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​An Architect about Architecture and Architects

In this article, we are giving a summary of a lecture by Alexander Skokan. The author’s subtitle is a subjective attempt to share about the professional problems.

11 January 2019
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Why am I an architect?

There were family prerequisites for that. My grand-grandfather, Peter Makushin, a patron of art, a prominent public figure, and an educator of Siberia, who founded the first publishing house in the city of Tomsk with a subsidiary in Irkutsk, and who also opened book stores and the first public library, built in 1916 in Tomsk, at his own expense, the “House of Science” for the public university.

A son of a country vicar, getting an education in the Ecclesiastical Academy of Saint Petersburg, he implemented this idea of his in the best architectural traditions: he organized a competition for the best construction project that was won by the then-young and unknown architect, Andrei Kryachkov.

Possibly, it was this event that influenced the choice of the profession for his grandson – the architect Peter Skokan, who became one of the students of the Ivan Zholtovsky Studio.

Peter Skokan, my uncle, a figure well-known at one time for his various gifts and killer charm, also influenced my professional choice to a large extent. Later on, it turned out that virtually all of the members of my family (children, nephews, and their wives) are architects. I hope that we will be able to save at least our grandchildren from this curse.

In the 1960’s, when I went to the Moscow Institute of Architecture my teachers were the famous avant-garde architects of the 1920-1930’s, Mikhail Turkus and Vladimir Krinsky; parallel classes were taught by Mikhail Barshch and Mikhail Sinyavsky. In an institute corridor you would oftentimes see Gregory Barkhin, the author of “Izvestia”, one of the best buildings in Moscow of the XX century, who would hurry to his class with giant books under his arm. And the son of Gregory, Boris Grigoryevich Barkhin, was the teacher of the group that I was in. It was him who fostered the rudimentary professional skills in us, or, simply speaking, taught us how to work.

After I graduated from the institute in 1966, I was sent on a “postgraduate work assignment program” (there was such a thing back in the soviet times) to work in Mosproject-2. The student romance was replaced by mundane reality. The studio where I worked chiefly designed housing projects for the “Facilities Administration Office” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which, by the standards of those days, could arguably be considered to be elite housing. I was young, brimming with energy and enthusiasm, but the civil service did not allow me to fully explore my potential, and, this is why, when I was invited to join the “New Element of Settlement” working group, I happily agreed – it was a great honor for me to work alongside Aleksey Gutnov, Ilya Lezhava, Andrey Baburov and other legendary figures. It was at that time that I developed my skills as a team player, which came in very handy for my further professional career – now I see that any kind of successful work is about playing as a team, where you know exactly who plays which part, and where the players are united not only professionally but by friendly ties as well.

One must realize that back in the 1960’s, all the sources of information, for the exception of the official ones, were virtually nonexistent, and this is why communication between people was so utterly critical. Speaking to one another, we would be getting across our knowledge and our subjective points of view. For example, my friend Andrey Baburov noticed, and I remembered that you could only listen to piano pieces by Skryabin if they were played by Vladimir Sofronitsky. Only in that room in the basement you could discuss a new novel by William Faulkner or Max Frisch, and it was there that I was first exposed to jazz music arranged by Gil Evans, and I also made a lot of other discoveries and got a lot of other knowledge there.

Once the term of my mandatory work of the postgraduate work assignment was over, I enrolled at the postgraduate courses at VNIiTIA. My science adviser was Andrey Ikonnikov – a most venerable student and theorist of architecture. And, again, I was lucky because I found myself in what you might call the intellectual epicenter of the university, i.e. in the smoking area underneath the staircase; for two years, every week (the postgraduate students were supposed to show up once a week); I would listen to Andrey Leonidov (the son of Ivan Leonidov), Alexander Rappoport, my friends Andrey Bokov and Vladimir Yudintsev. Also, there were such great people working there as Selim Khan-Magomedov, A.Oppolovnikov, and Nikolai Gulyanitsliy.

A few years later, Vladimir Yudintsev and I again ended up working together. This time it was the research and development department of Genplan Institute of Moscow, which a while later was headed by Aleksey Gutnov. Thanks to Gutnov’s organizational and other talents, we had something like a special status and could busy ourselves with what was interesting to us and what seemed to us really important; we also would come up ourselves with the subjects of our design and research projects.

