On December 22, 6 days after the announcement of the jury's decision, representatives of all 30 teams that reached the final of the competition gathered at the World Trade Center. Architects from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Ulyanovsk, Tyumen, Vilnius, Riga and Paris, eminent and still little known, came to the capital to discuss the task together with representatives of the Skolkovo Foundation and the Strelka Institute, acting as a consultant of the competition the next stage and get acquainted in more detail with the concept of the entire innovation center and the Technopark district.
This meeting was necessary for several reasons. The organizers planned to acquaint the finalists with the remarks to the competitive works, as well as with the changes that were made to the planning project itself and were reflected in the task for the second round (now it includes not only the corrected master plan and geographic base, but also the recently developed "Green Codes") … Significant changes also affected the format for submitting competitive works in the final. The finalist architects had to get acquainted with all the new introductory architects in two and a half hours, then ask questions for another half hour and go on a short excursion to the territory of the Technopark district to personally verify the emptiness reigning there, and in the evening to sign contracts for the development of architectural concepts.
That was the plan. Reality, as they say, has made its own adjustments. It turned out that the audience had already accumulated a lot of questions for the organizers, and the information about the new competition requirements worked like a detonator that launched a thermonuclear reaction of many hours of discussion. And if the news of the introduction of three categories of development (so far conditionally called "S", "M" and "L" - intended for rent by various groups of future residents of Skolkovo, they will differ in footage, level of comfort and quality of finishing) reacted very indifferently, then the information about the adjustment of density indicators and a decrease in the height of apartment buildings (from 7 floors to 5 maximum) caused genuine excitement among the audience. Anxiety intensified further after the announcement of a change in design areas. The three plots allocated at the first stage of the competition for the design of three types of development are only a small part of the planned residential quarters, and now, in order to bring the work of the contestants closer to the real situation, the organizers have distributed 30 finalist projects to all the available “islands” (so curators of the area "Technopark" call residential quarters). Moreover, they were distributed not randomly, but by grouping projects according to the principle of similarity of the space-planning solution. This was done personally by the chairman of the jury, Jean Pistre, who also accompanied each project that reached the final with a small list of comments and recommendations. Oddly enough, these recommendations themselves, which were originally planned to be openly discussed, did not arouse much interest. The same cannot be said about the change in localization and a decrease in building density indicators. Those present saw a serious problem in them, again the most relevant for the authors of large houses, because a change in the diameter of the building spot (in some cases by 1.5 times), coupled with a decrease in the number of storeys and density, will inevitably entail a complete redesign of the project.
In conditions when most of the allotted time (the delivery of projects is scheduled for February 3) falls on the New Year and Christmas holidays, such a significant increase in the volume of work could not but cause a counter reaction. Unfortunately, the organizers categorically refused to change the project completion date or return to their original positions. But the architects took a tangible revenge when it came to the volume and composition of the competition projects. According to the initial proposal of the organizers, the final presentation was to be presented on 8 (!) A0 format tablets (and this after 1 tablet on the first round) and consist of main projections (plans, sections, facades) at a scale of 1: 100, visualizations and even sketches of interiors. The volume, comparable to a thesis in an architectural university, categorically did not suit the masters, many of whom, as they did not fail to note, had thousands of such competitions under their belt. They received a tough counter proposal to reduce the number of tablets to 2, maximum 3, to minimize "ostentatious" renderings, to abandon interiors and radically reduce the scale of projections to 1: 200, and even better to unify the composition of projections and their placement on sheets, for convenience of comparing the merits of architectural projects. In the noble anger of the older comrades, the weak assurances of the young authors that they would calmly make both 8 and 10 tablets were drowned. And the organizers rushed to adjust the competitive conditions (minus the unification of filing) in order to include them in the contracts with the participants.
As it turned out, the composition of projects is a separate "sore subject". The publication of the finalist projects on Archi.ru allowed all participants to compare their work and find significant, sometimes fundamental, discrepancies. Many complaints were made to the jury about the fact that the experts were so lenient about the violations committed by individual contestants not only of the given urban planning and design parameters, but also of the general requirement to present their work on one tablet. Attempts by the organizers to draw the attention of the dissatisfied that in the first round the requirements were not so tough solely because of the desire to gather the most talented and promising teams in the final, did not have much effect. And the organizers were harshly raised the question of the inadmissibility of such indulgences.
In general, three hours passed quickly. The number of questions and clarifications that the participants of the competition addressed to the representatives of the organizers present, as well as to the absent members of the jury and ideologists of the Skolkovo project, was impressive. At some point, it was even difficult to understand what exactly drives the architects: professional indignation at the ill-conceived competition, an ambitious desire to clarify all the nuances in order to make a high-quality project and win, or a patriotic desire to catch “outsiders” who encroached on a “common clearing” in total ignorance local "rules of the game". The excitement of the questioners and their frequent inattention to the answers not only of the organizers, but also of their own colleagues, often made them doubt the desire to conduct a constructive dialogue.
Undoubtedly, the Skolkovo project itself and this competition were at the forefront of the architectural discussion for a reason. Many problems that have gravitated the professional community over the past 10 years have been projected onto it.. These are the seizure of the market by foreign "guest performers", and shadow games in the distribution of large and significant orders, and double, if not triple standards in passing the examination of various projects, and at least some noticeable influence on this process of professional public organizations. It is possible that the Skolkovo project, within the framework of which it is planned to hold several more competitions, will become a catalyst for a qualitative change in the situation, but this can only happen thanks to the joint work of both parties. However, the organizers of the competition repeated several times that all the comments and suggestions made by the participants of the seminar are extremely important for them and will be taken into account.
At the end of the second round of the competition, at least 10 participants will receive a contract with the Skolkovo Foundation. In the event that among them there are young architects who do not have their own design bureaus, they will receive the support of the General Designer chosen by the Foundation, whose task is to prepare the necessary documentation.
PS Many questions from the architects at the seminar were addressed to the organizers of the competition and the members of the jury. Judging by the remarks of the speakers, the role of the former was exclusively the Skolkovo Foundation (in fact, the Strelka Institute is directly coordinating the competition), and the latter were personally associated with Jean Pistre. Somehow, the idea that architects could address all the key questions not only here, but also to the Union of Architects of Russia, i.e. to your own public organization. As indicated in the announcement of the competition on the CAP website "The purpose of the competition, prepared by the Skolkovo Foundation in conjunction with the Union of Architects of Russia, is the choice of an effective architectural, planning and volumetric solution of objects in residential quarters of the Technopark district." However, after the announcement of the start of accepting applications on October 16, 2011 at Zodchestvo, in which Andrey Bokov took part, the Union of Architects took a position of selective involvement in the process of holding the competition. It is characteristic, for example, that the projects of the winners of the 1st round have not been published on the CAP website. Official representatives of the Union were not present at the seminar either, although the principles of holding the second - decisive - stage of the competition were to be determined and all the revealed problems, which were declared by the leaders of the Union, were to be overcome. In other words, it was the architects themselves who had to defend the interests of the architects participating in the competition, and not the public organization that was supposedly obliged to perform these functions, including due to its official participation in the preparation of the competition.
