По-русски

​Archimatika: it’s time for “sleeping belts” to wake up.

Uniting the imagery and the construction typology of a historical city with the lush vegetation of a “garden town”, Archimatika proposed for a peripheral yet actively developing area of Lviv a fragment of new-type city environment meant to inspire “feelings of a new quality”.

Written by:
Darya Gorelova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

28 February 2017
Object
mainImg
Architect:
Aleksandr Popov
Firm:
Archimatika
Object:
Residential complex on Stryska street
Ukraine, Lviv

2014 — 2016

The historical center of Lviv is relatively small – about 120 hectares. One of the protuberances of the city territory, which touches the city transport ring, is stretched south and joins the Stryiska Street, a busy city thoroughfare. In its very beginning, near the park that bears the same name, this street can boast stucco eclectic façades and fine “Roman” pavements. Further on south, these give way to workers’ settlements, and then to residential areas and industrial parks.

The territory of the new housing complex “Leopol Town” is situated between a factory and a hippodrome not far away from the city’s ring road. The three hectares occupy a corner of the derelict municipal tree nursery, which has now turned into a semblance of a forest. The surroundings are quite promising: the city’s bus depot is but a five minutes’ walk away, there is also the already-mentioned hippodrome nearby, and slightly further, a couple of kilometers southward, there is the football “Arena Lviv” which was built for FIFA 2012. There are also a few parks nearby, and there are small villages outside the city boundaries: from west and east. Currently, the urban area between the villages and east of the bus terminal is being actively developed – numerous new housing projects are being built, with the consideration of the proximity of the Arena and the city’s plans for renovating two of its highways: the Vernadskogo Street must turn into a span thoroughfare, while the nameless appendix stretching northward will be renamed into the Krasnaya Kalina Avenue. Leopol Town has at least four more neighbors with different degrees of construction completion, from 5 to 10 stories high.

The complex that Archimatika designed is inscribed in the same height restrictions – it does not tower over either the soviet-time nine-story houses, or the new housing projects. The large – three hectares – land plot, combined with rather modest requirements for floor space – 43 300 square meters – allowed the architects to stay within a reasonable scale. At the same time, the complex is strikingly different from its neighbors, and not only from the standardized prefab ones, either.

First of all, the architects paid a lot of attention to studying the architectural context, promptly reacting to all of its peculiarities. The rectangular territory of the former plant nursery, with a cutaway at its northeast corner, is essentially a triangle. From the right angle sides of the triangular land site, the future busy streets approach – therefore, this side of the complex includes capacious overland parking lots (there are no underground parking garages here). The buildings that stand where greenhouses used to be form a “contour” framework of an urban block type, as if protecting the land site from the city but their front is broken into three fragments, which provides free passages leading inside the complex, and helps to avoid the undesirable effect of a “Great Wall of China”. On the outside, alongside the hypothenuse, there are, of course, no parking lots whatsoever – instead, there is a pedestrian promenade running here that is meant to connect the bus depot and the bus stop on the Vernadskogo street with the future Krasnaya Kalina Avenue that will lead to the hippodrome and the Arena. A promenade is also one of the common decencies of the modern residential complexes, and, at the same time, the very fact that it will be placed not on the inside but on the outside, will make Leopol Town more open to the city and the forestland as well. The promenade is designed not only for the residents of the complex – the transient pedestrian stream could also make clientele for the cafés and shops on the ground floors.

The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Park. Project, 2016 © Archimatika
The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Master plan. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


As for the inside territory of the complex, the architects tried to keep as many of the old lime and ash trees as possible: they carefully searched for the places where to position the sports fields and playgrounds, and minimized the fire lanes and driveways down to the smallest allowable scale. The yard will only be opened to emergency vehicles and cars driven by people of limited mobility – ultimately, the yard has turned into a landscaped park of sorts. In addition, for the residents of the ground floors the architects designed small (about 3 square meters) little gardens on the inner contour of the complex. This hot trend of modern architecture – a piece of private space within a public landscaped territory, which makes it possible to lure people outside in their different capacities – becomes suddenly resonant, in this specific instance, with the rural surroundings of the new growing city. Within a fifteen minutes’ walk away from the bustling city people can, figuratively speaking, sit on their front porches, or have tea in the terraces, or even grow gardens of their very own. As for the ground floors of the outside contour, they will be occupied by cafés, shops, and other retail businesses.

