The City of the Sun

The history of designing VTB Arena Park is about 15 years long; to a large extent, it reflects the main “milestones” of the most recent times of Moscow architecture. Originally, it was designed as an office complex (at one point – with a very large output of useful floor space), but then it took on a mixed function: the Hyatt hotel, 4 office buildings, and apartments. Then the complex shrank down to a size of 400,000 square meters, and the design task was divided between two companies: SPEECH and Reserve Union, the former retaining the role of the chief designer, the plastique design of the buildings being split approximately even. A year ago we shared about the history of its design, examining the then-completed Stage One. Now the complex, situated at one of the most important transport junctions of Moscow, namely, at the crossing of the Third Transport Ring and the Leningrad Highway, quite familiar to all the motorists of the nation’s capital, is fully completed – its construction took 7 years.

zooming — The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky

The twelve buildings are lined up along the Third Transport Ring where it coincides with the Novaya Bashilovka Street, on the territory that widens towards Maslovka. Next to the crossroads, stands the Hyatt Hotel, followed by three office buildings; the wide five-faceted part is occupied by the housing complex “VTB Arena Park” consisting of six houses with apartments. The outside east corner, the one that faces the Third Transport Ring, contains an office tower.

The line of the facades running along the highway is reasonably straight, while the landscaped park “Dynamo” is faced by a wide arc of the complex. The first and the second stages are separated by a boulevard, at the wide mouth of which one can plainly see the blue “cap” of the renovated stadium.

This street then leads to an underground crossing underneath the Third Transport Ring, providing a shortcut for getting from the Dinamo metro station to the houses on the opposite side, walking through the park. However, all the inner streets of the first stage are open and landscaped; one can already wander around them. The territory of the residential complex is closed with a fence, but the volumes are placed separately, with breaks between them, and this makes the complex permeable to the eye and the wind.

On both sides, from the side of the park, and from the side of the road, the buildings are placed rhythmically, almost like a musical scale, no bulges or mergers, house-rest-house-rest, different but similar, or the other way around.

The whole scene looks as if somebody staged here an experiment on fostering in Moscow – a city, whose “raunchy” town planning character many people mistake for its genius loci – a habit of order and modesty without losing the subtlety in expressing various ideas.

In many respects, the complex has become almost the perfect benchmark for developing a considerable chunk of land in a large modern city. It is big, yet not excessively tall, generally 11-16 stories high, and only the furthest volumes, the ones standing next to Maslovka – one residential, one offices – reach out to 26 and 24 floors respectively. The complex is indeed multifunctional; it is divided between offices, a hotel, and housing stock in comparable proportions. The buildings of the first stage already have cafes and shops open in the bottom floors, the second stage having a car-free yard.

The complex is surrounded by greenery from all sides, both by trees and rather extended lawns: all of this is meant to compensate for the location at the crossing of the nation capital’s two busiest highways, which, on the other hand, ensure great transport accessibility. All the facades are covered by light-colored plasterwork, which unambiguously points to the high class of both housing and offices, at the same time creating an effect of inner integrity of this new city fragment. It is sufficiently remote from the Third Transport Ring, it is rather quiet, light, and cozy here, particularly on a sunny day, when the buildings cast shadows and highlights on one another, as well as numerous specks of light.

The ensemble has two authors – Sergey Tchoban and Vladimir Plotkin. Within the framework of one common task, they, however, strictly obeyed the height restrictions, vertical proportions of the facade pattern, and the snow-white design code, combined with a fair amount of glass. Yet, at the same time, they both presented a vector of one’s own – conditionally speaking, modern classics and today’s modernism – in a way as clear as possible. And they also gave everyone who is interested an opportunity to compare these two styles in a real, albeit carefully designed, living environment.

The buildings designed by SPEECH, accounting for the classical part, more agile, yet, at the same time, more massive, formed the framework of the composition and the basis for its stability. The Hyatt hotel opens up towards the center of the territory with the trapeze of its wings – and it is answered by a similar trapeze or the tallest (26 floors) residential building on the opposite side; its silhouette is slightly reminiscent of the head and the paws of a Sphinx, which is also quite a steady figure. On the sides, the house is “guarded” by two “semi-frame” city blocks, while in the central axis of the hotel there are two more, seemingly identical, volumes, designed by SPEECH.

