The 12th district of Shchukino is limited by the Stroginskaya floodplain, on the banks of which the most well-known metropolitan residential complex of the early 2000s - "Alye Parusa" - and Novoshchukinskaya and Aviatsionnaya streets were erected. Once it was a typical residential area, built up to capacity with five- and nine-storey buildings, and then the concept of "luxury housing" quickly burst into our lives and it turned out that on the banks of the Moscow River it belongs. Faceless typical buildings gradually yielded to the onslaught of modern apartment buildings: since 2004, six 29-storey buildings of a promoted residential complex have grown here, and on the opposite end of the district, the same DON-Stroy has erected municipal high-rise buildings lined with blue panels in a pandan. popularly nicknamed "blue towers". Their impressive volume, laconic appearance and corner glazing supported the scale of Scarlet Sails quite well, but of course they suppressed the rest of the buildings. However, it is by no means the aesthetics of the transforming microdistrict that saddens its residents most of all. Much more tragic is the fact that with such a large-scale development in the 12th microdistrict, there is still only one secondary school and three tiny kindergartens, and the latter was built quite recently. The school was bursting at the seams even before the first buildings of the "Scarlet Sails" were inhabited, but now its students literally sit on each other's heads. Perhaps, if the Kozhukhov boarding school had not received such loud honors, the DON-Stroy company would have gotten off with the construction of a spacious, but outwardly completely standard school. However, the success inspired the developer, and he also commissioned the Atrium architectural studio to design a new educational institution in Shchukino, and Butko and Nadtoche were given full carte blanche: the school was to be very large, unusual in appearance and completely unique in function.
However, the work needed to be planned so as not to deprive children of schools and kindergartens during construction. Therefore, Butko and Nadtochiy in their project took into account the plan for the "wave relocation" of the pupils, dividing the construction into several stages. The first kindergarten should grow right next to the current school, where part of the territory will be temporarily cut off and the windows of the gym will be bricked in order to comply with fire regulations. After the children start going to the new kindergarten, both old ones will be demolished and a new school and a second kindergarten will be built in their place. The latter will demolish the existing building of school No. 1875 with a chemical and biological bias, and at the expense of its territory, a sports block with two swimming pools will be attached to the new school. The nature of the site, which has a height difference of up to 15 meters and a very difficult geology, significantly complicated the work of architects. Moreover, the functional program indicated by the customer did not fit corny in the allotted territory.
After a long analysis and painstaking study of more than ten options for layout solutions, a scheme was adopted with two educational buildings for a junior and a secondary school, connected by a lobby group and forming an inner courtyard in the form of an open amphitheater. At the same time, the vestibule group itself, due to the relief difference, was buried in the ground and has natural lighting on only one front, as well as overhead light coming through the glass lantern of the atrium. A sports block adjoins the high school, and the buildings themselves at the level of the upper floors are interconnected by two broken transitional galleries. The transitions between the buildings were needed in order to "separate the streams" of schoolchildren, more precisely, so that high school students intersect with the kids as little as possible, but at the same time have convenient access to public premises, which are located on the upper floors of the elementary school building. The galleries themselves culminate in glass bay windows that house recreational areas, museums, greenhouses, an exhibition hall, internet cafes and even their own planetarium. By the way, the task to include a commercial component in the school project also entailed additional difficulties. In particular, the architects had to solve the problem of the presence of outsiders in the school - blocks with additional functions are designed in such a way as to lead a completely autonomous existence. Each of them has a separate entrance, and even has its own elevator to the planetarium.
Due to such a layout solution, the entire territory is divided into "upper" - green and private, and "lower" - public and active, where the "square" with a central entrance and a sports zone are located. The roof of the vestibule block is landscaped, which makes it possible to reduce the lack of territory, and the assembly hall is located so that its rows and slope coincide with the steps of the street amphitheater, as if continuing each other. In order for the students who come to the school from different sides of the microdistrict not to have to bypass its impressive territory around, the buildings were raised on supports, arranging through passages under them.
Here, as in the project of the boarding school in Kozhukhovo, instead of the traditional compact volume, the architects chose the path of creating a rich and varied environment with internal and external streets and squares, public and private spaces, bridges and crossings. The existing relief is used in the most active way, and the building forms a single complex organism with the site.
Both kindergartens are located along Aviation Street. Their layout is subordinated to the basic functional requirements: children's groups face the courtyard area, and windows of public areas - circle and play rooms, swimming pools, assembly halls - look out onto the roadway. The architecture of the gardens is based on the principle of playing with cubes, which allows you to get away from the feeling of cumbersome volume and turn the building into a complex composition of interacting colored forms. The bright colors of the facades unite schools and kindergartens into a single complex. The "Atrium" method of cladding with minerite panels of bright shades worked out at Kozhukhovo was used here, and the facades of all three institutions delight the eye with cheerful colors, while at school, as in a more "adult" institution, the color is used more restrainedly.
Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy managed to create not just a school and kindergartens, but an educational center of a new generation, with unique functionality and a modern approach to architectural solutions. The architects themselves compare the composition of the school with the structure of the DNA molecule - the school is chemical and biological! I wonder if the students of such a desperately atypical school will grow up to be a little different people than all of us, "born in the USSR"?