Speaking of preservation of trees and the “inland” forest that the complex got, the architects are mentioning the principle ‘invite nature in’ – and, indeed, if we are to look at the surroundings, the architects not just preserve the forest by fencing it off – they really let it in because the boundary between the complex and the outside part of the now-wild nursery was made as transparent as possible. The easiest thing in the world would have been to fence the territory off from all sides by a “wall” house getting a closed-type urban block – the authors share – yet they approached the task in a creative and flexible way, replacing the “wall” houses on the forest side with towers oriented strictly on the cardinal points, meaning, facing the hypothenuse boundary with their corners, opening up passages for going in and out of the complex. This way, people, and, conditionally speaking, trees, are “stepping inside” the yard: the boundary between the yard and the forest is transparent, and what we are looking at is one of the versions of the “garden” town, pretty much like a countryside health center or a university campus where the buildings stand amidst the forest. The difference lies in the fact that here the buildings stand closer to each other, while the trees are not just a pleasant site to see but they also perform a utilitarian function, helping to avoid the window-to-window view. The typology turned out to be of a mixed type: three sectional 7-story houses on the outside contours and four 10-story towers inside.

The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Layouts. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Park. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Yard. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


It must be noted that the architects not only paid attention to the transparency or even porosity of the residential area that they designed – which makes it possible to cross it from side to side in any direction – but they also provided theoretical rationale for this solution, turning to the prototypes lying in the historical center of the city. The architects analyzed the historical part of Lviv on two parameters: “construction density / street space” ratio and the number of end-to-and passages from one street to another, which make it possible to traverse the entire city from end to end through arches, alleys, and side streets. Then the architects applied the resulting figures to designing their own brand-new complex. Therefore, the project not only reacts to the current and future needs of the territory – the architects also endow the new complex with immanent qualities of the old town, similar to the urban genetic code, “replanting” them from the center to the suburbs. Calculated and borrowed from the famous UNESCO-protected Lviv’s historical center, the specifics of volumetric construction make the new complex, which is built on the other side of the soviet “micro-districts”, flesh and blood of the old town in some secret way. The “genetic code” is a very apt term in this case because, speaking about the use of the urban meta-base, the architects turn their new complex into some sort of a relative of the city’s historical center.

The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Birds-eye view. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


But then again, the parallels are drawn not only between the lines. The parceling of the construction is also resonant with the old town: less than 20 meters from door to door of the hallway entrance, and diversity of the façades of the block-and-section part. The façades of the sections, which will be built at the same time, are meant to imitate the naturally dense construction of the city center – also a modern technique that makes it possible to fracture the façade front thus making its look “human-friendly”. “What we ultimately wanted to get was this sort of a finely ground system that would partially resemble the historical buildings of the city center, that would be co-proportionate to human beings, and at the same time contemporary” – shares the chief architect of the project Dmitry Vasiliev.

However, the architects think beyond just the “hot-trend-of-today” technique, building up a whole chain of hints at the imagery of the historical Lviv. For example, the seemingly freehand variations of the height of the sections – half a story high – resemble the silhouette of the buildings that frame the Market Square (the main tourist attraction), where the pitches of the roofs are also longitudinally oriented, while the ledges formed by the small variations in the height of the buildings are close in their proportions to what we see in “Leopol Town”. It’s not that such ledges are not to be found in their places and other cities – but in this specific instance the similarity with Lviv is enhanced by the details: the pattern of the mansard windows resembles the dormer windows of the Market Square. The cold green hue of the copper oxide and the dark-beige plaster of the façades with striped wooden shutters also put one in the mind of the city center. The light-colored façades add a “coloristic” note, which in this case completes the theme, reminding us that in the old town the dark-stone façades alternate with light-colored stuccoed ones. One of the final strokes is the chimneys, or, rather, the elongated outlets of the vent shafts that certainly look like ones. Together with the fine pavement, they complete the play of the parallels being drawn with the historical Lviv, carefully teetering on the verge of the recognizability of the prototype without falling down to stylization.

