Let us remind you that the master plan of the Skolkovo innovation center was approved in July 2011. At the same time, the architects-curators of four districts (Southern, Northern, University and Technopark) and three special zones (Central, Green, as well as the zone between the Southern District and Technopark) were identified from among the members of the Skolkovo Foundation's Urban Development Council. They had to develop planning projects for each of the territories within seven months. The project presented at the World Trade Center is the first result of this work.
Zone D3 (University) is located in the center of the future innovation city and is adjacent to the railway station. Moreover, its central position is not so much physical as it is semantic - the educational institution must determine the main content of the innovation center, in fact, become its “city-forming enterprise”. Therefore, in addition to maintaining the ratio of audiences, laboratories and libraries, architects were tasked with inventing a completely new space, suitable, among other things, for design work.
- Modern students and professors say the word "project" two hundred times a day. It can be assumed that during the five-year study at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, the number of team projects will be quite significant. Meanwhile, there is no place at all for this type of activity in the internal organization of a traditional university. Cafes and other public places are much more suitable for this,”said Oleg Alekseev, vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation for education and research, at the presentation. - Our goal is to return public activity from the outside to the inside of the university.
“The main task of the architects was to design meeting points and routes of movement within the university,” explained Gary Wentworth, director of the Skolkovo Foundation's joint directorate for assets and services. - So that people intersect, and not retire in offices.
Apparently, it is the attempts to extract scientists from the classrooms that explain the obvious priority of public spaces. Actually, the layout of the territory consisted in building a system of courtyards framed by auditorium buildings. The Swiss office of Herzog and de Meuron (curator of the D3 region) presented two options for framing. The first is an extremely rational composition of parallelepipeds built into one another, which formed two vast rectangular courtyards, similar to the courtyards of British colleges. This option is called Courtyard. The U-shaped space of the city boulevard frames one of the courtyards, thus finding itself inside the university territory, between the buildings. However, the simplicity of the layout, reaching outright boredom, left the customers, representatives of the Skolkovo Foundation, with the feeling that this option was made as a “conditional alternative” - to create the appearance of a choice.
The second option (called Enfilade - enfilade) turned out to be much more sophisticated - a composition of four rings, almost Olympic, only of different sizes and connected in a free order. Each of them forms a courtyard in which a certain ecological object is located - a piece of forest and even a lake (in the project - Swan Lake, Swan Lake). The system is crossed by two chords crosswise - due to this, the ring-shells receive a larger volume, and the internal spaces become more complicated. The height of the buildings is 20 meters (four laboratory floors), but, as Olga Bolshanina, the chief architect of the project, told archi.ru, it is planned to reduce it to 16 meters, taking into account the general Skolkovo tendency towards low buildings. A residential area with a sports complex, a clinic, several kindergartens and schools is planned next to the university buildings.
“Both options passed hearings in the town planning council at the Skolkovo Foundation, as well as in the board of trustees,” said Gary Wentworth. - In addition, since the university is the most important element of the Skolkovo center, they were also presented to Mr Medvedev (President of the Russian Federation - AG). I am happy to announce that the second layout option has been approved for further development.
- The main problem of any space is how attractive it is and how much time people are willing to spend there. If it is beautiful from an architectural point of view, saturated with the most modern technologies, but for some reason will not attract people, they will start their activities somewhere else, - said Oleg Alekseev. - That is, important processes will be beyond our attention and understanding. In our opinion, the university is both the heart and the mind of Skolkovo. If everything goes well, and it is possible to establish a connection between spiritual qualities and rational considerations, you can count on the fact that Skolkovo will live happily and joyfully. If this does not happen, many disappointments await us.
The territory of Skolkovo University occupies about 60 hectares (the total area of the innovation city is 400 hectares). Of the 2 million square meters of real estate planned for construction, 550,000 have been allocated to the future Institute of Science and Technology. It will be built in two stages. The first is expected to be completed in May 2014, so that the first training programs will start here in September.
