"Avangard" is an award, the main task of which is "to encourage the work of young architects in order to further their professional growth and participation in the development of modern architecture." It was invented in 2009 by Bart Goldhoorn together with the Russian Avant-garde Foundation, and this year it is awarded for the second time. The competition has several stages: first, the participants (their age is limited to 33 years) present their portfolios, then 20 authors selected by the jury perform the first task (this year they designed the reading room), and then the jury determines four finalists who compete for the title of the best a young architect. Traditionally, the projects of the second round are demonstrated within the framework of the Arch of Moscow - this year 20 concepts of universal reading rooms were exhibited on the first floor of the Central House of Artists, next to the large-scale stand of Skolkovo. The results of the finals are also shown on Krymsky Val - on October 18, 4 mini-expositions were mounted on the mezzanine floor with its oppressive low ceilings.
The last two months Nikita Bogachkin (Moscow Architectural Institute 2001), Andrey Voronov (St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin 2006), Danir Safiullin (Kazan State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering 2005) and Igor Chirkin (Moscow Architectural Institute 2008) worked on the project of the university campus. This assignment did not come out of the blue: last year, Bart Goldhoorn developed the competition program for the master plan for the campus of the National Research Technological University "MISIS", which will be implemented within the framework of Project A101, and later decided to adapt the TOR for young architects. The number of faculties of the future university, the required number of dormitories and sports grounds remained unchanged, but the campus itself in the new TZ moved from the 5th km of Kaluzhskoye Highway to Moscow, namely to Novye Cheryomushki. It became very interesting to the curator how exactly the young designers would fit the educational cluster into the existing structure of perhaps the most famous dormitory district of the capital. An additional social task was put before them: the five-story buildings, for which Cheryomushki are so famous, should not be demolished, but artistically and effectively adapted to the needs of the educational institution. And in order to prevent the finalists of "Avangard" from inventing a typology from scratch, excursions to the university campuses of Holland, Belgium and Germany were organized for them in the summer. Summing up the results of the award was also organized in a European manner: first, each architect held a public defense of his project, and then the jury retired to vote.
The quarter, conditionally allotted by the curator for the creation of the MISiS campus, is located between the Profsoyuznaya and Novye Cheryomushki metro stations and is bounded by Profsoyuznaya, Garibaldi, architect Vlasov streets and Nakhimovsky prospect. Of the sights here - only the Orkestrion Concert Hall, converted from a former cinema, and the neighboring quarter of scientific institutes, the main architectural pearl of which is the building of INION RAS. The laconicism of the environment woven in the 1960s, plus the need to preserve and rethink the five-story buildings, had a decisive influence on the projects of the "avant-garde" artists: in fact, none of the finalists went beyond the paradigm of modernism.
In Nikita Bogachkin's project, which was the first to speak to the jury, this was perhaps most vividly reflected. The faculty buildings here have a lapidary rectangular or U-shaped plan, and the library is a volume with a very developed stylobate, part of which is raised above the ground and turns into a console oriented towards the metro and INION. Both the location of this landmark and its dynamic form, therefore, make it to be interpreted as “our answer to Chamberlain,” that is, a kind of gesture of respect for the most notable building in the area. If we talk about the structure of the entire campus, Nikita Bogachkin focused on communication zones: the central pedestrian alley runs parallel to Profsoyuznaya Street, and the main public buildings are strung on it, from faculties to temporary pavilions and cafes, between which there are cozy courtyards. The buildings themselves usually have atriums, also designed for active social life, which turns the central axis of the campus into an extensive system of open and closed public spaces. Bogachkin also carefully thought out the transport scheme: for example, he designed an alternate for Profsoyuznaya Street, which is extremely loaded with transport and in its current state of appearance of the campus simply will not withstand. In addition, the architect deliberately removed the buildings along Nakhimovsky Prospekt outside the territory of the university city - created in the 1980s and 90s, it stylistically differs too much from the original Cheryomushki.
Andrei Voronov also donated the towers of the late Soviet period, however, he did it much more radically - along the Nakhimovsky Prospect, the architect placed a spacious parking lot. But all the existing five-story buildings Voronov carefully preserves and supplements with modern volumes of similar dimensions, forming a rather strict palisade from both, as if protecting the central educational core of the campus from outside intrusions. Interestingly, at the same time, all the educational buildings of the campus were turned by the author of the project into landmarks - both the faculties and the library were solved as bright volumes of different shapes. Partially these buildings are dug into the ground so that most of the technical and educational premises were hidden from the eyes of strangers, and on the surface, generously landscaped and turned into a walking area, the university looked like a complex of separate rarefied structures.
Danir Safiullin, on the contrary, combined all seven educational buildings into one complex. In plan, it resembles the letter P, which, with its central crossbar, faces rue Garibaldi. The library is a low-rise, highly elongated volume, which is located on the central axis of the campus, and residential buildings and hostels (for the most part, of course, former five-story buildings) are concentrated on the right side of the town, closer to Nakhimovsky Avenue. In his project, Safiullin paid special attention to courtyards: in the united educational building there are several courtyards (each with its own plants) intended for different faculties, and between the library and the sports core there is a large courtyard of city-wide significance.
And finally, Igor Chirkin tried to make the university quarter as spacious and green as possible. To do this, the architect enclosed a significant part of the functions in a stylobate common to all buildings, and, in turn, disguised it as a green roof. The resulting park is surrounded by seven institutes, and its center is the translucent cylinder of the library, conceived by Chirkin as a kind of navigational landmark, from which it will be convenient to get to all buildings and objects located on the campus. Keeping the five-story buildings, the architect proposes to combine them in pairs so that between the houses there are cozy courtyards - the private space of residents, and for the long term, he also envisages a possible scenario for the addition of these not very spacious houses - on two parallel "bars" you can put one more or two. Along Nakhimovsky Prospect, the architect designed a business incubator - a very long building with several square arches, vividly reminiscent of the experimental multi-entrance buildings of the same 1960-70s. On the reverse side, a sports complex is perpendicularly attached to it - in fact, it cuts through the "plate" of the business incubator, facing the avenue, which, according to the architect, emphasizes the city-wide significance of this object.
The jury, which included architects Yuri Grigoryan, Anton Mosin, Nikita Tokarev, as well as MISIS rector Dmitry Livanov, editor-in-chief of Project Russia magazine Alexei Muratov and urbanist Alexander Vysokovsky, could not name the winner for a long time. As Yuri Grigoryan later said, even options were considered not to award the prize at all, since the experts expected to see "slightly different projects." Perhaps the most important point for them was the degree of integration of the campus into the existing development, since the university center was conceived precisely as a way to radically improve the image of the sleeping area, but almost all the finalists created a self-sufficient city within the city. The experts recognized Igor Chirkin's project, filled with greenery and free spaces, as the most open to the megalopolis and at the same time qualitatively improving the environment of Cheryomushki.
In conclusion, we note that the announcement of the winner's name ended the solemn ceremony of the Avangard Prize, since the organizers forgot to bring the prize to the Central House of Artists, and its monetary equivalent (10 thousand dollars) will be transferred to Igor Chirkin later. In addition, the best young Russian architect will have the opportunity to show a personal exhibition at the Moscow Architecture Biennale next year.
