say the leading role here is played by context and landscape – the change in elevation. Yet is it really so inconspicuous?

Object

The First International

With this publication, we begin a series of texts dedicated to works by the late Valery Kanyashin, one of the founders of Ostozhenka Architects. As it happens, the projects he was involved in largely illustrate our understanding of the firm and its history. The first project in this series is the International Moscow Bank on Prechistenskaya Embankment.

in memoriam

In Memory of Valery Kanyashin

On Friday, February 27, architect Valery Kanyashin passed away – co-founder of Ostozhenka Architects and the author of many significant buildings in Moscow. We publish a text by Anatoly Belov in memory of Valery Kanyashin.

Report

Hypertext in Space

As part of the exhibition “What We Have We (Do Not) Keep”, Sergey Tchoban, the Museum of Architecture, and the CHART studio experiment with an eco-conscious approach to exhibition design, with thematic cross-references and even with publicistic reflections on the necessity of preserving modernism, the roots of contemporary architecture, and the birth of ideas. All of this makes the exhibition, with its light and transparent design, look quite innovative. The elements – both “material” and conceptual – are familiar, yet their combination is far from conventional.

Object

The Outline of “Foundation”

In their competition proposal for the Fili transport hub, the consortium led by Alexey Ilyin proposed an “inhabited arch” – a form that is simple yet complex. The architects emphasize that even at the competition stage, the project’s feasibility was fully calculated, taking into account the minimal nighttime closures of Bagration Avenue. How was this achieved? With what functions? Let us take a closer look. In our view, the building would have suited the heroes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels perfectly.

Object

The Flying Horizontal

“A house in the spirit of Wright”, as architect Roman Leonidov describes it, pointing to his source of inspiration, was built on a challenging wedge-shaped site. To achieve a sense of intimacy and secure good views from the windows, the entire volume had to be shifted toward the far boundary, turning the house “back” to the neighboring mansions. The main façade demonstrates time-tested techniques often employed by the company: articulated horizontals, a weightless roofline, and a triad of materials – light plaster, dark slate, and warm wood.

Object

Needles of Horizon Contemplation

The “House of Horizons”, designed by Kleinewelt Architekten in Krylatskoye, is carefully thought out at the stereometric level – from the logic of how the volumes interlock (and, conversely, how gaps are articulated between them) to the triangular balconies that give the building its striking, slightly bristling silhouette.

News

The Red Thread

A linear park project prepared by Alexey Ilyin studio for the improvement of a riverbank in one of the residential districts seeks to reconnect people with nature. Two levels of the embankment invite visitors to contemplate the landscape while at the same time protecting the riverbank from excessive human impact. The “aerial street” links functional zones and the opposite banks, creating new points of attraction along the way: balconies, bridges, and even a “grotto”.

Object

Spindle and Thread

The concept of the Waver residential complex in Yekaterinburg draws inspiration from the past of the Parkovy district. In order to preserve the memory of the late-19th-century flax spinning mill once located here, the architectural company KPLN turns to the theme of textiles and weaving. The project’s main expressive device is a system of ribbons made of perforated weathering steel – a material that, in such volumes, has arguably not yet been used in Russian residential projects.

Overview

From Ski Resorts to Year-Round Recreation Clusters

In mid-December, several architectural firms gathered to discuss a “seasonal” topic: the prospects for the development of domestic ski tourism. Where is modern infrastructure already in place, where do only remnants of the Soviet legacy remain, and where is there still nothing – but projects are underway and soon to be completed? This article explores these questions.

Object

Woven Into Sokolniki

Over the past few years, high-rise residential construction in former industrial zones has become the main theme of Moscow architecture. Towers are springing up here and there – but the question is what kind of towers they are. The residential complex CODE Sokolniki, designed by Ostozhenka Architects, is a project where every detail has been taken care of. The authors are attentive to the history of the site, the continuity of the urban fabric, the skyline, and visual corridors. They also proposed a motif with the lyrical name “scarf”. We take a closer look at the volumetric composition and the large-scale décor “woven”, in this case, out of terraces and balconies.

Interview

Stepan Liphart and Yuri Gerth: “Our Program Is Aesthetic”

The studio of Stepan Liphart, an architect known for his distinctive signature style and one-off projects, now has a partner. Yuri Khitrov, a specialist with a broad range of competencies, will take on the part of the work that distracts one from creativity but drives the business forward. One of the aims of this partnership is to improve the urban environment through dialogue with clients and officials. We spoke with both sides about their ambitions, the firm’s development strategy, shared values, and the need for pragmatism. And why the studio is called “Liphart & Gerth” only became clear at the very end of the interview.

