MIRA is located some 7 km away from the Garden Ring and 10 km from the MKAD. Outside its windows lies the Yauza River, and across a footbridge, a landscaped park with the Rostokino Aqueduct, renovated 20 years ago. For decades, the site was hidden behind dense vegetation between the Mosvodostok municipal facility and School No. 293. To the west stands the 1957 Ministry of Agriculture building by Ivan Zholtovsky; to the north is the simple constructivist volume of the cotton factory by Ginzburg and Lisogor. Just beyond the school to the south is the well-known 1968 “House on Stilts” by architects Viktor Andreev and Trifon Zaikin – a slab raised on V-shaped supports, vis-à-vis Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Kolkhoz Woman monument. This is a context of highly recognizable structures from different periods, styles, and significance.

The architects responded to this eclectic environment by “rhyming” each building of MIRA with its immediate surroundings – taking cues from whichever landmark was closest. They also considered the views opening from each direction. The result is a set of buildings situated close together, sharing a similar underlying design logic, yet subtly varied in form and expression as a response to their specific context.

In practice, the project comprises two separate underground parking footprints and podiums. The larger one stretches along the edge of the river slope and actively engages with the topography, as the elevation drops by about 5 meters from west to east: the podium is taller at the back of the site and lower near the avenue. This single podium unites what are effectively two buildings – K1 and K2 – visually articulated as three volumes. At the southern end of the plot, tucked deeper into the site, stands a separate slab, K3. Thus, the site is well utilized, yet the central part retains a significant courtyard, enclosed but only partially – on two sides rather than all four.