We have already written about the competition for the project of the Palace of Schoolchildren's Creativity, which should be built in one of the residential districts of the capital of Kazakhstan, created from scratch, talking about the new project of A. Asadov's workshop. And if Moscow architects relied on bright colors, then Petersburgers drew inspiration, first of all, from the traditional architecture of Kazakhstan, borrowing from it key compositional techniques and ornamentation. However, this does not mean that Studio 44 is proposing to build a giant yurt for schoolchildren in Astana. Rather, the architects disassembled this structure into separate protoelements, each of which was then rethought within the framework of modern aesthetics and the required functionality.
Since ancient times, the ritual of settling Kazakhs in the endless steppe began with outlining a circle on the ground - it was this geometric figure that formed the basis of this project. For the residents of Kazakhstan, it personifies a properly organized, harmonious space, and the architects decided that it was the round house that would be most organic to the landscape of Astana. True, in fact, after fulfilling all the requirements of the technical task for the necessary functions, they did not get a house, but a whole town. The authors turned the Palace of Creativity into a scattering of separate volumes, and in order to give them generality, they covered them with a huge disc (diameter 156 m, height 8 m). This disk, facing the sky with a green surface, and facing the ground with stainless steel panels with a gilded titanium nitride coating, can be considered a distant descendant of the round shanyrak crowning the Kazakh yurt. Like the traditional shanyrak, it rests on three pillars and serves as a permeable membrane between the sky and the inner world of the building. In the yurt there was only one hole in the roof - it was placed exactly above the hearth, served for ventilation and illumination, symbolized the connection with the sky and the sun. There are many holes in the circular roof of the Palace of Schoolchildren's Creativity; they play the role of light lanterns, wells and even mines that conduct the sun's rays through the floors into the building.
As already mentioned, the architects had to puzzle a lot over how to fit more than ten different functions under one roof. In fact, under a round roof there are four different complexes - a sports complex, a theater and entertainment complex and a museum and exhibition complex, as well as administration offices, a library and a dining room. The functional groups are disassembled into their constituent "primary elements" (skating rink, museum, swimming pool, exhibition hall, etc.), each of which is packed in its own volume. Different in area, they have the same parallelepiped shape, and, being covered with ornaments, resemble Kazakh felt suitcases (shabadans). And just as in the nomadic tradition, the shabadans inside the yurt were stacked one on top of the other, so these volumes form four ledged "mountains". Two of them are located to the left of the main entrance to the Palace and contain the halls of the sports complex. To the right of the main entrance, traditionally facing east, there is a museum and exhibition complex and a dining room. In the most honorable place - in the back of the building opposite the entrance - the theater is located. The rectangular volumes of the first three floors of the building either approach the red lines of the building block, in places cantilever overhanging them, then recede inward, forming cozy courdonneres. Such a technique of "assembling" the complex from individual elements visually conceals its true dimensions, and gives dynamics and picturesqueness to the street front. And the disk covering the building pulls the rectangular block conglomerates together and picks up the horizon of the surrounding buildings.
The three-storey space between the "Shabadan Mountains", covered with a disk, is an atrium illuminated by an overhead light. Its compositional center is located exactly under the main light hole and is surrounded by open staircases, along which from the ground floor you can climb to the terraces, from where you can clearly see everything that happens under the roof of the Palace. Inside the disc itself, there is a club part with classrooms for classes, the layout of which reproduces the principle of grouping functions into separate enclaves, which is the basis of the entire complex. So, biological classes surround the winter garden, laboratories of scientific and technical creativity are located in a circle around the Planetarium, classes for choral singing - around an open courtyard.
In contrast to the densely built-up central part of the quarter, mainly open structures are located along the perimeter of the site: parking lots, a stadium with a football field, basketball and volleyball courts, a tennis court, as well as a landscaped area with a fountain near the main entrance. Although these objects occupy in aggregate a significant area of territory, they create the necessary air gaps between the complex of the Palace of Schoolchildren's Creativity and residential buildings, which in the future will surround it from all sides.
The operated roof of the complex is also being transformed into a giant playground for outdoor games and activities. Its plane, as mentioned above, is completely landscaped, and only the domes of the planetarium and the winter garden, as well as several skylights and the observatory tower, rise above the resulting giant lawn. Perhaps most of all, this picture reminds of the steppe landscapes, which now, however, will not be outside the stone jungle, but inside them and at the same time - above them.
Of course, the numerous circles used in the composition of this complex, be it a giant disc of the roof or light holes cut out in it, and their combination with the strict geometrism of the main volumes, cannot but remind of the aesthetics of Suprematism. But in the project of the Palace of Creativity of Schoolchildren, the architects of Studio 44 managed not only to rethink the ideas of the Russian avant-garde, but also to organically link them with Kazakh cultural and house-building traditions. And if the ornamentation of the facades and the diamond-shaped pattern of the blinds, reminiscent of the lattice structure of the kerege - the collapsible walls of the yurt, are obvious and immediately readable allusions, then the deep parallels affecting the intimate area of planning and perception of space turn this modern complex into a fascinating puzzle with many meanings.