Object

The Copper Mirror

The varied-toned sheen of “unsealed” copper, painterly streaks and fingerprints, exposed concrete, and the unusual proportions – when you study the ZILART Museum building by Sergei Tchoban and SPEECH architects, there is plenty to talk about. However, it seems to us that the most interesting thing is how the museum’s composition responds to the realities of the district itself. The residential district has been realized as an open-air exhibition of façade statements by contemporary architects – but without public access to the inner courtyards of the blocks. This building – that is, the museum – is exactly the opposite: on the outside, it is deliberately restrained, while inside it shines spectacularly, creating its own sunbeams in any weather.

View

“Strangers” in the City

We asked Alexander Skokan for a comment on the results of 2025 – and he sent us a whole article, moreover one devoted to the discussion we recently began on the “appropriateness of high-rises” – or, more broadly speaking, “contrasting insertions into the urban fabric”. The result is a text that is essentially a question: why here? Why like this?

Interview

Dmitry Ostroumov: “To use the language of alchemy, we are involved in the process of “transmutation...

What we ended up having was an extremely unusual conversation with Dmitry Ostroumov. Why? At the very least, because he is not just an architect specializing in the construction of Orthodox churches. And not just – which is an extreme rarity – a proponent of developing contemporary stylistics within this still highly conservative field. Dmitry Ostroumov is a Master of Theology. So in addition to the history and specifics of the company, we speak about the very concept of the temple, about canon and tradition, about the living and the eternal, and even about the Russian Logos.

Interview

MB-PROJECT: “Every new project is a challenge”

In this issue, we speak with Dmitry and Oleg Shurygin, founders of the company MV-PROJECT, which has extensive experience in designing theater and entertainment buildings as well as working with cultural heritage sites.

Object

A Glazed Figurine

In searching for an image for a residential building near the Novodevichy Convent, GAFA architects turned to their own perception of the place: it evoked associations with antiquity, plein-air painting, and vintage artifacts. The two towers will be entirely clad in volumetric glazed ceramic – at present, there are no other buildings like this in Russia. The complex will also stand out thanks to its metabolic bay-window cells, streamlined surfaces, a ceremonial “hotel-style” driveway, and a lobby overlooking a lush garden.

Report

A Knight’s Move via the Cour d’Honneur

Intercolumnium Architects presented to the City Planning Council a residential complex project that is set to replace the Aquatoria business center on Vyborgskaya Embankment. Experts praised the overall quality of the work, but expressed reservations about the three cour d’honneurs and suggested softening the contrast between the facades facing the embankment and the Kantemirovsky Bridge.

Object

Mountains, Groves, and Ancestral Towers

The year-round mountain resort Armkhi situated in Russia’s Republic of Ingushetia is positioned as a destination for calm family recreation and has well-established traditions shaped by its hundred-year history and the culture of the region. The development program prepared by the Genplan Institute of Moscow preserves the resort’s identity while expanding its offerings and introducing new types of tourist leisure. In the near future, the resort will feature a balneological center, a thermal complex, an interactive museum, an extreme park, and, of course, new ski slopes.

Object

A Small Country

Mezonproekt is developing a long-term master plan for the MEPhI campus in Obninsk. Over the next ten years, an enclave territory of about 100 hectares, located in a forest on the northern edge of the city, is set to transform into a modern center for the development of the nuclear energy sector. The plan envisions attracting international students and specialists, as well as comprehensive territorial development: both through the contemporary realization of “frozen” plans from the 1980s and through the introduction of new trends – public spaces, an aquapark, a food court, a school, and even a nuclear medicine center. Public and sports facilities are intended to be accessible to city residents as well, and the campus is to be physically and functionally connected to Obninsk.

Object

Pearl Divers

GAFA has designed an apartment complex for Derbent intended to switch people from a work mode to a resort mindset – and to give the surrounding area a much-needed jolt. The building offers two distinct faces: restrained and laconic on the city side, and a lushly ornate façade facing the sea. At the heart of the complex, a hidden pearl lies – an open-air pool with an arch, offering views of a starry sky, and providing direct access to the beach.

Object

A Satellite Island

The Genplan Institute of Moscow has prepared a master plan for the development of the Sarpinsky and Golodny island system, located within the administrative boundaries of Volgograd and considered among the largest river islands in Russia. By 2045, the plan envisions the implementation of 15 large-scale investment projects, including sports and educational clusters, a congress center with a “Volgonarium”, a film production cluster, and twenty-one theme parks. We explain which engineering, environmental, and transportation challenges must be addressed to turn this vision into reality. The master plan solutions have already been approved and incorporated into the city’s general development plan.