As a reminder, the RHD Foundation is holding this competition on behalf of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, given during a Sochi meeting with representatives of student organizations in February 2011. The jury, in particular, included the Director General of the RHD Foundation Alexander Braverman, Deputy Minister of Regional Development Ilya Ponomarev, Rector of Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichy, President of the Union of Architects of Russia Andrei Bokov, Professor of Moscow Architectural Institute Vyacheslav Glazychev, as well as heads of architectural bureaus, representatives of the Ministry of Education, rectors of several major federal universities. The jury will determine the main winner of the competition and laureates in 5 nominations - projects of dormitories for 400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1500 places. The winner will be awarded a prize in the amount of 500 thousand rubles, for the five laureates the amount of prizes will be 300 thousand rubles.
The organizers have timed an exhibition of competitive works for the jury meeting, which is displayed in the foyer of the Union of Architects of Russia. According to the results of the first stage of the competition, in which the qualifications of the participants were assessed, 20 out of 35 architectural organizations passed to the second round. To develop projects, the participants of the second round were offered to choose from three land plots provided for the construction of dormitories to the Baltic Federal University. Immanuel Kant (Kaliningrad), Ural State Agricultural Academy (Yekaterinburg) and Volgograd State University (Volgograd). This geographical spread is explained by the fact that the sites were selected according to the principle of different climatic conditions and, accordingly, the requirements for the buildings being erected there.
Today's student dormitories can hardly be called comfortable. Most of them were built during the Soviet period, and over the past years they have become obsolete not only physically, but also morally. Moreover, at a press briefing preceding the meeting of the competition jury, Viktor Sadovnichy noted that the existing dormitories are mostly unsafe for living: the corridor system in combination with multi-storey projects is extremely fire hazardous. Moreover, since the construction of buildings, the requirements have changed not only for the ergonomics of the space, but also for the technical parameters: old power grids cannot withstand the load of modern electrical appliances used by residents, and this can also provoke fires.
New educational standards that Russian universities are striving for should, among other things, be ensured through modern dormitories, where, ideally, not only should there be sleeping places, but also a new way of life for students should be formed, i.e. sports and leisure infrastructure has been created, comfortable study rooms have been designed. “In the end, it was during the student years that the worldview is finally formed, the attitude to the world is laid, the character crystallizes - are such fundamental things really necessary to take place in the conditions of one soul on the floor ?!” - Ilya Ponomarev could not restrain himself at the briefing.
In other words, in Russia there is clearly a need to create full-scale comfortable student campuses similar to those that have existed in the West for a long time. It was on these principles that the competitive works of the participants were to be based, which included the largest domestic design institutes and architectural bureaus: Novosibgrazhdanproekt, TsNIIEP of residential and public buildings, UralNIIAS, Mosproekt, Ulyanovskgrazhdanproekt, Ginzburg Architects and many others. However, the jury promises that, first of all, it will pay attention not to the team of authors, but to the architectural quality of the proposals, the color scheme, as well as the variability of the functional solution of the first floors.
The winning companies will receive an order to develop a package of all documentation for their projects. These developments will add to the project library of the RHD Foundation, and then any Russian university that needs to build a new dormitory or campus will be able to use these projects, adapting them to their needs and conditions. In general, assistance in the construction of student dormitories is one of the new directions of the RHD Foundation's work. At a meeting with journalists, its head Alexander Braverman emphasized that according to the requirements of the Fund, the projects that are being implemented within the framework of its special programs certainly have one common feature - efficiency. However, in the understanding of our builders, “economically” often means “poor quality”, and this is what the Foundation would especially like to avoid in this case. That is why the rectors of the largest Russian universities were included in the jury, who will have to assess the submitted works, taking the position of the final “consumers”.
Viktor Sadovnichy, who, according to him, “gave” 13 years of his life to the hostels, noted: “The hostel should be comfortable and should not drag us back architecturally - to the“boxes”and five-story buildings. Dormitories should be pleasing to the eye, and from an architectural point of view, correlate with the history of the university, its roots. For example, according to the rector of Moscow State University, the university on the new territory will build a cascade of dormitories for 6,000 places. The task of the project developers will include creating architectural parallels between the new complex and the historical high-rise of Moscow State University, the library building, etc. “Yes, it will be a little more expensive, but we will not slide down to standard boxes for anything,” Viktor Sadovnichy promised.
The results of the competition are planned to be announced by February 27, 2012, and the award ceremony is to take place within the framework of the international construction and interior exhibition "MOSBUELD", which will be held in Moscow from April 10 to 13.
