Young architects, I think, did not experience such a brainstorming session even before the most severe exams. At 12 in the morning on the second day of the exhibition, they were gathered on the third floor, where they were equipped with workplaces for the next three days, and they were given an assignment with explanations. It turned out that it will be a ground garage, occupying a block of 75 by 100 meters, with any public function. It is known that this is being done in the context of the project "Cities of the Future" for Russia, which Bart Goldhorn is preparing specifically for the exhibition at the Rotterdam Biennale. And most likely 4 winning projects will be included in it. The task was rather abstract, the participants were not indicated any connection to the situation, the only wish of Bart Goldhorn was to give some new architectural reading of this typology, which usually has a scary look, which should be helped by an additional function. A prerequisite was also the presence of isometry at certain angles, in the 500th scale.
To work even with your laptop, but in such unusual conditions, and even knowing that there is very little time, cost the participants a lot of nerves and two sleepless nights. “The first day was terrible,” recalls Alexander Kuptsov, “loaders were constantly walking around, the exposition was being installed, and we were sitting by the freight elevator…”. However, on that day it was necessary to come up with the main thing - a concept. The second day was mainly spent on the design of the found solution in the volumetric-planning form, the third - on the drawing. By the indicated date, the tablets were taken out one by one to the foyer of the first floor, placing them on stretchers next to the exhibition projects of the participants. They did not arrange presentations, the jury members themselves went, examined, sometimes asked questions, and then retired for a three-hour discussion.
As a result, Natalya Sukhova, Natalya Zaichenko, Fedor Dubinnikov and Alexander Berzing were announced as winners. I must say that the choice of the jury is quite clear - they singled out those whose ideas were complex and did not represent a set of different functions under one roof, but a certain concept expressed in an easy-to-read, symbolic form - Natalia Zaichenko's "archive", metamorphoses with sand at Alexander Berzinga, Fyodor Dubinnikov's “slide” and three concepts from Natalia Sukhova: “umbrella”, “crater” and also “slide”. So such a European approach to design was welcomed, when everything begins with a study - a simple scheme or image, graph, diagram, from where plans and facades then grow.
In general, among the works shown, there were few super-original things, and compositional moves were often repeated. For example, the desire to turn over the traditional scheme and carry the garage upstairs - to put it on its legs, on supports, on one edge, and at the bottom to arrange a kind of public space. Moreover, although there were no restrictions on the function, many preferred to do trade - such a specific Russian way of thinking. In a number of projects, a stake was made on environmental friendliness, invisibility and humanity of the environment, the desire to disguise the garage as a hill, park, etc. Strange, but no one remembered about the garage heritage of constructivism, anyway. no direct citations were observed.
Let's take a closer look at several interesting projects, let's start with the winners. Natalia Zaichenko presented the garage as a storage not only of cars, but also of various bulky seasonal items, or those that are a pity to throw away - as, in fact, it happens in reality. The building turns into a bunch of storage cells, something like an archive, as the author feels. And the second theme that appears here is history, memory, expressed in the arrangement of a columbarium for animals, also of such a cellular structure and a kind of storage. The structure of the building is as follows: there are only three levels, the first is a parking lot plus a flea market, formed by the fact that each parking cell also has a certain workshop, a shop module on the outside, which can be opened on the ground floor. From the street, these outlets are decorated with arcades, like traditional shopping arcades. On the 2nd floor, this module increases, and the tenant can store in it, for example, a boat. The third level is open guest parking. The columbarium is located on the inside of a rectangular building, and in the center there is an atrium, a place for meetings, communication, and memories.
