Education Design Fabric, or simply EDDE, was jointly organized by the development company KR Properties and the ARCHiPEOPLE and treeDS.ru portals, which decided to change the usual format of the architectural design competition and turned it into an exciting and multi-stage educational process. The project started on December 4 last year, the first seminar was held on January 17, and then the participants met regularly for two months at lectures and seminars and improved their projects. It must be admitted that not all contestants passed the one and a half month marathon: out of the selected 31 people, only 14. The EDDE jury included architects Boris Uborevich-Borovsky, Oleg Nikolaevsky and Dmitry Barkhin, decorator Sergey Vasiliev, as well as representatives of KR Properties.
As a competitive task, the participants were asked to develop a design for the interior of a residential loft located in one of the buildings of the Danilovskaya Manufactory built in 1867. The architects could choose one of six lofts of different sizes and develop all stages of the design project for it - from the concept to the detailed development of the sleeping and public areas. The task facing the contestants was complicated by the fact that they did not actually communicate with those for whom they were designing - the only representative of the customer was Alexander Poduskov, Sales Director of KR Properties and concurrently the owner of one of the projected lofts. However, Alexander provided the participants with all the information about other loft owners and personally attended all the practical seminars of the course.
The face-to-face part of EDDE consisted of 4 practical seminars, which took place mainly on the territory of the Danilovskaya manufactory. A variety of experts spoke to the participants: architects Oleg Nikolaevsky (held a round table on the topic "How to choose an architect") and Vladimir Dudin ("How to win in competitions"), decorator Sergei Vasiliev (lecture "Coloristics. Color in the interior") and the already mentioned Alexander Poduskov (lecture "Loft. Unlimited possibilities for self-expression"). A voluminous and very useful master class on how to build communication with a customer was conducted by architect Boris Uborevich-Borovsky (master class "Designing a new way of life for a customer").
Within the framework of the seminars, questions of a more general nature were also discussed: for example, the lawyer Zhanna Smal told the contestants about the problem of copyright observance, psychologist and business coach Anastasia Dmitrieva conducted the training “Virtuoso of Communication” and gave a lecture on the topic “Psychology of Color”, and the head of the ARCHiPEOPLE project Lyudmila Malkis told the participants about the use of PR technologies in the field of design and architecture.
The seminar program was very rich (they often ended at midnight!) And included not only several lectures / presentations / master classes, but also a "debriefing" - a discussion of the results of the previous stage. True, there was enough time for such discussions, alas, not always, and many participants did not have enough constructive dialogue with all the actors in the process, especially the reasoned opinion of the jury. Oleg Nikolaevsky also felt a lack of communication with the contestants, worried about insufficient attention to the stage of concepts and pre-project analysis, which in some cases led to ill-conceived and weak projects in the form of “exclusively planar planning decisions”.
After passing each stage of the project, the work of the contestants was evaluated on a 10-point scale, which made it possible, on the one hand, to easily identify the leaders of the course, and on the other hand, to give the rest of the participants the opportunity to improve their position in the rating table at the next stage. The winners were determined by the sum of points scored for all 4 stages.
It cannot be said that all the contestants agreed with such a system of judging: some projects, which had grown in quality just by the final, were undeservedly unnoticed. “Objectively, the best work in the final viewing will not be able to win if the person scored significantly less points in the previous stages. It seems to me that such a system for identifying a winner is not very correct when evaluating architectural competitions,”said one of the participants in the competition, architect Alexander Shtanyuk. “Opinions were divided: someone believes that intermediate assessments are not needed, but the result is important, and someone considers all stages to be important,” confirms Lyudmila Malkis. - I personally belong to the latter, since we initially relied on a meaningful product. It is not for nothing that the format of the competition is defined as "in a progress" - here it is important not only what the participants can design, but also how much they are able to refine and rethink their projects in the course of their studies. " What the organizers and participants of the project agree on is that EDDE has become a platform for a very interesting and fruitful discussion between architects and developers. And although the participants were by no means able to answer all the questions, the main thing is that the dialogue has begun.
It was originally planned that only one contestant will be named the best students of the content course, but after reviewing all the works, the jury eventually awarded three prizes. In terms of points, Polina Sukhomlina took the first place, who for her victory in the competition received a cash reward of 50 thousand rubles and the right to design a loft in New York. The second place was awarded to Ksenia Chernyakova, and "bronze" went to Irina Bessonova - both girls were also awarded cash prizes.
In addition, two special prizes were awarded. The Internet magazine "I like loft" awarded Anna Leksina and Rostislav Nikolaev, and the TARKETT company noted the project of Alexander Shtanyuk.
You can get acquainted with the projects of all participants and the recordings of lectures on the EDDE page. Well, the course content itself continues: on March 14, the organizers announced the start of a new stage, which this time will be dedicated to loft offices. Reception of documents is open until April 20.