The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Yard. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Terraces. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


As far as reality and the modern age are concerned, these are brought back to us by a variety of modern techniques: the doubled rhythm of the floors, very much like the Holland wall, the picturesque composition of the windows, the “wrapping around” of the towers with a casing of pitched-roof silhouette, as well as the inserts of grass-green panels and the horizontal stripes of dark stone that almost looks like wood – all of these establish imagery connections not with the Old Town, but with the immediate vegetation context. And, of course, the sign of modern age – the verticals of the flat-roof staircase and elevator units that stand outside the building, as well as the planes of the terraces in front of the penthouses – unlike the historical construction, where the pitches of the roofs would cover the attics, which, as is known, keep the warmth, in this case the triangles of the top floors are occupied by two-story apartments.

The housing complex on the Stryiska Street in Lviv. Birds-eye view. Project, 2016 © Archimatika


None


“The pool of our early versions of the project included both flat and pitched roofs. But when our clients showed the project to the focus group, almost 99% of the respondents voted in favor of the gabled silhouettes as more inviting and “looking like a home”. “This was not the first time that we built houses with gabled roofs. But it was the first time that I saw just how differently people reacted to modern shapes and gabled roofs” – Dmitry Vasilyev recaps. Another Archimatika project, all but completed, also boasting pitched roofs, is the merrily-colored “Comfort Town” in Kiev.

The similarity between the housing complex in Kiev and “Leopol Town” are rather apparent. However, while the architecture of the Kiev complex is designed to bring out emotional associations of “Europe in general”, the Lviv complex selectively draws from this theme individual “conceptual hooks”, tying its romantic image to the genius loci, at the same time keeping a fair share of “Christmas” quality – all of the pictures are of the winter kind, too. The architects view this project as an attempt to offer this city not just another new housing complex but also some certain strategy for developing a full-fledged living environment. It’s time for sleeping belts to wake up – in the XXI century the quality of their architecture is quite capable of holding its own with the architecture of the historical center of the city.


Architect:
Aleksandr Popov
Firm:
Archimatika
Object:
Residential complex on Stryska street
Ukraine, Lviv

2014 — 2016

28 February 2017

Written by:

