Garage-Garage

Recently, Moscow saw the presentation of a project by Yuri Grigoryan, devoted to turning the truck garage on Novoryazanskaya Street, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, into the Museum of Moscow Transport. The project involves restoring the monument of architecture, adding a new underground floor and a new entrance, as well as a whole park. The implementation is already underway.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

07 June 2023

News

This city has a habit of “presenting” architectural projects when they are in fact completed or nearly completed. This case is no exception – the reinforced wall underneath the monument has already been built, the restored structures are being assembled in their proper place – and we were shown a “sketch” project of transforming the truck garage, designed by Konstantin Melnikov at Novoryazanskaya Street, 27, into the Museum of Moscow Transport.

zooming — Moscow Transportation Museum, conceptual design, 2020-2023

Copyright: © Meganom/ provided by Moscow Transportation Museum

The museum is planned to be open in 2024; the project of the first stage of restoration was approved by the Department of Cultural Heritage still in 2019. The work on the “adjustment project” began in 2020, and the decision to hand the garage over to the museum, according to its director, Oxana Bondarenko, was made in 2015-2017, even though the mayor only signed the appropriate decree in 2022. The banner “Nam po puti” (“We’re on the same road”) has been hanging for years now, and the work is underway.

The garage is a cultural heritage site of regional importance; according to the chief architect of the Transport Museum, Natalia Vorontsova, the protected status has been granted to the “composition of the architectural ensemble, materials and the composition of the facades, and the architectural and planning solutions”. The restoration is performed by the studio “Faros”; the museum exposition by Planet9 (design), Pitch (multimedia), and Solarsense (content).

The main hero of the show, however, is the project of adjusting the building authored by Yuri Grigoryan and AB Meganom. We asked the author, and, yes, the Project and Project Documentation stages are also done by Meganom.

The project includes 9,027 m2 of new construction: the Melnikov garage is essentially a horseshoe-shaped semicircle where the trucks were parked. The “semi-bagel” of the garage is one story high; it rests on the ground; the axis of circumference includes the building of the repair shop, it is two stories high, with an underground tier.

According to the project, there is a new underground tier that is built underneath the “horseshoe” of the garage, and it will include a foyer, and the part devoted to the metro, which makes perfect sense. The visitors to the museum will get to the bottom tier through the new entrance – a triangular structure with an imposing attic, which is added to the garage from the east side. The former repair shop will host the museum’s media center.

There will be no entrances to the upper tier of the permanent exposition – i.e. to the garage – from the ground; the visitors will ride escalators, which Yuri Grigoryan places in narrow spaces between walls.

There are stairs too – they stretch along the inner arc of the semicircle, and are also present in the sector-like communication node of the central part. The stairs are also delimited by a laconic “shell” wall – it actively builds the plastique of the interior space of the museum, distancing the attention of the viewer ascending to the upper hall from the foyer and the exposition of the lower tier. A little daylight will also get down through the stairs, but since there is a “subway” down there, then a lot of light is probably not that necessary according to the logic of the original design.

The elevators and stairs take the visitors upstairs, into the space of the “monument” garage itself. The bridges above, under the floor structures here are historical, but the spiral staircases leading to them are an addition by the architects. The exposition can thus also be viewed from above.

At the back of the yard, a pentagonal (temporary) pavilion of educational vehicle workshops is planned for conducting master classes and children’s education sessions.

Let’s return to the new entrance group, however. The auto workshop pavilion is pentagonal, while the entrance, which, I remind you, leads underground to the new ground floor, is triangular – in both cases, the simple but energetic geometry serves as a paraphrase of Melnikov’s work, who, as we remember, loved bold shapes.

In addition, the architect plans to cover the facade of the attic with specially made dark bricks of concave shape, which will yield a surface of laconic “flute” grooves – because (and I quote Yuri Grigoryan’s words here) Melnikov is essentially an Art Deco architect.

Basically, the entrance turned out to be a modernist “beam”; such a solution is quite imaginable in some 1970s museum, but here I want to see concrete or metal for some reason. I wonder how the bricks will ultimately look.

My colleagues were somewhat confused by this Art Deco statement, but to me it seemed largely correct. Melnikov, of course, is far from being the most typical representative, but he loved Art Deco (or did at some point), and he was always interested in the art of plastique. Looking for hereditary grooves, I opened Melnikov’s album – I found at least the Gosplan garage. Why not add grooves from one garage to another? And the half-grooves of the Intourist garage come to mind too.

The restoration of the historical part is being done according to all the rules under the supervision of the Department of Cultural Heritage. According to Yuri Grigoryan, the brick repair covered about 7-8% of the masonry in the upper part, only where the masonry was severely damaged. In addition, when inspecting the building, the architects found wooden side windows somewhere upstairs under the trusses, which had been closed for a long time – it is planned to open them.

It was decided to restore the metal trusses not on site, but in the workshop; now, I remind you, they are being installed. According to the chief architect of the Museum of Transport, about 10% of new metal had to be added in the process of mending, the rest was preserved, “including rivets”. It turns out that the public in December 2022 was worried for nothing.

