The project of the church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, presented by Prokhram, was recently recognized in Novosibirsk with two awards: one of the “Golden Capitels” and the so-called “Hamburg Score”, a ranking of architects participating in the competition. And this means that the majority of professionals who submitted their projects to the competition – since voting for one’s own project is, of course, not allowed – voted in favor of this particular project.

It is interesting to ask why they did. The church does indeed possess several remarkable solutions – and it is even curious why no one had ever thought of them before. But first things first!

The church of Archangel Michael is planned for construction at the cemetery of the city of Apatity, 160 km south of Murmansk. Beyond the Arctic Circle. At present, funds are being raised for its construction.



The first distinctive feature of the project is that the church is wooden, and in silhouette it could be called “cell-like”, planned as a “ship”: a porch, then a taller volume, then taller still... All parts are covered with pitched roofs, the concrete foundation is faced with stone including boulders, resembling the so-called “boulder foundation” of ancient churches, both stone and wooden. Carved “towels” appear beneath the eaves. A very traditional silhouette, except that it is unusually elongated vertically. Slender. Graceful. But this too has happened, especially in the eighteenth century.



One more detail: the walls are clad with boards laid “herringbone,” diagonally, which may recall “wooden Art Nouveau”, for example, St. Petersburg dachas. Northern churches were either log structures or timbered, or (generally later) the walls were covered with boards, but laid horizontally.



Speaking of the tradition of wooden construction, at first glance one does not see the altar annex in the church. If we recall examples from the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, the altar usually projects to the east as a lower volume, most often three-sided. However, it did happen, and more than once, that the altar was partitioned within the main cubic volume, on the inside.

Let us take a closer look... Indeed, the elevated volume in the church of Archangel Michael is in fact the altar! And here’s where it gets interesting.



The composition we see in the 3D renders, when looking at the project superficially, refers to the traditional church layout: a smaller porch, a larger refectory, then the tall volume of the church proper. The altar can be added as a separate block, or, especially in Russia’s North, be enclosed within the eastern part of the cubic volume of the naos. Here, however, the entire typology is “shifted” to the east: the tallest volume has become the altar.

As the author, architect Dmitry Ostroumov, explains, the solution resulted from a combination of circumstances: a constrained site and the desire to make the church visible from the nearby highway.

Dmitry Ostroumov , Prohram Studio

We were significantly constrained by the size of the site. In other words, the building’s plan represents the maximum possible footprint.

At the same time, the task was to make the church visible from the highway connecting the city and the airport. The highway is separated from the cemetery, where the church is located, by a forest. So we tried to stretch it upward, so that the light and the dome would be visible from the highway above the low trees, thus drawing the attention of passing drivers. In this way, the functional task of shaping the architectural volume in its specific environment came together with symbolic imagery.