Darya Gorelova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov
Headlines now
New “Flight”
Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.
The Yauza Towers
In Moscow, there aren’t that many buildings or projects designed by Nikita Yavein and Studio 44. In this article, we present to you the concept of a large multifunctional complex on the Yauza River, located between two parks, featuring a promenade, a crossroads of two pedestrian streets, a highly developed public space, and an original architectural solution. This solution combines a sophisticated, asymmetric façade grid, reminiscent of a game of fifteen puzzle, and bold protrusions of the upper parts of the buildings, completely masking the technical floors and sculpting the complex’s silhouette.
Architecture and Leisure Park
For the suburban hotel complex, which envisages various formats of leisure, the architectural company T+T Architects proposed several types of accommodation, ranging from the classic “standard” in a common building to a “cave in the hill” and a “house in a tree”. An additional challenge consisted in integrating a few classic-style residences already existing on this territory into the “architectural forest park”.
The U-House
The Jois complex combines height with terraces, bringing the most expensive apartments from penthouses down to the bottom floors. The powerful iconic image of the U-shaped building is the result of the creative search for a new standard of living in high-rise buildings by the architects of “Genpro”.
Black and White
In this article, we specifically discuss the interiors of the ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh. Interior design is a crucial component of the overall concept in this case, and precision and meticulous execution were highly important for the architects. Julia Tryaskina, head of UNK interiors, shares some of the developments.
The “Snake” Mountain
The competition project for the seaside resort complex “Serpentine” combines several typologies: apartments of different classes, villas, and hotel rooms. For each of these typologies, the KPLN architects employ one of the images that are drawn from the natural environment – a serpentine road, a mountain stream, and rolling waves.
Opal from Anna Mons’ Ring
The project of a small business center located near Tupolev Plaza and Radio Street proclaims the necessity of modern architecture in a specific area of Moscow commonly known as “Nemetskaya Sloboda” or “German settlement”. It substantiates its thesis with the thoroughness of details, a multitude of proposed and rejected form variants, and even a detailed description of the surrounding area. The project is interesting indeed, and it is even more interesting to see what will come of it.
Feed ’Em All
A “House of Russian Cuisine” was designed and built by KROST Group at VDNKh for the “Rossiya” exhibition in record-breaking time. The pavilion is masterfully constructed in terms of the standards of modern public catering industry multiplied by the bustling cultural program of the exhibition, and it interprets the stylistically diverse character of VDNKh just as successfully. At the same time, much of its interior design can be traced back to the prototypes of the 1960s – so much so that even scenes from iconic Soviet movies of those years persistently come to mind.
The Ensemble at the Mosque
OSA prepared a master plan for a district in the southern part of Derbent. The main task of the master plan is to initiate the formation of a modern comfortable environment in this city. The organization of residential areas is subordinated to the city’s spiritual center: depending on the location relative to the cathedral mosque, the houses are distinguished by façade and plastique solutions. The program also includes a “hospitality center”, administrative buildings, an educational cluster, and even an air bridge.
Pargolovo Protestantism
A Protestant church is being built in St. Petersburg by the project of SLOI architects. One of the main features of the building is a wooden roof with 25-meter spans, which, among other things, forms the interior of the prayer hall. Also, there are other interesting details – we are telling you more about them.
The Shape of the Inconceivable
The ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh brings to mind a famous maxim of all architects and critics: “You’ve come up with it? Now build it!” You rarely see such a selfless immersion in implementation of the project, and the formidable structural and engineering tasks set by UNK architects to themselves are presented here as an integral and important part of the architectural idea. The challenge matches the obliging status of the place – after all, it is an “exhibition of achievements”, and the pavilion is dedicated to the nuclear energy industry. Let’s take a closer look: from the outside, from the inside, and from the underside too.
​Rays of the Desert
A school for 1750 students is going to be built in Dubai, designed by IND Architects. The architects took into account the local specifics, and proposed a radial layout and spaces, in which the children will be comfortable throughout the day.
The Dairy Theme
The concept of an office of a cheese-making company, designed for the enclosed area of a dairy factory, at least partially refers to industrial architecture. Perhaps that is why this concept is very simple, which seems the appropriate thing to do here. The building is enlivened by literally a couple of “master strokes”: the turning of the corner accentuates the entrance, and the shade of glass responds to the theme of “milk rivers” from Russian fairy tales.
The Road to the Temple
Under a grant from the Small Towns Competition, the main street and temple area of the village of Nikolo-Berezovka near Neftekamsk has been improved. A consortium of APRELarchitects and Novaya Zemlya is turning the village into an open-air museum and integrating ruined buildings into public life.
​Towers Leaning Towards the Sun
The three towers of the residential complex “Novodanilovskaya 8” are new and the tallest neighbors of the Danilovsky Manufactory, “Fort”, and “Plaza”, complementing a whole cluster of modern buildings designed by renowned masters. At the same time, the towers are unique for this setting – they are residential, they are the tallest ones here, and they are located on a challenging site. In this article, we explore how architects Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova tackled this far-from-trivial task.
