The Maxmix Cities competition was dedicated to the problem of revitalizing the urban environment and improving the quality of life in the metropolis. Participants were asked to create a “maximized” mixture - “maxmix” - from the usual components: streets, buildings, institutions and residential areas, public and private spaces, as well as traditions, values, hopes of the city: the organizers opposed this approach to traditional functional zoning as more flexible.
All the domestic participants noted by the jury focused on the problems relevant to Russian cities: the future of dreary sleeping areas, the absence of full-fledged public spaces - primarily green ones, as well as the unfriendliness of the urban environment to pedestrians. Despite the “locality” of the problems they identified, the prize-winning projects are no less interesting on a global scale, which led to their victory in the competition.
The first place among professionals in the East European section was taken by Nikita Sergienko with the project for the reconstruction of the Otradnoye microdistrict, called “To Maxmix”. According to the architect's plan, the building is being transformed from a purely residential into a multifunctional one, along with multi-storey plates and towers, townhouses, sports facilities, cafes and restaurants, and office complexes appear. The existing boundaries of the quarters become permeable; instead of one center, many new ones, different in meaning and scale, appear. New public spaces are being created, the share of green areas is increasing, including due to the artificial landscape of "mountains", hiding underneath a motorway passage through the area. Due to these changes in the microdistrict, not only different functions and structures of different scales are connected, but also different social groups, which enriches urban life.
The second honorable mention (actually - the third place) in the same section was awarded to Yaroslav Usov for his plan for the reconstruction of Novy Arbat and the Boulevard Ring "Project Moscow". In it, he drew attention to the catastrophic situation in the city center with greenery, as well as to the almost complete absence of walking routes. To solve these problems, it is proposed to build terraces with green public spaces over the carriageway of the streets, connected with the adjacent office and public buildings, as well as with already existing recreational areas.
Alina Batishcheva received the same award as Yaroslav Usov, but in the student category. Her project "City Constellations" is dedicated to the problem of creating public information spaces in Volgograd. The author proposes to distinguish in the fabric of urban development "constellations" from various public institutions: theaters, healthcare facilities, religious centers, and so on. The lines connecting them with each other act as a flexible alternative to the existing layout, and qualitatively new centers of urban life should appear at the intersection of axes of different content.