I will admit at this point that defining Sergey Tchoban’s buildings as “classicist” would be not entirely correct in this case. Rather, they might be considered as the pole of the “traditional” architecture (again, I use the term in inverted commas) within the logic of the overall narrative of this specific project.

The Hyatt hotel is turned to the Leningrad Highway and takes on the role of the “head” of the comet or the captain’s cabin of the steamer – the comparison is not accidental because the ventilation exits on the roof of the first building are designed as sculpted ship’s funnels. The forward motion is highlighted by the prevalence of the horizontal lines, yet it is at the same time restrained by the golden-bronze fluted verticals; the facades are treated as grids. The rounded corners and flexible ribbons gravitate towards retro-technical design, the funnel reminds of Le Corbusier's “steamer” house, or of steamships and steam locomotives in general, semicircular bay windows – of the Vesnins architecture. The very idea of likening the house to a steamer or a locomotive engine refers to avant-garde, yet here it became an organic part of Art Deco – the kind of post-constructivism that Russia has not seen yet. On the other hand, another thing that comes to mind is Samuel Marshak’s satirical poem “Mister Twister”: “Mister Twister, man of great worth, owner of factories, ships, journals, boats, is going to the USSR on a guided tour”. Such an “owner of factories” can easily fit in at such a hotel.

The second building is a trailer for the locomotive. There is less metal in the second building but more flutes and piers. It trails in the wake, and it is lighter because all of it is beige and stone, while the first building looks more metallic yellow when viewed from a distance (for more details on the structure and interiors of the hotel, see here).

Comparing the head building to a locomotive engine also makes you take a different look at the other buildings: they do indeed look like train cars of different shapes and sizes. However, the “tail of the comet” widens, and the string of cars turns into something more complex.

If in the second iteration, Hayat’s building was solid, but had two wings, at the third stage, the volumes were divided into three separate buildings: two on the sides were designed by Reserve Union, and the small central one was designed by SPEECH – this is the first place where one can see a proximity of two models, and, let’s note that the style of the “traditional” building is also different from what we see in the hotel, and is resonant with the ensuing buildings designed by the same architects. This third line looks like a pivot joint – here, in addition to other things, the turn of the arc of the border between the complex and the park is strengthened. All the three buildings are office ones, and it is them that park cut by the Chislenko Street, which divides the complex into two halves, separating the public part from the residential one.

The contrast between the two approaches is particularly tangible here. The buildings designed by Vladimir Plotkin, standing on the sides and facing the two “facade” sides, i.e. the Third Transport Ring and the park, make unambiguous statements about the fact that they are different (see more about these differences here): white color instead of beige, no cornices, and an agile minimalist design, light and almost weightless. These buildings form a dynamic antithesis to the purposeful yet very robust-looking hotel building.

Turned onto the park, the west building, in spite of its considerable height (15 floors), is comparable, as far as its pattern goes, to the park pavilions made from white slender colonnades. A well-articulated set of white straight lines becomes a contrasting background for the flexible lines of the geo-plastic hills.

The floors are grouped in twos here to form horizontal bands, while the verticals, slender and pure, are smoothly spaced out in the north corner, sharp on the plan. In the volumes of the upper and lower tiers, the acute angle is chamfered, and is only fenced off by a stone grille: one can pass underneath, while on top the slender colonnade surrounds the terrace, at the same time marking the ventilation outputs.

The other building, designed by Reserve Union, and situated closer to the Third Transport Ring, is more “of the city”; collected and material. The cells are single-tiered, and there are no horizontal trusses at all – the plaques between the windows are intertwined like fingertips or like some kind of metaphysical macramé: glass the warp, stone the weft.

On the corners, glass and stone alternate, obeying the clear and almost infallible inner logic; the central part of the building is “pleated” consecutively, due to which it looks a little bit like a “thing in itself”. The livening-up asymmetry is provided by pylons at the top and at the bottom, i.e. at the basement floor and at the attic level – the imposing “undone queues” of the main belt. The volumetric character of the east building brings up associations with the novocento metaphysics, as if the Roman EUR were devoid of its arches and slightly turned, like a rubix cube, or unbraided, like fabric.

Which gives us yet another variant of allusion to the 1930’s, contrastive to the hotel building, as if representing a different pole of ideas and events. But then again, all the conceptual layers are so subtle here that one should think that you could easily prove that they were never there in the first place. But still, this is much better than direct borrowing.