Natalia Sukhova, who, by the way, studied at the Bauhaus, this conceptual thinking, which is taught to students in European schools, gave rise to as many as three witty schemes. The metaphor of the first is an umbrella, in fact, this is the shape-shifter that was mentioned above: the garage goes to the 2nd level, is put on its legs, giving public space to pedestrians, and a market square is arranged under it. It is very similar to the project of Andrey Ukolov, where the device is identical in scheme, only the parking has a simple rectangle shape with light wells to illuminate the market and the ramps of the entrances are arranged a little differently, and Natalia Sukhova's rectangle is cut by open green areas-wells, similar to courtyards …
The second concept of Natalia Sukhova - "crater" - cleverly suggests placing the parking lot literally under the stands of the stadium, which seems to fall into a "crater" that appears in the middle of the rectangular body of the parking lot. Here, however, the garage is no longer the main, but an auxiliary function, which is probably correct. Something similar in form was proposed by Grigory Guryanov in his project, where the parking lot is formed in two blocks of 200 spaces each, raised above the ground by five levels. On the inside, shopping galleries are attached to them, and on the upper floors there is a greenhouse. From above, both blocks are covered with a single undulating surface, between them it bends, lies on the ground, organizing a market square - also a kind of "crater" or rather "failure", because it is open from the ends.
And the third concept by Natalia Sukhova, on whose tablet all the main approaches to solving a given topic were briefly displayed, is a "slide" where the parking takes the form of a ziggurat or a hill, the steps of which are greened up and turn into a park. Actually about the same project of Alexander Kuptsov, only in it he concentrated more on the building regulations. The author reasoned as follows: when moving to a new quarter, residents begin to put their shells in it, only according to Kuptsov's project they do this not chaotically, but centrally, in a certain place. As soon as one of the levels is recruited as the population increases, the city authorities fill in concrete floors, and another level is created. So the ziggurat from the garages grows up to level 3. And then soil from a nearby construction site is poured here, and a landscape park with an amphitheater is created, in which, for example, an all-season sports ground can be arranged.
Another winning project, called "Gorka" by Fedor Dubinnikov, offers a solution according to the principle "everything ingenious is simple." Why does the parking lot need uncomfortable elevators or expensive ramps? The building itself can be made a ramp, tilting it at an angle above the ground in the form of a kind of "visor", and then loading by machines will be faster and easier. In addition to ergonomics, the form itself is expressive and easy to read; moreover, it forms a lot of useful space, both below, under the “canopy”, and on the green roof, where the author intends to set up a park and place shops and cafes there. In addition, these functions can be placed on the two floors of the parking lot. A similar technique of such a "deviation" of the building from the ground was used in the project of Dmitry Mikheikin, only it lacks the purity of the concept that is in the previous one. There are a lot of functions here at once - a supermarket, a gallery of boutiques, a square, a green area, a sports ground, and an art gallery. The shape of the building itself is more curious: it is a rectangle made up of two L-shaped volumes, and its outer wall touches the ground only at one corner point, and then the wall gradually lifts off the ground, freeing up more and more open space, eventually turning into a canopy. on supports. Thus, in this project, as in the "Gorka", the inclined ramp is not attached, but itself is part of the building. The canopy allows you to freely view the courtyard where the gallery is located. An interestingly conceived color scheme - each facade has a gradient reminiscent of the four times of the day, symbolizing the life cycle - an ordinary day starting and ending in a parking lot.
Alexander Berzing's project was made by him in the same strict style as his exhibition tablet - laconic, on a black background and completely European in presentation - it should not be read literally. Here's how to get started with a model that demonstrates the shaping principle. The photograph of the hands holding the model is very much in the spirit of the Dutch architects. The rigid shape of the parallelepiped softens, according to the principle of sand poured into a rectangular container. A layered structure arises: a base on legs and a "cover", between which there is a rather complex nonlinear surface, "sand", an artificial landscape, a recreational zone. There are light wells perforated in the "sand". In general, the scheme is recognizable, resembles an "umbrella with holes", but formally it is much richer and more unexpected.
According to Oskar Mamleev, the coincidence in the choice of the jury turned out to be 90%, however, we note that the level of work is generally quite high. The idea of Bart Goldhorn to hold such a competition in the spirit of the exercises of the French Academy of Arts of the nineteenth century went off with a bang. There was an intrigue, there was a certain experiment, rather severe, I must say, but giving a true picture of what the next generation is capable of, since such clauses show a level much more honest than the same exhibition projects. It was decided to assimilate valuable experience and develop further in the context of the interest that has arisen at the current "Arch Moscow" in progressive forms of architectural education.
