Framework in Space

Developed by "Studio 44", the project of a judo school is based on the opposition of the modernist principle of point support and the openness of deconstruction - with their sources lying in the traditional Japanese architecture. A fair share of abstraction helps to add some stylistic discourse to the necessary level of generalization.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

29 August 2016

Object

The judo school whose design "Studio 45" completed a few months ago will be built on the Vyborg side in the district of Polyustrovo - an area that was once occupied by large Dukes dachas, then factories, and now predominantly by Soviet-type apartment buildings with an odd fraction of smaller dachas and spots of die-hard industrial parks. The judo school will occupy a large rectangle on the borderline between the Academic Sakharov Park and a residential area that consists predominantly of the 1970's panel nine-story houses interspersed with later additions. The city backdrop here is a habitual checkered gray; anyone who was born in the Soviet Union would recognize this view from a mile away. And, as for the park, it is not just any park, but a descendant of the Abamelek-Lazarevs' dacha, which pretty much turns it into a piece of the preindustrial suburbs that were later merged with the industrial Saint Petersburg. Later on, it was renamed into a "Young Pioneer" Park, and its northern park has kept this name to this day, the southern part having been renamed into the "Sakharov" Park and getting a monument to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a copy brought all the way down from Japan. And, not so much by design as by coincidence, it turned out that this Japanese theme took root here: across from the monument, a new school of a Japanese martial art will be built. The school will have in it training and performance halls - not only for judo but for gymnastics as well; it will also have a highly developed infrastructure that will include, among other things, about a dozen rooms for guest athletes. This is going to be a great up-to-date school the height of a nine-story house (28.8 meters), the height measurements of the building fitting in nicely with the surroundings.

zooming — Sports and recreation complex of the judo school. Project, 2016 © Studio 44

The school building consists of a voluminous "grid" framework with a large cell span of 7.2x7.2 meters. It is planned that the framework will be coated with wood that will bring out the wood construction both on the inside and outside, following its structural logic. To an outside observer it will look - just as it looks now on the project visualizations - that the building's framework is indeed made of wood. In an odd checkered pattern, it is at some places covered in glass and at some places is coated with panels but still mostly it is transparent, viewable, and is designed prominently on the outside. The walls recede into the depth of the building forming on the facade an intermediate space that is akin to shallow stanzas - but still uninhabited. The outer plane of the facade is touched by the "legs" of the glazed stairwells. Just like all the other pillars, they support the bowl of the main competition hall - an inverted stepping pyramid whose volume is partially readable from the outside. The entire building turns into a support for the bowl of the main hall elevated 12 meters above the ground, its edges "resting" on the outside framework, and its basis - on the volumes of the minor halls of the bottom floors that are still pierced with point supports, just as they should be in accordance with the tradition of the architecture of today. The narrow verticals of the stairwells are evenly placed, like buttresses of a gothic temple, and, coupled with the crowning band of panoramic windows, they form on the facade a composition that reminds, on the one hand, a horizontal skyscraper on slender pillars, and, on the other hand (especially when viewed from a distance of the park) - a temple portal of the Far East architectural tradition: an array of colums that support a beam with two long protruding "tails" of the cantilevers. The likeness is still further enhanced by the steps of the spectators’ stalls which add characteristic bulges to the silhouettes of the cantilevers. The whole façade is turned into a portal - a gate to sport, which is more than symbolic. This portal is, however, far from classic - it has a pillar in its middle which made the architects shift the entrance with its broad marquee to the left: the geometry of the main façade took on some "irresponsible" quality, while the likeness to the hyper portal stopped being literal. Behind the top glass horizontal, there are cafes that circle the stalls along their perimeter that will command, just like the stairwells, a great panoramic view of the park and the city.

This mixture of avant-grade and modernism with a tilt to Japanese postwar metabolic architecture - with references to the traditional Japanese house, and, most importantly, the classic judo halls - are to be found everywhere in this building. One grows into the other, which seems more or less self-explanatory, as one abstracts himself from the form. Just like on a Picasso painting, where somebody's nose can be at the same time an abstract triangle, we can see here, depending on our mood and angle of vision, either a Japanese temple with a broad roof or a wooden pavilion, the kind that is popular today at architectural festivals, or a huge building designed in full accordance with the rules of modern architecture (which it actually is). So - and it comes as no surprise at all - what we see is a curious version of Pompidou Center's Piano&Rogers Pyramid, only tested with squares of wooden structure and changed almost beyond recognition, the masterpiece and the manifesto of the deconstruction architecture. And why not? The staircases are brought forward, behind them, there is the "bustle" of the building works crossed by diagonal metallic beams - the likeness to the famous escalator and the metallic grids on the main façade of the Paris museum is obvious, even though here, in Saint Petersburg, everything is a lot more reserved and farther away from hi-tech, and, even, conversely, sunk in the tradition of wooden construction. Another thing that comes to mind is Nikolai Plissky's "Hadron Collider", a hint at the mechanism of state-of-the-art technologies, built from rough timber - but then again, the distance from the prototype is not so great. And if we are to talk about deconstruction, it is something that is contained inside here - the building does not cast any "protuberances" outside and stays compact; the main façade looks more like a cut or a section of some part of the building's structure. No irony is in sight - quite the opposite, what we see is, for all intents and purposes, quite a serious discourse on the subject of the basics of modernist culture and its origin lying in the traditional oriental cultures.

