Recall that the competition, organized by Bart Goldhoorn together with the Russian Avant-garde Foundation, was announced in May this year, and its first stage took place as part of the New Names exhibition in the Central House of Artists, which became the main intrigue of Arch of Moscow -2009. For this exposition, Bart Goldhoorn and the president of the Russian Avant-garde Foundation, Sergei Gordeev, selected 24 participants who worked online for three days to complete the clause. As a theme, they were offered a ground garage with 400 spaces, combined with some kind of public function.
Then four leaders of the competition were determined - Fedor Dubinnikov, Natalya Sukhova, Natalya Zaichenko and Alexander Berzing, who received 5 thousand dollars each from the fund as an advance payment for design at the next, final stage of the competition, which took place as part of the Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture. The theme of the Biennale this year was Open city, and Bart Goldhoorn, who is one of the curators of the festival, presented his own concept of an “open post-socialist city”. As part of this project, the Avangard nominees were also presented in Rotterdam.
Goldhoor's concept, presented in the form of a short and witty video, promotes … the principles of mass production in architecture and typical construction, albeit in their modern post-socialist, that is, market form. Bart Goldhoorn is convinced that in urban planning it is absolutely necessary to preserve such a genre as the design of neighborhoods and neighborhoods, because individual buildings, no matter how beautiful they are, are not able to create a high-quality living environment. However, what is well understood in theory does not always work perfectly in practice: today all urban land is divided into unequal shares between different developers, and the projects of typical blocks developed in Soviet times do not suit them not so much with their ideology as, above all, with technical -economic indicators. Goldhoorn used a very understandable metaphor, comparing architectural design to clothing design: the "suits" made thirty or forty years ago are very few people today. The curator sees the solution in adapting the standard, i.e. a typical project for the conditions of an open market exactly as it happened with clothes: we have long abandoned individual tailoring in favor of high-quality brands that sew in five to six sizes that satisfy 95% of demand. In other words, modern developers need hundreds of neighborhood projects that are flexible in terms of their area and set of functions, and then, purchasing or taking a long-term lease of a plot of land, the developer will be able to immediately select several options for microdistricts for its parameters. The economic sense of this venture is obvious: it is cheaper to build in neighborhoods than to design and implement ten separate buildings. In addition, in the presence of standard projects of new generation microdistricts, developers will not have to think about how and with what infrastructure objects they need to be saturated - all proportions will already be included in the documentation.
Within the framework of this very concept, the finalists of the "New Names" competition had to develop a draft of a typical block, which would be based on the possibility of its modification. Bart Goldhoorn described this condition as “one project, many options” and urged architects to provide options for adapting their neighborhoods to a variety of conditions.
As already mentioned, the projects of the Avangard Prize finalists were presented at the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale and were judged by an international jury. After long discussions, the judges recognized the Checkers quarter of Fyodor Dubinnikov, a student of Evgeny Assa, as the best. The name of the project (translated from English - "Checkerboard") was given by the principle of the layout of residential buildings chosen by the architect: four-storey houses with gable or sloping roofs are placed on a single parking stylobate like chess pieces on a playing board. While maintaining the general structure of the quarter, emphasizes Fyodor Dubinnikov, it is possible to combine buildings of different number of storeys, shapes and purposes, depending on the architectural context and the current urban planning regulations. In addition, each building has four façades that are completely different in decoration and structure, which makes it possible to create courtyards between them that have an emphasized individual visual image. Dubinnikov himself wittily called this technique "the designer of courtyard spaces." In Rotterdam, Checkers received the unofficial name "Dutch", and owes this to its obvious typological similarity with the development project of the Ypenburg district in The Hague by the well-known Dutch bureau MVRDV.
The projects of the rest of the finalists looked no less worthy of the first prize. Alexander Berzing, who graduated from the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin and working in the Vitruvius and Sons bureau, presented the Assembly XXI quarter in Rotterdam. At the heart of this concept is the idea of reusing typical designs from the 1960s and 70s. Each panel Berzing offers to insulate and insulate, and then "assemble" from them a radically new living environment - a block of 6-15-storey buildings with developed public spaces, as well as multi-level apartments with double light in the living room.
Natalya Zaichenko, another student of Evgeniya Assa, presented the Kaleidoscope quarter in Rotterdam, the main advantage of which was the unusually developed infrastructure. The residential quarter is, as it were, integrated into a multifunctional complex - “comfort zones” (parking lots, household services, shops, offices) become the connecting elements between the residential sections. Natalya Zaichenko even came up with a special indicator of comfort - "slipper accessibility", which means that the residents of these houses can get to all the enterprises they need quickly and without having to change home shoes for street shoes.
The fourth finalist, Natalya Sukhova, could not personally attend the ceremony at the Central House of Artists, and the explanatory note of the project was voiced by Alexander Zmeul instead. In a block called Chlorofilia, she develops the idea of a hybrid typology of an apartment-dacha. The quarter is formed by 5-6-storey block houses, in which each apartment is equipped with an open landscaped terrace. In addition to these private gardens, the project also includes public squares and semi-enclosed courtyards. For the decoration of residential blocks, several options for "clothing" have been developed, depending on the climate and season.
Evgeny Ass also received a well-deserved standing ovation at the awarding ceremony, having educated ten out of twenty-four participants in the first stage of the competition and two finalists. The "New Names" project itself was recognized as very interesting and successful, and the organizers of the competition announced their decision to hold it every two years, that is, within the framework of the "Arch of Moscow" dedicated to the work of young architects. For these purposes, the Russian Avant-garde Foundation has already reserved the appropriate funds and is sure that no crisis will interfere with continuing the search for architectural talents.
