A social village is a special type of settlement intended for people with developmental disabilities. In Europe, such settlements are quite common, but in our country it is still not very accepted to talk about the needs of incapacitated members of society, and even more so to satisfy them. And, nevertheless, it is no secret to anyone that in Russia there are quite a few people with mental disabilities who cannot exist on their own and are doomed to the so-called lifelong support. Usually this very support is provided by the parents, after whose death they, alas, have no alternative but to live in a neuropsychiatric boarding school. The fact that there is an acute shortage of such establishments in our country is only part of the problem. The other is that the employees of such boarding schools do not have the opportunity to pay attention to each inhabitant and carry out full-fledged creative and social rehabilitation work with him, and this means that even the skills that were instilled in a child in a family are irretrievably lost. So a group of parents of such children came up with the idea of lifelong accompanied collective living, that is, creating a center where people with developmental disabilities could live their whole life and work with the support of specialists.
The project is managed by the Center for Curative Pedagogy. In 2007, a commercial structure acquired for this undertaking a plot of 2 hectares near the village of Danilkovo, which is 80 km from Moscow, and donated it to the Center. True, the legal registration of the land is still ongoing, since its current category ("agricultural purpose") does not allow construction on the site. In parallel with the procedure for changing the category of land, a draft master plan for the social settlement was developed. Sergey Kiselev & Partners did it free of charge and is ready to completely complete the architectural project on a similar gratuitous basis (with the exception of the engineering part).
The plot allocated for the construction of the village resembles a horseshoe in shape, opened towards the road, and in the general plan of the social village, the architects successfully played on this feature. The structure of the village is traditional - a community center is located closer to the road, which acts as a soundproof buffer, in the depths of the site there are cottages. True, the social settlement consists of only one street and five houses, so we can safely say that the town-planning principles of creating comfortable suburban settlements are implemented here in miniature.
The public complex, in which all the infrastructure facilities necessary for the village are concentrated, in the plan also resembles a horseshoe, hospitably opened to the roadway. The horseshoe is formed by two arched but unequal buildings that flank the central entrance to the village. The smaller eastern wing is occupied by a sports hall and a dining room with a kitchen, while the western wing is occupied by workshops, administrative premises and a library. Closest to the entrance to the site is a store. And on the street side, to the left of the "horseshoe" house, there is a rectangular utility block that will accommodate a garage, a laundry room, a carpentry workshop and technical premises of the entire complex.
The central street of the village in the plan resembles a small branchy spruce, with its top resting against a house-“horseshoe”, and “roots” - in a square with a decorative pond. A house is planted on each of the spreading "branches", and such an arrangement of residential volumes on the site, even with its modest area, allows you to comply with all insolation norms and at the same time not move the houses too far from each other. In general, the reception of a reverse perspective creates an interesting spatial intrigue in the perception of the village: from the side of the public complex, its street looks almost like an avenue, and from the side of the lake it looks more like a square.
The architects designed the houses as universal residential units, which include apartments for permanent residence, guest rooms with amenities, and public areas for leisure. Moreover, each house is actually two independent residential volumes, placed at a slight angle to each other and covered with a single roof. At first the architects wanted to combine them with the help of a small cozy patio, but in the Russian climate such a decision seemed rather risky, and as a result SKiP settled on the option of creating a common two-story living room with a beautiful view of the forest.
It is too early to talk about the exact timing of this project, but the Center for Curative Pedagogy is making every effort to ensure that the colorful village with a lake invented by the architects is actually built. And, undoubtedly, a huge progress is the fact that in Russia they began to develop and discuss architectural and urban planning projects designed for comfortable living of people with disabilities.