In the spirit of ROSTA posters
The new Rostselmash tractor factory, conceptualized by ASADOV Architects, is currently being completed in Rostov-on-Don. References to the Soviet architecture of the 1920’s and 1960’s resonate with the mission and strategic importance of the enterprise, and are also in line with the client’s wish: to pay homage to Rostov’s constructivism.
The Northern Thebaid
The central part of Ferapontovo village, adjacent to the famous monastery with frescoes by Dionisy, has been improved according to the project by APRELarchitects. Now the place offers basic services for tourists, as well as a place for the villagers’ leisure.
Brilliant Production
The architects from London-based MOST Architecture have designed the space for the high-tech production of Charge Cars, a high-performance production facility for high-speed electric cars that are assembled in the shell of legendary Ford Mustangs. The founders of both the company and the car assembly startup are Russians who were educated in their home country.
Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor
The so-called “Mytny Dvor” area lying just behind Moscow Railway Station – the market rows with a complex history – will be transformed into a premium residential complex by Studio 44. The project consists of three parts: the restoration of historical buildings, the reconstruction of the lost part of the historical contour, and new houses. All of them are harmonized with each other and with the city; axes and “beams of light” were found, cozy corners and scenic viewpoints were carefully thought out. We had a chat with the authors of the historical buildings’ restoration project, and we are telling you about all the different tasks that have been solved here.
The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement
In 2022, Ostozhenka Architects won a competition, and in 2023, they developed and received all the necessary approvals for a master plan for the development of Chernigovskaya Street for the developer GloraX. The project takes into account a 10-year history of previous developments; it was done in collaboration with architects from Nizhny Novgorod, and it continues to evolve now. We carefully examined it, talked to everyone, and learned a lot of interesting things.
A Single-Industry Town
Kola MMC and Nornickel are building a residential neighborhood in Monchegorsk for their future employees. It is based on a project by an international team that won the 2021 competition. The project offers a number of solutions meant to combat the main “demons” of any northern city: wind, grayness and boredom.
A New Age Portico
At the beginning of the year, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport opened Terminal C. The large-scale and transparent entrance hall with luminous columns inside successfully combines laconism with a bright and photogenic WOW-effect. The terminal is both the new façade of the whole complex and the starting point of the planned reconstruction, upon completion of which Tolmachevo will become the largest regional airport in Russia. In this article, we are examining the building in the context of modernist prototypes of both Novosibirsk and Leningrad: like puzzle pieces, they come together to form their individual history, not devoid of curious nuances and details.
A New Starting Point
We’ve been wanting to examine the RuArts Foundation space, designed by ATRIUM for quite a long time, and we finally got round to it. This building looks appropriate and impressive; it amazingly combines tradition – represented in our case by galleries – and innovation. In this article, we delve into details and study the building’s historical background as well.
Molding Perspectives
Stepan Liphart introduces “schematic Art Deco” on the outskirts of Kazan – his houses are executed in green color, with a glassy “iced” finish on the facades. The main merits of the project lie in his meticulous arrangement of viewing angles – the architect is striving to create in a challenging environment the embryo of a city not only in terms of pedestrian accessibility but also in a sculptural sense. He works with silhouettes, proposing intriguing triangular terraces. The entire project is structured like a crystal, following two grids, orthogonal and diagonal. In this article, we are examining what worked, and what eventually didn’t.
An Educational Experiment for the North
City-Arch continues to work on the projects that can be termed as “experimental public preschools”: private kindergartens and schools can envy such facilities in many respects. This time around, the project is done for the city of Gubkinsky, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. A diverse educational and play environment, including a winter garden, awaits future students, while the teachers will have abundant opportunities to implement new practices.
Alexandra Kuzmina: “Working is easy when the rules are the same for everyone”
The subject matter of Moscow Region’s booth and presentations at Zodchestvo Festival was the concept of “Integrated Land Development”, and for a good reason: this task is very challenging, very relevant, and Moscow Region has already accumulated quite a formidable experience in this regard. In this article, we are speaking to the main architect of the region: about master plans and who makes them, about where you obtain resources for creating a comfortable environment, about her favorite projects, about why there are so few good architects, and what we should do with the bad ones.
The Cemetery: Inside and Outside
The workshop organized by the Genplan Institute of Moscow scored one of the two first places at the “Open City” festival. Its subject is reorganization of municipal cemeteries. Two action plans were proposed, diametrically opposite: one for the downtown and one for the suburbs.
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.
For Mental Reboot
At the architectural competition held in 2023 in Novosibirsk, the project by GORA Architects – a pedestrian bridge leading to the town of Bor – was awarded the “Golden Capital” prize. In this country, more than a hundred pedestrian bridges are constructed each year. What makes the Bor bridge different?
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.