Anton Yar-Scriabin:

Julia Tarabarina. 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.

Julia Tarabarina. ​The Flying One

Expected to become an analogue of Moscow’s Skolkovo, the project of the High Park campus at Saint Petersburg’s ITMO University, designed by Studio 44, mesmerizes us with its sheer scale and the passion that the architects poured into it. Its core – the academic center – is interpreted as an avant-garde composition inspired by Piazza del Campo with a bell tower; the park is reminiscent of the “rays” of the main streets of Saint Petersburg, and, if watched from a birds-eye view, the whole complex looks like a motherboard with at least four processors on it. The design of the academic building even displays a few features of a sports arena. The project has a lot of meanings and allusions about it; all of them are united by plastique energy that the hadron collider itself could be jealous of.

Julia Tarabarina. ​Watched by the Angels from up Above

Held in the General Staff building of the Hermitage Museum, the anniversary exhibition of “Studio 44” is ambitious and diverse. The exhibition was designed to give a comprehensive showcase of the company’s architecture in a whole number of ways: through video, models, drawings, installations, and finally, through a real-life project, the Enfilade, which the exhibition opens up, intensifies, and makes work the way it was originally intended.

Julia Tarabarina. The Terraces of the Crystal Cape

Proposed by Nikita Yavein, the concept of a museum, educational, and memorial complex to be built in the city of Sevastopol avoids straightforward accents and over-the-top dramatics, interpreting the history of this place along with the specifics of its landscape, and joining the public space of the operated stairway and amphitheaters with an imposing monument.

Alyona Kuznetsova, Julia Tarabarina. ​Theater Town

The second stage of Boris Eifman Dance Academy is constructed around a theater building, its space “spinning” around the architectural scenery of the “little town” of the atrium. The result looks like a Russian Matryoshka doll: a theater within a city, and then a little town within a theater, all of this forming a dance school – a very effective way of organizing the space.

Alyona Kuznetsova. A String of Impressions

A “string” park designed for the first alluvial waterfront of the Vasilyevsky Island is full of modern functions, at the same time demonstrating a regular structure and a reference to the classic gardens of Saint Petersburg. The project won in the competition and is due to be implemented.