The installation by Vladimir Plotkin and TPO Reserve – a tower made of translucent plastic resembling Turkish delight – can be said to connect two projects: one from the past and another that may well belong to the future, though the architect speaks confidently about its practical feasibility.
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![zooming]( "Vladimir Plotkin, TPO Reserve. Masters. Arch Moscow 2026 Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru")
Vladimir Plotkin, TPO Reserve. Masters. Arch Moscow 2026Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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![zooming]( "Vladimir Plotkin, TPO Reserve. Masters. Arch Moscow 2026 Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru")
Vladimir Plotkin, TPO Reserve. Masters. Arch Moscow 2026Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
Let us begin with the backstory. The installation itself – a generalized model and, as we shall see, a starting point for further exploration – was assembled from reused material. In 2012, the bureau X.Y.Z., led by Svetlana Golovina, built the House with Pink Shutters in Pirogovo as part of the “Yachtsmen’s Houses” project conceived shortly before by Yevgeny Ace at Zavidkin Cape.
It is a relatively small two-story timber house with a gabled roof. Its waterside façade is composed entirely of pink plastic elements. To reinforce the resemblance to actual shutters, the elements were perforated with a regular pattern. Traditional shutters might feature heart-shaped cutouts; here, however, the openings take the form of crosses with enlarged centers, making them resemble both eight-pointed stars and cross-stitch embroidery motifs. The latter association works particularly well with the pink color of the shutters: pink and cross-stitch embroidery are conventionally perceived as feminine themes, yet this is no delicate embroidery – at the very least, it is strikingly bold in scale.
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![zooming]( "Svetlana Golovina. Yachtsmen’s House, Pirogovo Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
Svetlana Golovina. Yachtsmen’s House, PirogovoCopyright: © TPO Reserve
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![zooming]( "Yachtsmen’s House, Pirogovo. Architect: Svetlana Golovina. Photo: Ilia Ivanov Copyright: Courtesy of X.Y.Z.")
Yachtsmen’s House, Pirogovo. Architect: Svetlana Golovina. Photo: Ilia IvanovCopyright: Courtesy of X.Y.Z.
Olga Golovina, Vladimir Plotkin’s wife, participated in the design of the house. As a result, the construction leftovers – in this case, the plastic cross-shaped cutouts – ended up at the couple’s own home, where they were used as paving for a garden path and remained there for roughly a decade. Eventually they were collected, cleaned, and Olga Golovina began assembling them into a kind of tower – or perhaps several towers. Looking at these objects, Vladimir Plotkin – who, along with TPO Reserve, has recently been working extensively with modular construction systems, both for low-rise buildings and high-rises – picked up the idea and developed it further.
More precisely, he came up with a module of his own design.
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
What distinguishes this proposal from the familiar Jenga-like experiments with modular construction is the shape of the basic element. Here, the module takes the form of an equal-armed Greek cross inscribed within a square. Its enlarged central section lends itself naturally to a tower with a communication and service core at its center. The element is divided into three parts: the arm of the cross itself, containing the principal living space with a living room projected outward over the city and illuminated from three sides; transitional volumes; and open areas in the form of terraces and balconies. All of these components are arranged in a centrally symmetrical composition.
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
In the completed tower, the modules are successively rotated by 45 degrees, transforming what might otherwise have been a conventional high-rise into a spatially dynamic yet rigorously ordered “porcupine”. More importantly, Vladimir Plotkin proposes that the tower itself rotate around its vertical axis. The central core remains fixed, while the modules turn slowly as a single body rather than independently. As they move, views from the apartments gradually shift, allowing the residents to survey the entire city over time.
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
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![zooming]( "“Pink module” Copyright: © TPO Reserve")
“Pink module”Copyright: © TPO Reserve
This is not the kind of rotation seen in the 11-story Suite Vollard building (1994–2001) by Bruno de Franco, where individual apartment floors rotated at the push of a button. Plotkin’s idea is more restrained: the modules rotate together, somewhat like the movement of Heliotrope, Rolf Disch’s own house (1990–1994). In terms of scale, however, it comes closer to David Fisher’s Dynamic Tower project (2007–2008), which envisioned a 420-meter structure with eighty independently rotating floors composed of modular apartments.
