Facades Of The Moscow School Of Management Skolkovo

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-09 00:51

A large-scale project of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management was presented at the Russian Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2008. It is being implemented according to the principle of public-private partnership within the framework of the Priority National Project "Education".

The idea of creating this project appeared a long time ago, but in such an architectural form - only in the summer of 2006. A closed competition was held, the winner was the bureau of the young but already famous British architect David Adjaye. David Adjaye reports: “Our project involves the creation of a kind of utopia, because the idea of an educational campus is one of the last opportunities to create a utopia. After all, the university campus resembles an ideal monastic fraternity. This is an idealized paradise, and the whole world is far, far away. In a sense, it is the modernist idea of a vertical city planted on a circular disc that hovers above the landscape. Various functions are concentrated within this disc - squares, squares, residential blocks, classrooms and premises for sports and recreation. The building spot occupies a minimal area and is located like a point on the territory."

“The area of the entire site is 26 hectares, while the building itself is maximally concentrated and occupies a minimal area. This creates a feeling of freedom, as well as a good view,”says the managing director of the business school Emil Pirumov. The area of the buildings is about 65 thousand square meters. About 30 thousand square meters - this is the area of the "disc" itself, where the library and the main premises are located, 7.5 thousand square meters. - a sports complex equipped with the latest technology. There will also be a hotel and a hostel (each block - for 125 rooms), as well as a separate small administrative building.

The entire adjacent territory, as well as part of the inner territory, will be landscaped. In addition, the roof will be landscaped, a pedestrian zone will be created, flower beds will be laid out, a cafe will be installed.

Investing a lot of money in design and construction technologies, the customer, the Moscow School of Management "Skolkovo", carefully considered the choice of the facade manufacturer. The contract for the design, production and installation of facades was concluded with CJSC Alkon-Trade-System, the leader of the Russian market of facade technologies, which has repeatedly confirmed its European level of quality. Practical experience, technology and a sense of the excellent specialists of Alkon-Trade-System allowed us to create unique facade solutions for the business school.

Yuri Khripin, General Director of ZAO Alkon-Trade-System, says: “From the very beginning, we were given a non-trivial task - according to the general architectural concept, to design facades consisting of a huge number of different elements. Among the priorities was the creation of a color scheme that would completely match the sketches of David Adjaye. We searched for colors through careful selection of fillings (all kinds of transparent, translucent and opaque options), and as a result, we settled on 10 different shades of colors, and these were exclusive special orders. Before the start of the work itself, life-size samples were mounted for the facades of buildings A, B, C, D and D. We successfully coped with the task and achieved one hundred percent color hit, although for this we had to do work that was several times larger than the usual volumes.

The non-standard project entailed other non-standard manufacturing and installation methods. The fact is that buildings A and B have horizontal crossbars and inclined posts, forming the horizontal direction of the facades, and buildings C and D, on the contrary, have vertical posts and inclined crossbars, giving a vertical direction. The number of elements that are unlike each other exceeds 1000 variants, each of which is individually made and, in turn, consists of at least 15 parts. And that's just for one case! And there are 4 of them!

Due to the fact that half of the work had to be done already in winter, at temperatures below -5˚С, in the process it became clear that it was impossible to make structural glazing. I had to quickly rebuild and look for a suitable solution. Since the main idea of the architect was to create a completely flat facade, we chose a mechanical method of fixing the glass using an ultra-flat pressure cover. It does not protrude beyond the plane of the facade, and outwardly imitates structural glazing. Thus, having overcome unplanned difficulties, we have achieved the desired result in this.

Another important feature of the architectural design of David Adjaye was the device of the so-called second-light lanterns - light wells on the exploited roof of a huge stylobate, serving as a source of additional lighting for the internal classrooms. In Russia, this idea is becoming popular, but not everyone is able to adequately implement it. Therefore, I believe that we have every reason to be proud of the successfully completed 43 roof skylights. Great attention was paid to the organization of project management, installation technologies using all the most modern methods of facade construction.

All stages of work had to be carried out in the shortest possible time, but here we are no stranger. If you want to be a leader, have time to react and work. If there is a challenge, we are always ready to give a worthy answer to it.

As of today (mid-June 2009), work has been completed on buildings A and B, as well as on the stylobate disk D. Work is underway to assemble buildings B and G. The project is completed on August 15, 2009. And I am absolutely sure that we will do it. For this, I want to thank the entire team working on the project from day one - our sales department, finance department, design engineers, procurement department, production, installation department. Special thanks go to the project manager Sergey Sevastyanov, as well as Stepan Spiridonov, Vladimir Kurchenko, Yuri Panfilov, Vladimir Veselov and many other employees of the company. The key to our results is the close-knit work of a team of professionals,”sums up Yuri Khripin.

This unique project actually represents the embodiment of the utopian dreams of Kazimir Malevich, who painted "planets for earthlings" - that is, houses for the people of the future. David Adjaye, in turn, used the model of one of Malevichev's architects for the school campus, where the right managers should be raised. Four futuristic cases are set at different angles on a giant disc-hill, inside of which public spaces are located - in the author's words, "like a still life on a plate." The building looks as if an alien ship has landed in the Odintsovo district. When asked if he knows about the deplorable fate of futuristic communal houses and, in general, monuments of constructivism in Russia, Ajaye says that Russian constructivism simply did not have modern technologies to make its dreams come true, which is why they are crumbling.

Adjaye: “Customers said - campus, administration house, four buildings on each side, square, grove, lake and so on. Then they thought - what to do when the thermometer drops to 30 degrees below zero, how to move from one building to another? The most sophisticated suggestions poured in, for example: what if you dig tunnels? Everyone tried to solve the problem of the local climate. But why project a campus idea in a place where it clearly doesn't work? Then I said - we need a new model, a new utopia. I could never have come up with my project alone. It arose out of such discussions and discussions."