The office building – the one that was designed by SPEECH, and placed between these two – is declaratively unlike them in many respects, first of all in its completeness, steadiness, and, of course, its decoration – here the decoration reaches its climax: all the six broad bands running between the floors and collecting the building into a single whole, are beautifully ornamented.

The type of carving is large and flat, like the one you may see on the Byzantine House, Wine House, and the neighboring Czar Square; the motifs are neo-classical ones. The corners are rounded; there are flutes in the attic tier. All put together reminds the “bank” modernist style, such as in Moscow’s Kitay Gorod.

However, despite all the classic nature of the pattern with the laurel wreath, the building does not have a crowning cornice; its floors between the bands consist of quite modernist triangular bay windows: one facet is glass, and the other is stone – as if the ornamental bands were holding the stripes of some volumetric stone-and-glass track. If we are to get back to the theme of the locomotive engine, set by the architecture of the hotel building, we will probably see the “mechanical core” of the entire composition. This is also the place where the decorative ornament is stated for the first time, and immediately in full effect, too – in both senses, the building justifies its central and symmetric location in the overall composition.

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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 4, offices

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 4, offices

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 4, offices

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 4, offices

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky

Building 9 on the opposite side of the Chislenko Street generally mirrors its “laureled” neighbor, even if only in terms of height, volume and the same kind of ornamental bands. This building, however, is more Art Nouveau, there are only three ornamental bands here, top and bottom, the pattern is less sophisticated, the corners are not as rounded and don’t look like “pillars”, while the “saw” of the projections is replaced by alternating windows and piers, which, for the record, do stand out a little bit in their middle part, taking on a certain resemblance to the triangular bay windows. But then again, the cornice here does not manifest itself either – it seems as though Building 9 were passing the baton of the imagery found in office building No. 5 to the apartment complex.

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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 9

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 9

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 9

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 9

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 9

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky

The smallish, yet capable of holding the composition axis, Building 9 is flanked on both sides by large semi-quarters designed by Reserve Union, specifically buildings No. 10 and 6. Both stand facing the above-described office buildings 3 and 5 standing across the road, but, whilst the two vis-a-vis of SPEECH noticeably echo each other, Vladimir Plotkin proposes a different solution for these residential buildings: the facades are subjugated by a relief grid, the main motif of which are chamfers – the chamfered piers that asymmetrically flank the glass patches, gathered into horizontal bands. Their sharp edges look like the blades of white ceramic knives, which once again highlight the contrast with totally rounded corners of the buildings designed by SPEECH. An oval there and a sharp corner here, no terms.

The chamfers are “combed” to one side, and the bay windows are turned in the same direction as well: a lot of them face the park, only one faces the street, and none are on the side of the Third Transport Ring.

The “grid” or the “mesh” behaves very freely – we have already compared Building 5 with pleating, but here the pattern looks like a stretched “hippie” sweater: there is a lot of glass at the two outer and southern corners, and the stone gradually thickens northward. From the side of the yards, the chamfers disappear, but the agile alternating rhythm remains, added by flat recessions.

The three residential buildings designed by Sergey Tchoban also have a U-shaped plan with wings stretching out into the yard. The house on the far side of Maslovka, as we remember, rises significantly in its central part, up to 26 floors. We have already compared it with the Sphinx – it has a tangible importance, comparable to the impression produced by a Stalinist skyscraper, especially if viewed from the outside. If you want to bother such a person of consequence, you need to have a good reason for that.

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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 12

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 12

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 12

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 12

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. Building 12

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky

All the three SPEECH houses are subjugated to one and the same theme, already stated in buildings 4 and 9 – referring to the modernist architecture of the early XX century, and to the buildings that could have become the climax of developing the typology of tenements and bank offices. Perhaps, even to the well-known ideal of 1913. This choice is quite understandable, both for residential and office buildings; at the same time, the prototype is interpreted here in a general manner – modernist architecture is diluted by a tangible taste for up-to-date technological solutions, and, as we saw earlier, by a slight twist of “Stalin” architecture.

In addition to the ornamental bands and the “flutes” in the attic tier, the three houses are getting crowning cornices – of smooth proportions, and, of course, without cantilevers. All the corners are rounded: corners of the houses, of the projections, and the vertical “blade” piers. All the houses feature risalits, wide and hollow; sometimes they are placed in the middle, and sometimes the facade is getting two asymmetric risalits.

