As one of the jury members, Dmitry Fesenko, editor-in-chief of the Architectural Bulletin magazine, told us, among the projects submitted this year for the competition, there was no one that would be a cut above all the others. “The level of the works presented is generally very high and indicates that the architectural community has successfully overcome the economic crisis,” says Dmitry Fesenko. “However, the jury did not see a project that would amaze with its fundamental novelty, so it was decided not to present the Grand Prix this year.”
There was no unity in the ranks of judges about projects worthy of the first and second places, therefore, the “gold” and “silver” of the festival in almost every nomination were divided between two architectural workshops.
Thus, in the category “Realized Country House”, the first place was awarded to the MOSSINEPARTNERS bureau for a residential building in the village “Meindorf Gardens” and NV Belousov's workshop for “House-Bridge”. The mansion from MOSSINEPARTNERS is an example of a very expensive and very stylish solution of a country house, that happy occasion when the excess of funds does not interfere with good taste, but, on the contrary, helps to bring to life the most verified and clean architecture. At the exhibition, this object was remembered by visitors for its main facade: it faces the street with a glass wall protected by a lattice made of strips of milky glass. This design not only creates an interesting effect of a multi-layer surface, but also allows you to protect the living space from excess sunlight, for which the public called the building a "blind house". "House-Bridge" is a completely different story. Firstly, in terms of area it is 6 times smaller than its nominee neighbor and, apparently, about the same number of times cheaper, and secondly, typologically, this small wooden mansion is more likely a dacha than a permanent suburban residence. The building owes its name to an unusual constructive solution designed to compensate for the presence of a deep ravine on the site. Public areas are grouped in a small chopped volume that fits on a flat surface, and a 30-meter one-story bridge is thrown across the ravine, which houses the bedrooms and a bathroom, as well as a deck designed for walking and allowing you to get to the opposite side of the ravine.
The second place in this nomination was shared by the “Yachtsman's House” by Vladimir Plotkin and Olga Golovina and the house with a gallery by “Robot Architects” bureau (Samara). And again we have objects that are not comparable in terms of their budget. Plotkin's object is a skillfully cut diamond, the construction of Robot Architects is a masterpiece of hand-forged. And if in the first case, the absolute self-sufficiency of an architectural work admires, then in the second it is the hand-made that fascinates. The comparison with the creation of a blacksmith, by the way, is not at all accidental: the house of an intricate, not immediately readable whole form is lined with sheets of iron. “Bronze” for “Realized Country House” was awarded to the bureau “Architects Gikalo Kuptsov” for the House 4L project - another masterly wooden house with a memorable facade.
There are much fewer winners in the category “Project-idea of a country house”. The first place was awarded to the group of architects FAS (t) for the Villa (J) project, already familiar to our readers in the Perm Wooden House competition, where it was recognized as the best wooden mansion in the premium category. Architects Alexander Ryabsky and Dmitry Baryudin shape the living space with the help of vertical cylindrical logs placed in a circle in four tiers, and the private zones are solved as isolated blocks, "scattered" at different levels of the house. The second place was won by Konstantin Larin with the project “Urban Dreams”. This is a very ingenious architectural and sociological study of the unfulfilled needs and secret desires of the inhabitants of the metropolis, who, acquiring the coveted six hundred square meters, begin to build palaces with fireplaces and glazed balconies on them, garages, "shells", tennis courts and alpine slides.
“There were no problems with determining the winners in the“architectural”nominations, since a lot of worthy projects took part in the competition. On the contrary, some of the very high-quality houses for this reason could not even make it to the finals: for example, the house in Gorki-6 of the Atrium workshop, which was eventually awarded a special prize by the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction, says Dmitry Fesenko. - But in such nominations as "Detail" or "Interior decoration" there was a clear lack of quality projects, and the situation was saved only by transferring here some of the works from other nominations. So, for example, it happened with the "Puzzle House" by Totan Kuzembaev and with the "Trellis House" by the "Terra" bureau.
To the jury's credit, this year there is not a single project among the laureates of Under the Roof of the House that could be classified as glamor, although there were enough such works in the competition itself. “In this sense, the results of the festival, of course, are not very objective,” admits Dmitry Fesenko. “We chose the best works, but not the most typical for the mainstream.” However, perhaps this is the high educational mission of the architectural competition - not to adapt to the mainstream, but to set new standards for it. It is not a pity to sacrifice for the sake of such a goal and the grand prix.