There is another, additional, story about the trusses. They are universally spoken of as the work of Vladimir Shukhov. This information goes back to Selim Khan-Magomedov’s book (1990), but according to Mark Hakobyan, who curated the 2019 Shukhov exhibition at the Museum of Architecture, there is no confirmation of Shukhov's involvement either here or in the Bakhmetev Garage – in the latter case, historians have studied the materials in the archive of the Central State Archive of Moscow, and the drawings there are signed by Melnikov, while Shukhov’s signature is nowhere to be found. Shukhov’s post-revolution works, Mark Hakobyan explains, are generally difficult to document: the sources are scarce, and you have to determine them by the type of construction: the mesh vault patented by Shukhov is more likely to be associated with him, but the great engineer was also engaged in calculations of simpler truss structures – like the cargo garage on Novolyazanskaya. Meanwhile, such a calculation could have been made by some other engineer.

The constructions of the garage are quite simple: there is no special engineering beauty, which could be seen in the exhibition pavilions of the XIX century – after all, the task was rather technical, and the main advantage of the structures was that they covered the span of 35 m without supports and allowed trucks to maneuver more freely. By the way, at first 5-ton German trucks were parked in the garage, then Soviet “1.5-ton-trucks”, then, during the war, it served as a repair shop, and finally, after the war and until its closure, it was the 4th bus park.

Another part of the project is landscaping. As it is customary nowadays, there is a special emphasis on it, especially since the museum is a public place and requires the appropriate space around it. To the east of the garage a park called Milyutinsky is planned – let’s not forget about the legendary Commissar. Besides, the alley-circumference between the “garage” museum and the former workshop (now the media center), will be opened for walks – and not to surround the museum with any fences at all. “The city will receive”, as they say nowadays, a new park, a quiet street, plus the improvement of Novoryazanskaya Street running near the museum.

Thus, the fears of the public turned out to be largely groundless: the garage is a monument, it is being restored, and the difficulties associated with the poor quality of technical construction (after all, the garage is just a garage) are being overcome. On the other hand, there is a lot of new construction in the project, a little less than half of the original area. It is not very clear why the project was shown so late – it would have been possible to calm everyone’s misgivings from the very start, wouldn’t it?

One more thing. I think it would be nice if the Museum of Transport allotted a special room for an exposition devoted to Melnikov’s other garages, because – let’s not forget it – garages were one of Melnikov’s most frequently done projects. He designed two garages for Paris, one of them with cantilevered ramps over the bridge over the Seine – in both of them, back in 1925, he proposed the famous one-way traffic. No, it’s not the first time Melnikov had it on Novolyazanskaya; it’s the core idea in all of his garages – not to make the car egress. The words written by Melnikov while designing a garage for English buses on Ordynka (not implemented) are remarkable and very textured: “... it was neither caprice nor autocratic, but the daring power of beauty to stop wasting millions on ugly things”.

In Moscow, Melnikov designed five garages, four of which were actually built: bus Bakhmetyevsky, cargo Novovyazansky, Intourist garage on Suschevsky Val, and Gosplan garage on Aviamotornaya. All of them were with straight-through traffic (or essentially one-way), only organized differently: Bakhmetyevsky garage for the sake of convenience of buses’ movement received slanted contours, and Novobiazansky – a horseshoe-shaped plan, which, by the way, if we look at the map of the district as a whole, is very similar, in shape and size, to the steam locomotive circular depots of the XIX century. For example, 300 meters from the Novoryazansky Garage, a slightly smaller, but very similar in parameters, depot of the 1890s – was it the source of inspiration that helped the great architect Melnikov to cope with the triangular shape of the site? Who knows? It is clear that there were locomotives, which were placed along the radii to reconnect to trains, and here were trucks, but still: the garage on Novoryazanskaya is quite in line with the search for transportation architecture.

Another thing that comes to mind here is the museum of the Oktyabrskaya railway, which Nikita Yavein designed in the railway depot in St. Petersburg (open since 2017 ). You can still feel some rhyme arising between the two large transport museums.

Meanwhile, the project of the Transport Museum in the Melnikov’s Garage is grand-scale, and unique to a large extent. At the same time, however, it does fall in line with modern trends. Today, Novoryazanskaya Street is being actively developed; gradually, it stops being the “backyard” of the “square of three railway stations”, and already a restaurant complex opened on it. The complex is called “Depot” (it is opened in another depot, the tram one, not the steam engine one we talked about before), and the street is being paved with granite – for all intents and purposes, the museum will also soon be completed. And life will be beautiful then. What’s next? A museum of private garage construction?

07 June 2023

Headlines now

Inverted Fortress

This year, there has been no shortage of intriguing architectural ideas around the Omsk airport. The project developed by the architectural company KPLN appeals to Omsk’s history as a wooden fortress that it was back in the day, but transforms the concept of a fortress beyond recognition: it “shaves off” the conical ends of “wooden logs”, then enlarges them, and then flips them over. The result is a hypostyle – a forest of conical columns on point supports, with skylights on top.

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Transformation of Annenkirche

For Annenkirche (St. Anna Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg), Sergey Kuznetsov and the Kamen bureau have prepared a project that relies on the principles of the Venice Charter: the building is not restored to a specific date, historical layers are preserved, and modern elements do not mimic the authentic ones. Let’s delve into the details of these solutions.

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.