Note that this is the second Olympic facility for the workshop. Last year Speech participated in the competition for the design of the stadium for the opening of the Winter Olympic Games, and this year received an order to develop the concept of the main Media Center. The complex, thanks to which the events of the Russian Olympics will be seen by the whole world, will be located in the immediate vicinity of the Olympic Park, on a green pedestrian boulevard connecting the latter with the train station. In addition to the Media Center itself, which will include an international broadcasting center and the main press center, there will be a three-star hotel for journalists with 600 seats - it is also designed by Speech, which has found a single stylistic solution for the objects. The fact that this was not easy can be judged at least by the fact that the total area of buildings is almost 150 thousand square meters, and their height should not exceed 3 floors in the case of a media center and 8 in the case of a hotel. To give such a colossal volume an interesting shape, and not just spread it evenly on the ground - this is an ambitious creative task that Sergei Tchoban and Sergei Kuznetsov had to solve.
A trapezoidal plot has been allocated for the construction of the media center, somewhat similar to a chemical flask laid on its side. Its longest western side faces Green Boulevard and the Olympic Park. In a narrower "neck" the architects placed a hotel for journalists, while the main - northern - part of the territory was occupied by the media center. Speech's managing partner Sergey Kuznetsov explains that this was done for several reasons. First, the general plan for the development of the Imereti Valley provides for the construction of roads from the northern and eastern sides of the site, which means that the best access will be provided to the media center. And secondly, on the adjacent site (defined by the same general plan) there is a field on which it will be possible to place both satellite dishes and temporary parking (for security reasons, private cars are not allowed to park under the media center itself).
Thus, the building of the media center is stretched along the western, northern, and eastern boundaries of the site, occupying most of it and repeating the trapezoidal configuration. The "face" of the complex is the extended western facade. “The problem with all long facades is that they are very boring and monotonous,” says Sergey Kuznetsov, “and we wanted to get away from this in every possible way.” That is why the facade not only emphasizes the direction of the Green Boulevard, but develops its theme, transforming along its entire length into a pedestrian gallery, protected from precipitation and the scorching sun. In order to break the monotony of the facade plane, the architects move the roof forward and give it a pronounced wave-like shape. And this wave, and thin snow-white columns supporting the roof, and horizontal slats encircling the building - all these elements skillfully conceal the true dimensions of the complex, not only giving it visual lightness, but also emphasizing the belonging to the resort architecture of the city of Sochi. And yet, probably, even such plastic tricks would not have saved the facade from the feeling of a wall endlessly stretching along the boulevard, if the architects had not come up with the idea of carving a semicircular pedestrian square in the building. Decorated with a fountain and a park of sculptures, in the future it will complete the street perspective of a new residential area, projected perpendicular to the boulevard.
Another challenge for the architects was the need to include in the project the possibility of a post-Olympic transformation of the building from a media center into an ordinary shopping and entertainment complex.“From the point of view of the internal layout of the complex, there are no special problems,” explains Sergey Kuznetsov, “but these objects are fundamentally different from each other in the volume of power supply. The media center needs tens of times more electricity than the shopping and entertainment center, and we considered the only way to solve this problem is to use rented engineering equipment, which will be removed from the building after the Games”. The mobile blocks mentioned by the architect will be located on the ground floor of the complex, and in the post-Olympic period this area will be used as an open parking for visitors to the shopping center. The fate of the warehouse of the International Broadcasting Center will be decided in a similar way: technical and utility rooms are specially concentrated in the northern part of the building, which, after the Olympics, will also turn into a parking lot, albeit already covered.
It is also important that several exits are provided in the building - security considerations require the separation of functional flows ("broadcasters", that is, employees of television and radio stations, "press", that is, employees of the print media, staff, VIP, etc.), and they will not interfere with the shopping and entertainment center, rather, from the point of view of preventing a crowd of buyers. Two main entrances (for “broadcasters” and “press”) are located from the side of the main square: journalists enter the building from ground level, and after passing control, they find themselves on the “Main street” - the main internal artery of the building with an overhead light.
As already mentioned, the buildings of the media center and the hotel located on the same site are designed in the same style. True, the hotel is twice as tall as its neighbor, so the architects introduced color into its design. The fences of the loggias of each of the floors are painted in their own tone, so that the eight-story building under a dashing undulating visor seems to be belted with ribbons of the main colors of the Olympic movement.
