The Moscow River in Moscow competition was announced in the spring, and its results were announced at the end of June this year. We have already written about the problems of the competition and its results, and now we will take a closer look at one of the competition projects - the work of a group of young architects led by Sergei Kiselev, who received one of the incentive prizes at the competition.
As many remember, the competition was organized by C: SA for the National Association of Shipbuilders. Therefore, he had two declared tasks - one narrow and understandable, namely, to design some structure that could exist on the river. The second is very vague and broad - to draw public attention to the Moskva River and make everyone think about the urban development problems of the river in a big city (for this purpose, special round tables and presentations were held). The need to combine the private with the general, a floating structure of 62x12 meters - with urban planning reflections, largely determined the specifics of projects, including the SK&P project.
So, the architects of Sergei Kiselev's studio named their project USB. This name contains, if I may say so, half of the specifics of the proposed solution - the half that is responsible for generalization. The authors decipher this name: "universal serial barge" and emphasize that its main feature is in a standardized connection. Namely, it is proposed to build special berths on the embankments equipped with infrastructure (heat, electricity, water, sewerage, communications). It will be convenient to dock to such berths a typical structure on the floating basis of a barge. It is just as easy to undock, change, put two instead of one (each berth has two "ports" for connection). The structure itself, the "barge", also has its own berth - for small ships, yachts or inland river transport. Thus, it, joining the standard pier, creates its own smaller pier.
The standardization does not end there. The floating structure sits on a standard platform barge and is filled with factory elements (foreigners would say 'prefabricated') that define its function. The elements are loaded and removed using a crane similar to a harbor crane. For example, the roof can be removed in summer, returned in winter. And not only: everything is standard, right down to the toilet stalls; and is assembled as a designer - what is not a house-machine, a dream of avant-garde masters.
The architects' system for connecting a barge to a dock as standard reminded them of a spaceship docking station or computer port; hence the name USB, as it is known that now the most convenient and easy-to-use port is usb. Although the spacecraft was mentioned for a reason: in terms of its versatility, the "barge" is located, relatively speaking, somewhere between the most complex (spacecraft) and the simplest (computer port). And as a consequence, it approaches the bus in complexity.
The authors made the bus the second iconic link of their project after the computer port. Red double-decker buses have become a symbol of London, and USB “universal barges” could become a symbol of Moscow if they were multiplied along the river - the authors of the project are sure.
It should be admitted that the two figurative analogies accompanying the project have a tangible flavor of literaryism characteristic of the works of this group of architects (Sergey Kiselev, Anton Yegerev, Anastasia Ivanova, Azat Khasanov). And also - adherence to various designations, in particular - graphic. Similarly, the same authors presented their project Fingerscape, made for the Latvian competition (we wrote about this project relatively recently). Architects tie the project to a certain core idea, and then examine this idea from different angles: they come up with images, comparisons, marketing moves, draw diagrams and pictograms. By the way, the adherence to pictograms is another feature of the work of the same architects. In the Fingerscape project, something similar was observed - an image, a name, a pictogram. However, in our time, such metaphor is a necessary part of a high-quality presentation of the project.
Outside, the parallelepipeds of the universal USB “barge” modules are supposed to be tightened with a transparent metal mesh receding from the walls. Its coldish luster and translucency is akin to a water surface; this texture is designed to visually facilitate volumes. Large icons are applied to the grid, informing passers-by about the function of a particular module. During the day all this should look restrained, but at night the USB boxes are conceived to be illuminated and turned into media screens, illuminating the city and decorating the river.
So, having offered the system by making their "barge" serial, the SK&P architects answered the problem-town planning task of the competition. However, his conditions included the creation of not one, but three projects by each team. In response, the USB authors offered - three case studies - three likely functions of the facility, all three sporting: ice rink, pool and skatepark. The functions correspond to different seasons and different audiences: ice rink for winter, pool for summer, skate park for young people. This allows you to demonstrate how exactly the universal solution is transformed for different tasks.
The skating rink and the pool must be recognized as the usual varieties of sports typology. Although it is obvious that both are appropriate on the river - after all, if it were clean, it would be possible to swim in it in the summer and skate in the winter. And now this requires special structures. Artificial ice on the Moskva River, which does not freeze for most of the winter, an artificial pool above the water … So, the skating rink and the pool are familiar and even beloved, as they say, by Muscovites. But the skate park is a new and definitely youthful function, especially when combined with the graffitti club. Her appearance is unexpected.
Another part of the specifics is the location. All participants of the competition were offered a choice of several Moscow embankments for "linking" projects. SK&P chose Krasnokholmskaya embankment, a section between the Novospassky monastery and the Yuri Gnedovsky House of Music. Taking a closer look at the site, the authors noticed on the embankments next to the Krasnokholmsky bridge two stone "bulls" - the rudiments (or remains?) Of a small bridge parallel to the Garden Ring. From the side of the Krasnokholmskaya embankment, this nonexistent bridge abuts against a small square and a Stalinist house put "at rest". Thus, the site acquired an additional plot, and then merged with the idea of a pedestrian tourist route, one of the ideas developed at the initiative of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov for a long time. Like the bridge, the route does not yet exist, but the architects used both themes to tie their "universal barge" to the site.
The means for such "binding" was a wooden pedestrian embankment, which the authors laid below the existing stone one. A string of a wooden platform tied together three modular "barges", a pier existing not far from Novospassky pond and the mentioned bridge, which in the SK&P project exists in the same lightweight design as the pedestrian embankment.
Generally speaking, the bridge and the embankment seem to be a very attractive part of the project. This is an appropriate and delicate brushstroke in the overall picture, the result of carefully gazing into the city. It becomes a pleasant addition to the pathos of standardization expressed in the main idea and balances it, it becomes the glue that is necessary for any universal solution to adapt to a specific place. The duality of the general and the particular, characteristic of the test task, looks in this project reconciled and even transforming into some new quality, saturated with the ease of being above water - a feeling that, unfortunately, is completely unusual for today's Moscow.
