The Russian State Social University (RSSU) is the youngest university in the country. It was created in 1991 and at first had practically no material base. Today, the university (by the way, one of the 50 largest universities in Russia) has several buildings in different districts of Moscow on the books of the university, although there is still no sports complex among them. Physical education classes for students, of course, are held, but they do not have the opportunity to go to various sections, and it is this gap that is designed to fill the project developed by Yuri Vissarionov's PTAM.
The site allocated for the construction of a sports complex is located between the RSSU and the natural-historical park "Ostankino". Once there was a stadium, which gradually became so dilapidated that it was no longer used by the city, and in 2005 its territory was transferred to the university. The first project of PTAM Vissarionov on this territory was a hostel with a universal hall and a swimming pool. The new building is partly intended to support the Empire style of the adjacent educational building, while at the same time passing the baton to high-tech with its metal cladding and light open structures.
The theme was continued during the design of the sports complex. Its site has a pronounced triangular shape, and the architects used this as a hint - the building in the plan resembles the letter "U" turned upside down, each "stick" of which is a separate training hall, and the "tick" contains the entrance group facing the main the building of the RSSU. There is also a small pond in the area adjacent to the former stadium. The developed master plan of the site provides for its partial preservation and arrangement - in particular, green walking areas, recreation areas, elegant paved paths will appear along the coast. The problem of parking is also being solved: the architects propose to raise part of the building of the sports complex on supports, and place small guest parking lots between the columns.
These supports in many ways form the architectural image of the future building. If the deaf volumes of gyms were on the ground, they would visually be perceived simply as two large hangars, raised on columns (and massive square beams are combined with "pipes" set at an angle of 45 °) they acquire a distinct resemblance to mechanisms - a kind of " cars for sports”, which have legs instead of wheels. As already mentioned, the parallelepipeds are located at an angle to each other, and the glass volume of the entrance lobby is designed in the “alignment”. The architects actively use the theme of crossing supports in the design of facades: the entrance group is accented with a visor in the form of a brutal lattice, and the glass surface is "reinforced" by diagonals of metal rods. The pillars supporting the vestibule are "stretched" to the very roof and painted in a bright ocher color. It should be noted that there are no other active tones in the palette of the sports complex - it is solved in frank metallic. According to the authors, this openly youthful, technically-inspired addition to the traditional plaster-yellowish buildings of the Soviet period should significantly update the idea of the learning environment.
In terms of its functional structure, the building, which has a variable number of storeys, resembles a pie, each "layer" of which is dedicated to a particular sport. The only exception is the first floor, where, in addition to the entrance lobby, there are a cafe, a first-aid post and a block of coaching rooms with showers and toilets. Above, there is a table tennis room, a gym and a boxing and weightlifting room. One floor higher, there is a universal gym designed for team sports (basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, aerobics) and which also has an area for seating spectators, and above it there is a hall for classical and freestyle wrestling, sambo and rhythmic gymnastics. Part of the fourth floor area also “eats up” the balcony for spectators of the universal hall. The fifth floor is reserved for changing rooms, showers and technical rooms, and the sixth is the kingdom of tennis: here you can change clothes, warm up and go out onto the court itself, located on an exploited roof.
