The territory of the Sharapovsky quarry in Mytishchi has been mastered by Moscow architects for a long time. At first, A. Asadov's workshop won the competition for the reconstruction of the square in front of the station, located southeast of the quarry. As a result, the studio "Arch 4" was engaged in the construction of the bright red shopping complex, but according to the Assad concept. Then, directly by A. Asadov's workshop, residential complexes "Gulliver" and "Perspektiva" were built, more and more surrounding a large sandy patch of wasteland that remained on the site of a quarry - a kind of bald patch inside the city space. The volume of the Olympic reserve school should close the "ring" of buildings. Then the Sharapovsky quarry will be turned into a park and a new natural zone will be formed in Mytishchi.
The development, which increasingly surrounds the quarry spot, is subordinated to the high white volume of the newly built Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. Thus, the "Gulliver" complex was built in the form of a huge comet tail, the "head" of which was the building of the church. A long, curved house bends in front of the temple, and moving away from it - it adds more and more in height - and finally "explodes" with huge multi-colored towers.
The school will become the second "comet's tail" - it will be located on the opposite side of the church, from the south. Thus, when designing the school, the architects of A. Asadov's workshop followed the plastic principles that they themselves had previously invented for this place, designing "Gulliver": the dominant position of the church is emphasized in every possible way by the architectural behavior of its "retinue" - the latter, however, is not obscured in front of the temple, but sets off its whiteness with its cheerful multicolor.
The Olympic Reserve School will combine general education with professional sports training - therefore, its building has many functions and they are located in various volumes. The buildings of the future school are vaguely reminiscent of a layer cake - the "layers" are stretched along the enveloping quarries of Novomytishchinsky Avenue and "sewn" by a transverse atrium. The configuration of the buildings changes as we move deeper into the future park - from more traditional and “classic” to “natural and ecological”.
The first, on the line of the avenue, is the building of the existing lyceum, which it was decided to preserve and reconstruct, slightly revitalizing the facades - to reveal pilasters, cornices, pediments. This approach to a typical school building - almost like a "monument of architecture", forms the history of the place and enriches it, albeit not very ancient, but memories of the past. A wooden portico will be erected in front of the old building - the main entrance to the ensemble of school buildings, behind which the already mentioned atrium will begin, uniting, like a giant paper clip, the main buildings of the school.
The next, second building recedes from the old lyceum in a smooth, wide arc, as if "paying homage" to the preserved building. Its long, curved façade will be covered by a glass screen on wooden supports to reflect the trees of the existing apple orchard. This is a kind of air gap, "a transitional space between the building and the garden," says the head of the workshop and one of the co-authors of the project, Andrey Asadov. The arched building will house classrooms for 1000 students. Its eastern end is adjoined by the same extended, but straight building of the dormitory - there is a hint of constructivism in it: the end is rounded, and the green color of the lintels between the windows creates the likeness of ribbons.
Several volumes of various configurations, larger and smaller, covered with glazed tiles of bright local colors - yellow, red, blue - have "grown" to the opposite facade of the arched educational building. They will accommodate: a dining room, an assembly hall, workshops and a foyer for primary classes.
Further - a giant striped green "snake" - a complex of several sports facilities, united under one roof, smoothly "growing into the ground" from the side of the future park. It will house two sports halls - for ordinary students and for future professional athletes, an adult and a children's pool, an ice skating rink and a large universal hall with stands for 3.5 thousand people in a separate volume-petal. Between the “school” and “sports” parts there is an inner street, even a square, pleasing to the eye with green lawns, multi-colored facades and a slight zigzag trajectory.
In total, we get a school-city or school-quarter, which consistently but unevenly - with periodic bursts of color, then shape - develops, ranging from an almost traditional "parterre" with an apple orchard to a large non-linear "snake" of gyms, striving to merge with the park … Characteristically, the “town” formed in the space between the preserved old school building and the phlegmatic green giant is very bright and diverse. As if some kind of "explosive" energy was released between the two poles.
The project definitely does not fit into the image of an educational institution that is familiar to us from childhood - an institution, as a rule, rather harsh than joyful. “Among other things, we were inspired by the successful example of the boarding school in Kozhukhovo, built by the Atrium bureau, one of the first examples in Russian practice of the optimistic architecture of a children's educational institution,” says Andrei Asadov. Indeed, before our eyes, a new tendency in the architecture of school complexes arises and develops - complex, diverse, bright, cheerful, cheerful.
