For SPEECH Choban / Kuznetsov, this is not the first Olympic facility. In 2009, the workshop took part in the competition for the design of the stadium for the opening of the Winter Olympic Games, and a year ago it developed the project for the main Media Center of the 2014 Olympics. Having arranged the workplaces of journalists who will come to Sochi to cover the main sports competitions of the planet, the architects quite naturally switched to creating complexes in which the press will live.
The housing for journalists is designed in the form of small clusters, each of which consists of a maximum of 8 blocks. The total building area is slightly less than 30 hectares, but in fact we are talking about three plots isolated from each other. The decision not to build one impressive media village can be easily explained: instead of a “city within a city,” Sochi will receive several independent residential complexes after the Olympics, filling the gaps between social and sports infrastructure and thereby creating a full-fledged and diverse living environment.
The development of each of the three allocated plots is designed separately, but all proposals are based on the same architectural and planning principles. “And economic,” adds Sergey Kuznetsov, the managing partner of SPEECH Choban / Kuznetsov, “since the requirement to design a budgetary and at the same time high-quality housing in terms of its appearance and materials was one of the main ones in the terms of reference we received.”
Precisely for reasons of economy, the stake was initially placed on five-story sectional buildings, and in order to achieve maximum visual diversity, the architects developed a lot of section projects (4-6 apartments each) and then arranged them in a different order. As a result, buildings of various configurations were obtained - from compact single-entrance to extended and L-shaped ones, and quarters were already formed from them. During the Olympics, the buildings will function as a 3-star hotel complex with 4,200 rooms, and after the Olympics they will turn into housing.
The need to include in the project the possibility of dual use of objects demanded additional ingenious solutions from the architects. In particular, it was necessary to come up with a planning and structural system of buildings that would be transformed without much material and time costs. This task is solved with the help of lightweight partitions that can be quickly dismantled. Plus, all rooms are designed either already with kitchens, or in such a way that one of the living quarters easily adapts to the kitchen. It is also important that the entrance groups of houses are located along the outer perimeter, so that the courtyards are free from traffic. During the Olympics, summer cafes and recreation areas will most likely be set up in them, and after the Games, when hotels turn into residential buildings, playgrounds will be created in the courtyards. The entire infrastructure located on the lower floors of buildings will undergo similar transformations.
The architectural solution of the quarters is of an emphatically restrained character. And this is a deliberate choice of the authors of the project: so many striking architectural structures are being erected around future hotels for journalists that they simply need to be balanced with something. Here, the rich experience of SPEECH Choban / Kuznetsov in the design of housing - not striking, but instantly recognizable as a very high-quality, "European" one, turned out to be just right. In other words, there is no play with shapes and no catchy decor here, but there is delicacy and accuracy of proportioning, fine elaboration of decor and the use of noble building materials. The plinth and some decorative elements are made of natural stone, the facades are finished with smooth or embossed plaster in warm pastel colors. For glazing loggias, enamel is used, and platbands and decorative belts of different widths are made of concrete. With the help of this modest but carefully selected palette of materials and elements, architects create residential areas with an unobtrusive and most comfortable look to the eye.