The main motivation for our activities was overthrowing the then-almighty governmental agency Genplan (which translates as “Master Plan”) that would divide the city into a few (seven or eight) independent towns-planning zones, each with a center of its own. The main ideologist of Genplan, Simon Matveev, whom we would inevitably corner in our discussions, would ultimately always extricate himself with an answer to the effect that “better a bad master plan than no master plan at all”. This young urge to do everything “OUR OWN WAY”, look at things at a different angle, allowed our team to make a lot of discoveries and come up with a lot of new lines of research, along which we would work later on.

We proposed to view a city contextually, as a part of a complex system of agglomeration ties, which, back in those days (and sometimes today as well) is obstructed by administrative obstacles that tend to separate the city from its surrounding territory, generally known as “oblast”. We also claimed that a city needed a polycentric structure of multifunctional business centers situated at several transport hubs, instead of just one. Also, right about that time, we discovered yet another promising branch – working with the historical city and its environment, which generally did not comply with any of the existing rules and regulations. “Discovering” this city that we had known for years from our everyday life but knew nothing about from the professional standpoint, we started our research from historical, morphological, functional, and even attempts at social analysis. We saw the problems of the city from a whole number of new different angles.

Back in the 1980’s, although they had to work a lot, the architects did not make much money, while their friends – painters, sculptors and graphic designers – sometimes made decent money when they chanced to land a lucrative contract. This is why the architects were so lured by the prospect of working in “Integrated Art Centers”, where they would enter in a creative symbiosis with artists and designers. Together, they would work on the expositions of museums and exhibitions, design theater stages, community centers, and industrial buildings.

Working together with these artists was a great professional school, an experience of free intuitive creative activity, without the architectural pre-programming.

Here I was taught by: sculptor Nikolai Nikogosyan, the Rukavishnikov sculptor family, and, finally, the sculptor of monuments and painter Ivan Lubennikov, with whom we did a few very important joint projects – the exposition of the Soviet section of the Auschwitz memorial museum, the XVII Youth Exhibition of the “Memorial” society, a few contests, and many other interesting projects.

Speaking of my great teachers, I cannot help but mention Leonid Pavlov, with whom I was looking lucky to work almost for a month in Weimar (Bauhaus) in 1978 within the framework of an international project conference. The clarity, the crispness, and the dramatic quality of his architectural gestures, talking to him in general, and the master’s charming ways really impressed me.

And, finally, 30 years ago, in 1989, the project of reconstructing Moscow’s Ostozhenka area brought about the appearance of our architectural firm, which later got the name of Ostozhenka.

It was on that project that all the experience that I had accumulated hitherto came in very handy, as well as my skills of working as a team player.

After working in Genplan with the territories of Zamoskvorechye, Stoleshnikov Lane, Pokrovka Street, and such like, working with historical environment was habitual and easy. Also came in very handy the idea of parceling that we discovered when still working on the Stoleshnikov Lane – the new buildings started to easily fit in with the historical environment it these historical guidelines were observed. Working with the Ostozhenka Street was also about an experience of working with initially timid clients and developers, who would at first politely ask: “how many square meters can we build here?”, and the communication with the then-forming class of government officials, many of whom had in fact recently been our brothers in architecture.

I also had a very interesting experience of working with overseas architects: Finns, Italians, English, Turks, and Yugoslavs (yes, if you remember, there was such a country – Yugoslavia), Dutch, and French.

Since 2003, it has been the time of major international competition, and our company has been participating in many of them.

This was the competition for Saint-Petersburg’s Mariinski Theater, the competition “Big Moscow” (2012), and the competition “Moscow River”. As for our last two competition projects, we did them together with our French colleagues (Ives Lion architects). Again, we made discoveries that were very important for us and our city – a railway, a river, a 100 cities and 140 little rivers). In these competition projects we also partnered with geographers, transport experts, sociologists, and one architectural historian, Andrei Baldin. Not trying to say anything final, and not claiming to be holding the ultimate truth, in conclusion of this talk about architecture and architects, I would like to try and formulate a few keynotes that seem important to me:

Keynote one: “APPROPRIATENESS OF ARCHITECTURE”

“Appropriateness” means that your architecture fits in with its place and its properties. At the same time, you must keep in mind that today the very notion of “place” is being constantly diluted, that is, the farther away we are, the bigger this place is, and we are now sort of in a different place.