The risalits on the ends of the wings reaching out into the yard occupy their entire width; they are made of dark glass with dark lintels, and they look like jewelry cabochons. They significantly add to the “mirror-like” quality of the house and proudly sport the curvilinear glass.

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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. The yard of the housing complex

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. The yard of the housing complex

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. The yard of the housing complex

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky
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The multifunctional complex VTB Arena Park. The yard of the housing complex

Copyright: Photograph © Aleksey Naroditsky

And, finally, the office building on the corner, authored by Vladimir Plotkin, Building No. 8, is only two floors smaller than its residential “neighbor”. While the whole complex presents itself to the city and the park with calm dignity, this building is slightly more on the active side. They take full advantage of both its height and its “corner” location at the bend of the Third Transport Ring; this building is one of the highlights, with which VTB Arena Park establishes itself with the city. When you come driving to the complex from the side of the Savelovsky railway station, at some point it seems that this buildings is about three times higher than the rest, and from the opposite side, from the Leningrad Highway, the height of the tower at first disappears, but then you can feel well how its corner is decomposed into parts, directing us to the right almost like a traffic controller.

The office tower on the corner features virtually the same dynamics and openness as the two other office buildings designed by Reserve Union, Buildings 3 and 5, yet here it works in a slightly different way. The whole building is subjected to the light-colored grid, similar to the kind that is used on the facades of the Kommunarka clinic; the outside facades sport a mesh that is finely textured, on the inside facades the lines are wider and flatter, but it always has vertical proportions and is simple as parallels and meridians in the globe, is not to be measured by any gradient successions, does not “teeter” optically, and keeps perfect stability. On the other hand, the slenderness of the lines on the outside makes the building look deliberately fragile: the facade grid here is lighter than in any of the other buildings, and can only be compared to the attic tier of Building 3.

The clarity and the simplicity of the facade pattern highlight the partial turn of the volume: the building looks slightly like a volumetric puzzle at the beginning of the transformation movement. This turn is, of course, resonant with the turn of the highway, but some of the volume looks exactly as if it was “taken out” and “unfolded” – and it is echoed by the turn of the place in the lower tier of the north facade from the Maslovka side, under the same angle.

In the same spot, the lower tier stands out northward, about three cells of the grid, in the direction of the residential Building 12. At the bottom, an arch appears – a cantilever with a mirror ceiling rests on two rows of very slender “legs” (and one support of a larger size). It opens yet another, additional, view into the courtyard, emphasizing the subtlety of the building, which seems to have set one elegant “leg” aside.

The two tall towers – the office one (24 floors, designed by Reserve), and the residential one (26 floors, designed by SPEECH) – become the high-rise highlights of the north part of the complex, which, as we remember, raises its height from the Leningrad Highway towards the Maslovka Street. These two buildings also enter a dialogue based on contrast: symmetric-asymmetric, rounded-sharp, robust-lightweight, a third one within this complex.

Each of the dialogues built here is based on different techniques, and each time it takes on a new key. All of them are united by the balance of tension and coherence, coupled with the elaboration of each solution. Each building here is a statement, and one that must be viewed in the context of a joint conversation, built up consistently with the expectation of showing the strong sides of one method or another, highlighting the differences why their closeness, but reconciling them with one common denominator.

This is not the first time that Vladimir Plotkin and Sergey Tchoban venture into such an experiment, one of the close examples at hand (in terms of the approach) being the high-end residential complex Wine House, where the facades, including stone-white ones, are alternating. The case of VTB Arena Park is the largest in this paradigm. It even seems that the authors “walk” the observer through the entire history of the controversies of the architecture of the XX century: modernism, avant-garde, Art Deco, and metaphysics of the forms in the “cross-sectional” view – in a subtle manner, without thrusting their meditation on the city people, but saving them up for those who will want to think about the architecture in general. In addition, the two architects are meeting each other halfway: the modernism is rather on the classical side, it has a lot of vertical flavor about it, while the Art Nouveau and the Art Deco are significantly generalized and merged with the technology aesthetics, characteristic of modernism.