Even a brief excursion into the history of kinetic architecture – and one might also recall Angelo Invernizzi’s Villa Girasole (1930–1935), the ideological predecessor of Heliotrope, which followed the sun by moving along circular rails – shows that such buildings do exist and continue to be imagined, though not in great numbers. This can be interpreted as evidence of limited demand for kinetic architecture. On the other hand, it may equally suggest that the field remains insufficiently explored by contemporary architects and engineers.
Given the demand for distinctive architectural solutions in present-day Moscow, why should it not become a pioneer in this area? When Rolf Disch completed his rotating house, he was reportedly surprised by how little energy was required for the movement itself. Plotkin’s proposal appears considerably more feasible than the Dynamic Tower, while still embracing both modular construction and ambitious scale: according to the project, the tower would rise to 300 meters.
Viewed against the backdrop of well-known examples of kinetic architecture, both built and unbuilt, Plotkin’s proposal is notable not only for its restraint. After all, the floors do not rotate independently, nor does the building generate constantly shifting, chaotic compositions as it moves. This restraint – rooted in the original star-shaped cross module – ultimately becomes a virtue, lending the project a remarkable economy of architectural expression.
All of its variety, and even its sense of dynamism, emerges from just a few simple devices. Among them are the extensive glass surfaces and the dramatic cantilevered projections, which transform the traditional bay window into something altogether different: volumetric “boxes” akin to those piercing the façades of “Vremena Goda”, only larger, more energetic, and repeated with greater frequency. There are also the triangular cuts that carve out open balconies and terraces. Most importantly, however, the project’s sculptural quality, visual complexity, and formal boldness are achieved not through decorative gestures but through the very logic of the building itself. The architecture grows organically from its internal structure.
In solutions of this kind, where form is determined from within, the simplicity of the basic module helps preserve the underlying logic of the composition – a logic grounded in proportion and order. There is no need to impose additional layers of abstraction or formal generalization, because the coherence of the architectural statement is already embedded in its foundations. That is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the project.
As a result, the possibilities for formal development are virtually limitless. Working from the same module – and with Elena Kuznetsova playing a major role in exploring design options and producing the project graphics – the architects developed an entire spectrum of possible configurations. These range from the most straightforward tower, where the star-shaped modules are simply stacked one above another, to perimeter-block developments and even a spatial conglomerate organized around a gigantic triangular cantilever projecting into space. Each option was analyzed using a SWOT framework, identifying its respective strengths and weaknesses.
At this point, comparisons naturally arise with Moshe Safdie’s Habitat and, more broadly, with the many manifestations of volumetric pixelation that have characterized architecture in the twenty-first century. There are numerous examples of “pixelated” towers as well – One Park Drive by Herzog & de Meuron comes readily to mind. Over the past seventy years, perhaps even longer, this approach has evolved into a method in its own right, finding expression in everything from container-based art projects to formal explorations in high-rise design. One could even argue that the search for form in contemporary tall buildings falls, in broad terms, into two categories: sculptural, fluid compositions on the one hand, and these pixelated structures on the other – buildings that seem, if one may permit a pun, to “cross themselves against” excessive plasticity in favor of a visually articulated module. As always, there are hybrids as well. What is striking, however, is that over recent decades the volumetric pixelation of large architectural forms has largely been confined to experiments with its decorative variant: static projections, bay windows, and terraces placed atop them. In such cases, the entire façade becomes an impressive decorative device. Impressive – but still decorative.
Plotkin’s project attempts something different. It seeks to look deeper into the nature of form itself: to take it apart and reassemble it like a construction set, revealing its structural essence and presenting that essence as a powerful formal gesture. This is what distinguishes the proposal from most contemporary experiments in what is often loosely described as “sculptural form” – a term that today is applied to almost anything. The project is compelling precisely because of this fundamentally different approach. The expressive architectural statement is no longer applied to the volume; it becomes the very substance from which the volume is generated.
This is all the more intriguing because contemporary modular construction technologies make such an approach entirely feasible. One is tempted to quote Akhmatova’s famous line, “from what refuse poetry grows”. Yet perhaps another conclusion is more appropriate here: what remarkably useful “refuse” can sometimes be found in the garden of the Plotkin/Golovina household.
