It is curious that such a large-scale order went to the team of Alexander Asadov thanks to its work on another football project - the Volgograd region turned to the workshop after it won the competition for the project of reconstruction of the Dynamo stadium. And if in Moscow the architects worked on the appearance of only the stadium itself and the adjacent multifunctional sports and shopping and leisure complex, then in Volgograd they are responsible for all the infrastructure necessary for the city to host the 2018 World Cup.
The main Volgograd symbol of the World Cup - an arena for 45 thousand seats - is supposed to be built on the site of the existing stadium "Rotor", which is located in the central area of the city, on the Volga embankment, not far from the famous Mamayev Kurgan. As the chief architect of the project, Yevgeny Vdovin, told us, the proximity to the memorial complex had the strongest influence on the development of the figurative and volumetric-spatial solution of the stadium. “We deliberately relied on the interaction between the monument and the sports facility, trying to link the symbols of the city's military past and its peaceful present with each other,” explains the architect. For this purpose, the most populous tribune of the stadium - the eastern one, which is still often called the "people's" one, is made in the form of an amphitheater, opened onto the monument. A translucent "sail" is stretched over the amphitheater, the expressive parabola of which is equally well visible from the foot of Mamayev Kurgan and from the river. At first, guided by the shape of this element, the architects painted it in the colors of the rainbow, and then they complicated the palette, making a "sail" of the colors of the flags of all countries of the world.
The design of the new stadium automatically entailed the need to improve the entire embankment and the Central Park adjacent to the arena. And since this is the high bank of the Volga, the architects made the most of the relief possibilities, actually turning the embankment into a multifunctional three-level promenade. There was a place here for a new city beach, for a network of bike paths, and for numerous shops and cafes. Directly next to the stadium, there are parking lots - a three-level covered one, which is supposed to operate after the 2018 World Cup, and an open one, which will be eliminated after the competition. And the territory of the stadium and the embankment will be connected with Mamayev Kurgan by a separate ceremonial promenade, in which the authors of the project intend to include another memorial monument - an ensemble of heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad.
The architects approached the solution of the problem of lack of hotels in a complex manner. On the one hand, they are designing a whole block of apartments, which will adjoin the north-western border of the stadium, on the other hand, they are reconstructing the student dormitories and the hotel "Tourist" already near the Central Park, on the third, they are proposing to use the water area of the river and place it on the Volga floating hotel. And if the latter object has an emphatically "navigable" streamlined shape, then ground-based hotels are designed in the same color scheme as the stadium - the extended planes of the facades are decorated with bright dots, giving the buildings a bright and festive look. It is clear that after the 2018 World Cup, these objects will have a different fate: the apartments used for temporary accommodation of fans will be put up for sale and thus replenish the housing stock of the city, the reconstructed hostels will be returned to students of Volgograd universities, and the floating hotel can be simply dismantled and will travel by water to wherever it is needed.
The new transport artery along the Volga embankment, which is necessary for access to the stadium, will not be superfluous - it will become a backup of Lenin Avenue, the central highway of the city, and will help to unload it. The new railway station "Mamayev Kurgan", which the architects of A. Asadov's studio are planning not far from the apartment complex, will also make the new arena and the memorial itself more accessible to the townspeople.
Evgeny Vdovin emphasizes that the architects were initially faced with a very difficult task - to create a compact and economical concept of preparing Volgograd's infrastructure facilities for the reception of the World Cup, which was greatly complicated by the proximity to perhaps the most famous memorial in Russia dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. And if the authors figured out almost effortlessly with compactness (and all objects, except the airport, are located within a radius of 4 km from the central arena) and economy (all design solutions and materials were selected taking into account their budget), then the proximity to the monument forced them to concentrate their main forces precisely on the elaboration of the urban planning part of the project. The appearance on the Volga embankment of a bright volume with very active plasticity and well-thought-out improvement of the entire territory make it a modern and logical addition to the town-planning ensemble of the memorial complex.