And that's as true as it's going to get - the bare staircases that are brought forward here can be seen not only in Pompidou but also in many other modernist masterpieces - for example, in Andrew Meerson's "Pilots' House" with its oval stairwell towers. The crossings of sliced verticals and horizontals, on the other hand, put one in the mind of the Fuji Television building designed by Kenzo Tange, as well as some projects done by "Studio 44" itself where a "centipede" beam elevated on a multitude of supporting pillars is one of the favorite techniques; it is to be found, for example, in their contest project of a multifunctional complex on the alluvial land of the Vasilyevsky Island; or in the building of the defense ministry of Kazakhstan.

On the whole, however, the project is immersed in the Japanese tradition. The most obvious prototype is, of course, the Japanese house and the judo gyms with their wooden frameworks, lattices, and partitions covered in rice paper, light, transparent, agile, just as the spirit of a judo school should suggest. To a certain degree, the building of the Saint Petersburg school IS such a gym, only magnified manifold: 72x29 meters,12.6 meters to reach the beams, and 16 meters together with them - strictly speaking, it could contain a couple of 5-story residential buildings. Three tiers of ceiling beams - its main pride - also work to "explore the subject" directly referring us to the prototype of the Japanese red ceilings that in the old houses sometimes occupy a significant share of the home space dividing it into cubes. The ambient light that falls from all sides, including from the ceiling, is softened but still with a voluminous quality to it, and it enhances the Japanese framework feel of the space in which mass is seemingly completely inferior to structure.

But, as was already said, the modernist basis and the Japanese prototypes are closely connected here. The architecture of contemporary history is all about framework, which accounts for 90% of its beauty and success; this is also one of the principles of Le Corbusier. The point supports are derived from the specifics of the technology of reinforced concrete, and they help save building materials and space, as well as make walls light and transparent. But at the same time this technology dates back to all framework houses known to man, less to modernism in its European half-timber form, and more to the framework of a Japanese house that so many classics of the wooden tradition fell for. In other words, this evergreen technology of framework construction that has been around for at least a century has its roots in a tradition. In this case, the theme luckily coincided with the theme of the judo school, making the meaning complete or getting back to the sources at the new helix of development.

One cannot help recalling that "Studio 44" has already done another project built upon a wooden framework - the science museum in the city of Tomsk. Back then, it seemed that the architect revived the sculptural tradition of the early Soviet wooden avant-garde architecture, and that he was going to keep on using that language teetering on the verge of the literal, the recognizable, and the generalized. It is clear now that "Studio 44" views the idea - one of a wooden framework in this case - from many different angles, studying its numerous prototypes suggested by the context. Viewing the building's framework as a voluminous grid whose content is conditioned by the building's function, and, as a consequence, is rather flexible, is interesting in itself, and, besides, all through the XX century a lot was said on the subject, so the architects had a lot of starting points to lean on.

29 August 2016

Headlines now

Architecton Awards

In 2025, the jury of the Architecton festival reviewed the finalist projects through live, open presentations held right in the exhibition hall – a rather engaging performance, and something rarely seen among Russian awards. It would be great if “Zodchestvo” adopted this format. Below, we present all the winning projects, including four special nominations.

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Garden of Knowledge

UNK architects and UNK design created the interiors of the Letovo Junior campus, working together with NF Studio, which was responsible for developing the educational technology that takes into account the needs and perception of younger and middle school children.

The Silver Skates

The STONE Kaluzhskaya office quarter is accompanied by two residential towers, making the complex – for it is indeed a single ensemble – well balanced in functional terms. The architects at Kleinewelt gave the residential buildings a silvery finish to match the office blocks. How they are similar, how they differ, and what “Silver Skates” has to do with it – we explore in this article.

Overview

On the Dynastic Trail

The houses and townhouses of the “Tsarskaya Tropа” (“Czar’s Trail”) complex are being built in the village of Gaspra in Crimea – to the west and east of the palaces of the former grand-ducal residence “Ai-Todor”. One of the main challenges for the architects at KPLN, who developed the project, was to respond appropriately to this significant neighboring heritage. How this influenced the massing, the façades, and the way the authors work with the terrain is explored in our article.

Object

A New Path

The main feature of the Yar Park project, designed by Sergey Skuratov for Kazan, is that it is organized along the “spine” of a multifunctional mall with an impressive multi-height atrium space in its middle. The entire site, both on the city side and the Kazanka River embankment, is open to the public. The complex is intended not to become “yet another fenced enclave” but, as urban planners say, a “polycenter” – a new point of attraction for the whole of Kazan, especially its northern part, made up of residential districts that until now have lacked such a vibrant public space. It represents a new urban planning approach to a high-density mixed-use development situated in the city center – in a sense, an “anti-quarter”. Even Moscow, one might say, doesn’t yet have anything quite like it. Well, lucky Kazan!

Object

Beneath the Azure Sky

A depository designed by Studio 44 will soon be built in Kenozersky National Park to preserve and display the so-called “heavens” – ceiling structures characteristic of wooden churches in the Russian North, painted with biblical scenes. For each of these “heavens”, the architects created a volume corresponding in scale and dimensions to the original church interior. The result is a honeycomb-like composition, with modules derived directly from the historic monuments themselves, allowing visitors to view the icons from the historically accurate angle – from below, looking upward. How exactly this works is the subject of our story.

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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.

News

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.

Object

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Interview

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Interview

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.

Overview

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”.