The competition was held in January 2012. Within a month, the participants had to come up with a project to renovate the facades of the former cinema "Havana" while preserving its load-bearing structures, so that its appearance would become the hallmark of the new residence of KVN-shchikov. In particular, the number of competitive conditions included the need to spectacularly beat the abbreviation "KVN" on the facades. 15 projects took part in the competition, at the end of January the jury determined three winners: first, second and third places.
The first place and the prospects for the implementation of the project were awarded to the workshop "Atrium" by Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy. The composition of the jury has not been announced, however, we know that the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, as well as the hosts of the KVN programs, father and son Maslyakovs, participated in the selection. So, to some extent, it can be considered the choice of the club, especially since the KVN players in the videos unanimously confirm this. However, the management of the AMIK TV company, which is engaged in filming KVN, gently refused to comment on the architectural projects in any way.
The authors of the winning project came up with an easy and truly innovative solution. They literally enveloped the facade with two large, plastically curved ribbons of special mesh fabric on a metal frame. In some places, behind the ribbons, the walls of the building will be visible, which are planned to be revetted with colored panels. Thus, the architects, practically without affecting the rectangular box of the building with the "deep" reconstruction, managed to radically change the image of the rectangular "box", making something fluid and sculptural out of it, visibly reacting to the traffic flows of the Third Ring. It's amazing that all this is done with fabric, albeit a very specific one. We plan to tell you more about this project in some time.
The second place was taken by the project of the architect Ekaterina Vinogradova. In it, the main facade is formed by two flights of stairs and a concrete structure masking them, with the image of a stylized smiling mask in profile.
The third place went to the version developed by the architectural and engineering company OJSC Stroyproekt. This design preserves the building's cubic volume while playing with solid and transparent surfaces: glass, brown and white slabs. In front of the main facade there is a convex glass screen through which the main staircase runs. OJSC Stroyproekt is a large design company (see website), little known among lovers of modern architecture. Perhaps the most visually interesting project of hers is the reconstruction of the Botanical Garden's greenhouse.
The projects of the three winners were published almost immediately on the website
Skyscrapercity. The projects of other participants in the competition are completely unknown, but there is something to see: their draft proposals for KVN were made by SPEECH, SKiP, the bureau of Andrey Chernikhov, Alexey Ginzbug and Mikhail Khazanov. None of them, however, made it to the top three.
Andrey Chernikhov's workshop presented three very bold and bright options for the competition. The architects called the first project "an attempt at neomodernism". The upper floor is designed as a red flat volume, which is laid “on the roof” of the building at an angle and overhangs the square in front of it. The floor is cut with large glazed holes - according to the architects, there could be "dancing over the stream of cars." You can get to this "dance floor" by the corner staircase hidden in the cocoon of a wooden egg.
In the second version, the facades of the former "Havana" are disguised with a light bumpy material, similar to the inside of a foam mattress. Above hangs a large purple bracket, which covers the area to the right and left of the main volume, including their territory in the sphere of influence of the "KVN planet". In the explanation of the project, this option is called "an experiment that changes the framework of our reality."
The third version of Andrey Chernikhov's bureau forms the facades of stylized multi-colored "TV sets", each of which has a multimedia TV screen inside.
The image of the TV was also used in their projects by SPeeCH and the workshop of Alexei Ginzburg. The Ginsburg Architects project consists of two contrasting volumes. One part is a wood-colored "TV" with streamlined corners, round windows and a large "screen" with slightly convex glass. Adjacent to it is a colored volume with the abbreviation of the club. The laconicism of the volumetric solution is compensated by multi-colored panels with KVN logos.
The SPeeCH project is almost literally inspired by an old TV: the main facade is enclosed in a characteristic frame and turned into a giant screen covered with glass with images of KVN heroes. SPeeCH offered two options: in the first, the entire building was turned into a horizontally elongated TV, in the second, the TV's proportions are more square, and on the sides there are “speakers” with posters.
The architects of the bureau "Sergey Kiselev and Partners" placed in front of the main facade giant letters "KVN", made up of LEDs and mirrors, to the entire height of the building. There is an entrance staircase behind a translucent screen with letters, and on the end wall there is a split screen for showing video.
Mosproject-4 also played with giant letters in its project, placing them in front of the main facade. In one version, the letter "B", which successfully coincided with the entrance, is raised obliquely, like an awning near a tent, but in the second, it is pushed forward.
Mikhail Khazanov closed the parallelepiped of the former "Havana" from all sides with glass, placing the abbreviation KVN on the upper part of the walls. The facades are laconically symmetrical, the entrance is designated by a giant niche with a huge glass canopy. Next to the building there is a round ball of the sculptural "planet", which emphasizes the rigid geometry of the parallelepiped of the main volume.
The deadline for the completion of the reconstruction is very tough: the building of the Planet of KVN should be ready by November, that is, in six months. It is planned to hold the first concert in December. Construction work inside began in December 2011 even before the project was approved by the Moscow authorities, however, the approval arrived at a record speed by the beginning of April (it was agreed to increase the area of the cinema by 1.5 times to 11,000 square meters; the building will be 5-storey). At the same time, the press voiced skeptical assessments of the reality of the completion of the reconstruction as scheduled.
Recall that the decision to transfer the Havana cinema to the KVN nest was announced in November 2011 at a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Vladimir Maslyakov. Then in November, the company "Luxor Entertainment", whose lease agreement for the cinema building expired in 2017, protested, but by mid-January it had vacated the building. Now it is covered with a banner, construction work is underway inside, the site of the Planet of KVN reports that "the auditorium is ready to fill the comb." In March, another competition was held - for the design of the building's interiors, the details are unknown to us, but it is known that the version of the interiors proposed by the authors of the winning design of the facades of the Atrium bureau was rejected. The interiors will be different from the facades. But one way or another, and we may see the result in six months.