On the one side, this is a result of our growing mobility – we have visited a great number of places in the world, and now it’s hard for us to stay committed to some specific place, even if it is our “small motherland”.

On the other hand, thanks to smartphones and other smart gadgets that have become an indispensable part of our life, we can be in this or that specific place only physically, while in actuality, looking into the screens of our smartphones, we can be in quite different geographic locations and life situations.

That is, thanks to digitalization, “gadgetization”, and other “smartphonization”, the properties of your physical location, from which you go online, for the obvious exception of sitting comfort, are no longer that relevant, after all.

In this connection, it will also be appropriate to touch upon another relevant topic: architecture and design.

Who are we? Architects or, rather, already designers? Designers of perfect objects, including buildings, their outward shells and interior spaces?

Design is exterritorial and cosmopolitan, it is not context-sensitive. A designer object (which you cannot say about architecture) will look great everywhere if it is perfect from the technical and aesthetic standpoint. Design is global. Globalism is partially a child of design.

An architect is by default more local, more “down to earth”. As a rule, the fruits of his labor are firmly rooted in the ground – even though they do talk about the architecture of ships, for instance, or about the architecture (and not design) of some institutions, like European Union, nothing more nor less, and quite recently, come to think of it, we had “architects of perestroika” and so on.

Not delving deeper into this discourse, I believe that with a fair share of certainty we can refer design and everything that is related to it to the class of global phenomena which exist with a certain contextual time frame – design by default is current. And architecture is something that is APPROPRIATE for a specific place, something that is inscribed into it, something that corresponds to its genius loci, its taste, its smell, and its history.

Keynote two: “EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE YOU”

Meaning, you don’t have to invent anything – you only need to see what is already there, something that has been around for ages: as the historical traces of property boundaries, old streets and roads, buried little rivers and ravines, derelict industrial parks and railway lines that would entwine large cities in the first half of the XX century – all of this is already there or was there, and this is something that any urban researcher worth his salt will never overlook.

Such “discoveries” are essentially nothing more than one’s ability to see the seemingly habitual things from a different angle or ability to reinterpret the existing contexts in the light of “newly emerging circumstances”. A textbook example of a stupid or malevolent “coming up with something that nobody else did before” is the 2011 annexation of new territories by Moscow, instead of searching for new hidden resources for further development within the city. At that moment, by the way, the smart urban designers did propose a concept of recycling the redundant city territories, which lay unused, as well as the land adjacent to rivers and railroad lines – the so-called “forgotten city”. This would have been an example of recycling the land, of reusing the city substance with consideration for the changes in its meanings and functions, a natural and inevitable process (Lizin Pond – Tyufeleva Coppice – AMO – ZIS – ZIL – ZILART).

The real problem only lies in our attitude towards the remnants or the traces of the previous use of this land – is it curious, disdainful or is it respectful? This is a test of how cultured we are, and therefore, the demolition of the Khrushchev five-story houses within the so-called “renovation program” is not just an architectural problem.

And, finally, the keynote that I would call “DIFFERENTLY”

This means doing things not the way everybody does them or not the way that is usually done here and now. Not jumping on the bandwagon but trying to do your own independent thinking. That is, trying to be not just inside the process but also outside of it – then you will have much more chances to see what goes on, and what forces are at play.

The trick obviously is to be able to switch between being inside and outside the process. 

Your “different” position, your ability to see things from a different angle will also allow you to see and even predict the future.

Because architecture is always about the future. The beginning of design and the end of construction are always separated by a time lapse – a month, a year, a decade, maybe, even a century. Architectural design is always about a passthrough into the future. Therefore, one of the key tasks of architecture and architects is not just creating appropriate things but also setting the image of the future. Regretfully, today this task is most often performed by people who, out of their calling or job description, are simply “security guards” who fence off things that already exist from the future, in which they only see threats and challenges. Not to mention the economists who calculate how much responding to these challenges will cost, and the lawyers who provide the necessary legal sevices to this die-hard approach.

11 January 2019

Headlines now
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!
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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.
Object
​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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
​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.
send.project
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
send.project
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
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.
Object
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”.
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The Flower of the Lake
The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.
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Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue
The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
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An Interior for a New Format of Education
The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.