The idea of holding a festival entirely dedicated to green design came from the Union of Architects of Russia this summer, simultaneously with the creation of the Council for Sustainable Architecture. Almost immediately, the venue of the festival was determined - the International Information and Exhibition Center "InfoSpace". On the one hand, this is a rather chamber hall, in which the modesty of domestic merits in the field of ecological construction is not so striking, and on the other hand, it is located not just in the very center of the capital, but in one of its most advanced in terms of architecture areas - on Ostozhenka …
The festival's exposition consisted mainly of projects in which “green” technologies are involved in one way or another, and its program mainly included master classes and presentations by the authors of these projects - architects, engineers and manufacturers. The highlight of the two-day show promised to be the arrival of Werner Sobek, a famous engineer who masterly applies the principles of energy efficiency and passive impact on the environment in his buildings. However, in the end, the "star" never made it to Moscow, and Zobek's projects that were included in the exposition and won the festival's highest awards were presented to the audience by his bureau colleagues.
At the first acquaintance with the exposition, the visitors had no doubts that this exhibition was about ecology. Literally everything here was green: buildings with gardens on the roofs, tablets showing them, and stands on which these tablets were hung. Perhaps the only thing missing was carpets imitating lawn greenery, as well as living plants, which at least slightly bring visitors closer to the numerous concepts of ecologically sound objects and settlements. The only "living" exhibit with some stretch can be considered the installation "Workshop TAF" from carelessly hewn logs, among which were placed photographs of similar "protoforms".
However, the exposition of the new festival dazzled not only with all shades of green. We must pay tribute to its organizers - trying to dispel the stereotype that there is no "green" architecture in Russia today, they have collected a huge number of projects proving the opposite. And, perhaps, the most unexpected thing is that at least half of the work was carried out in the regions, and not only in the south of the country, where the climate is conducive to closer contact with nature, but also in its most northern latitudes. It's another matter that in the overwhelming majority of cases these are just projects - and, probably, just for the sake of not giving the exposition a purely conceptual character, the works of foreign architects were included in it: the already mentioned Werner Sobek and his compatriots Albert Speer & Partner and Bollinger + Grohmann, Italian Michele Piccini, Dutch IHS, Americans GNG Design consultants. It is interesting that in the general space of the festival they were in no way separated from the works of Russian architects, and they also participated in the competition on an equal basis with them, so it is not at all surprising that the first places in the "Buildings" section were awarded to foreigners. The Russians in this nomination were able to claim only the third place - it was shared by Mikhail Khazanov with the project for the reconstruction of an administrative building in Gagarinsky Pereulok and the architectural bureau Architect Khatuntsev and Tovarischi with a project for a residential building in the village of Uskovo. In Projects, things for Russian architects are incomparably better. Thus, a diploma of the 1st degree was awarded to the workshop "Sergey Kiselev and Partners" for the project of the Fingerscape mansions complex in Jurmala (Latvia), the diploma of the 2nd degree was awarded to the "Architectural workshop of Tsytsin" for the project of reconstruction of a water tower in St. Petersburg (the tower is supposed to be adapted for a chamber public concert and exhibition center "Green Wave"). The diploma of the III degree went to the AM "Atrium" for the project of a health-improving hotel in the Vladimir region. It should be noted that Anton Nadtochiy and Vera Butko became laureates of the Green Project twice: in the Urban Development Projects nomination, their project of the Olimpiyskiy eco-district in Krasnodar was awarded a 1st degree diploma.
One of the most interesting nominations at the festival was Conceptual Projects, which demonstrated the almost limitless willingness of Russian architects to experiment with the use of new technologies. Thus, the "Alexander Remizov Architectural Workshop" presented the "Kovcheg" project - an energy-autonomous structure in the form of an expanding sphere, capable, if necessary, of easily withstanding earthquakes or a rise in the level of the world ocean. And the architect Pavel Kazantsev from Vladivostok demonstrated the project of an individual residential building with solar heating "Ecohouse Solar-5", developed specifically for the moderately cold climatic zone of the south of the Far East and providing for the subordination of the architectural form to the annual movement of the sun and seasonal change of winds. Participated in this nomination and the project of affordable eco-friendly housing "Patch" "Architectural workshop of A. Asadov", based, according to the architects themselves, on the principles of "natural self-organization". Also noteworthy are such futuristic concepts of returning green cover to cities as Tatiana Sharko's Green City and Timur Bashkaev's Novaya Zemlya. In the first case, it is proposed to raise all buildings on powerful supports in order to lay out gardens, parks and squares under the houses, and Timur Bashkaev, on the contrary, proposes to cover numerous industrial zones of megalopolises with platforms, the upper level of which is a continuous landscape free from street traffic.
The Green Project 2010 convincingly showed that the genre of ecological architecture in Russia itself is not at all alien. Now it's up to the implementation of projects that were included in the exposition of the first festival of innovative technologies. If at least some of them are built, then the "Green Project" will no longer have to collect from the world on a string, and its current emphasized futuristic character will become our "real perfect".