In this case, the very dialogue between the two major directions turns into a subject of creative work, which somehow entitles us to use, when describing its results, not just the clichéd market term “complex”, but, rather a more emotional and image-laden term “ensemble”. What is also interesting, by the way, is the fact that the interaction of the parts of the complex takes place not in accordance with the classic or modernist rules, but poses new questions, which are, possibly, the new agenda of our day and age, for example, the question of the need for diversity and the permissibility of using “different languages”.

We will note here that the topic that is developed here is resonant with a more global dialogue taking place in the nation’s capital: Moscow is essentially a conglomerate of classicist and modernist buildings, “Stalin” versions of these styles, and modernist statements, mixed sometimes by chance, and sometimes by design. Sometimes they are indifferent to one another, but more often they are bickering back and forth. Here, on the other hand, at the crossroads next to the Dinamo metro station, the conversation turned out to be different, regulated, and tolerant – some kind of special “architectural parliament” where no one interrupts anyone, as if the task is to set an example. At the same time, the two architects were able to form the proverbial “comfort town”, big enough to satisfy the developers’ interests, yet not excessively large and comparable, scale-wise, to the nearby streets.

If this is not perfection, then I don’t know what is.

07 October 2020

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

Headlines now

The Paradox of the Temporary

The concept of the Russian pavilion for EXPO 2025 in Osaka, proposed by the Wowhaus architects, is the last of the six projects we gathered from the 2022 competition. It is again worth noting that the results of this competition were not finalized due to the cancellation of Russia’s participation in World Expo 2025. It should be mentioned that Wowhaus created three versions for this competition, but only one is being presented, and it can’t be said that this version is thoroughly developed – rather, it is done in the spirit of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, the project is interesting in its paradoxical nature: the architects emphasized the temporary character of the pavilion, and in its bubble-like forms sought to reflect the paradoxes of space and time.

The Forum of Time

The competition project for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka designed by Aleksey Orlov and Arena Project Institute consists of cones and conical funnels connected into a non-trivial composition, where one can feel the hand of architects who have worked extensively with stadiums and other sports facilities. It’s very interesting to delve into its logic, structurally built on the theme of clocks, hourglasses and even sundials. Additionally, the architects have turned the exhibition pavilion into a series of interconnected amphitheaters, which is also highly relevant for world exhibitions. We are reminding you that the competition results were never announced.

Mirrors Everywhere

The project by Sergey Nebotov, Anastasia Gritskova, and the architectural company “Novoe” was created for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025, but within the framework of another competition, which, as we learned, took place even earlier, in 2021. At that time, the competition theme was “digital twins”, and there was minimal time for work, so the project, according to the architect himself, was more of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, this project is interesting for its plan bordering on similarity with Baroque projects and the emblem of the exhibition, as well as its diverse and comprehensive reflectiveness.

Report

The Steppe Is Full of Beauty and Freedom

The goal of the exhibition “Dikoe Pole” (“Wild Field”) at the State Historical Museum was to move away from the archaeological listing of valuable items and to create an image of the steppe and nomads that was multidirectional and emotional – in other words, artistic. To achieve this goal, it was important to include works of contemporary art. One such work is the scenography of the exhibition space developed by CHART studio.

The Snowstorm Fish

The next project from the unfinished competition for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025, which will be held in Osaka, Japan, is by Dashi Namdakov and Parsec Architects. The pavilion describes itself as an “architectural/sculptural” one, with its shape clearly reminiscent of abstract sculpture of the 1970s. It complements its program with a meditative hall named “Mendeleev’s Dreams”, and offers its visitors to slide from its roof at the end of the tour.

The Mirror of Your Soul

We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.

Part of the Ideal

In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.

Object

The Fortress by the River

ASADOV Architects have developed a concept for a new residential district in the center of Kemerovo. To combat the harsh climate and monotonous everyday life, the architects proposed a block type of development with dominant towers, good insolation, facades detailed at eye level, and event programming.

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In the Rhombus Grid

Construction has begun on the building of the OMK (United Metallurgical Company) Corporate University in Nizhny Novgorod’s town of Vyksa, designed by Ostozhenka Architects. The most interesting aspect of the project is how the architects immersed it in the context: “extracting” a diagonal motif from the planning grid of Vyksa, they aligned the building, the square, and the park to match it. A truly masterful work with urban planning context on several different levels of perception has long since become the signature technique of Ostozhenka.

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Generational Connection

Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.

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Three Dimensions of the City

We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived

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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.

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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.

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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”.

Overview

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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 City of the Sun

The City of the Sun