The design of the new Garage space is being carried out by the founder of the OMA bureau and Harvard professor Rem Koolhaas, together with the Russian bureau Form. Rem Koolhaas began his presentation of the project with a short story about the history of Gorky Park, remembering first of all that the main architect and author of the general plan of the park in the 1920s was the famous Russian avant-garde artist Konstantin Melnikov. This mention is not accidental: as you know, the center of contemporary culture "Garage" was first opened in the Bakhmetyevsky garage, which was also designed by Melnikov. Thus, the name of the great avant-garde artist becomes rather shaky, but nevertheless - a connecting thread between the old and the new location of the cultural center.
The renovated Garage is planned to be opened in the Vremena Goda restaurant with an area of 5,400 sq. meters. Rem Koolhaas showed photographs showing the current state of the building: it was built in the 1960s, forgotten in the 1990s and now
very dilapidated. Although the architect did not fail to notice that the current neglect gives the building a certain romantic charm. Rem Koolhaas considers his project for the new Garage premises important for the cultural life of Russia as a whole, as it is aimed at restoring a destroyed example of architecture of the 1960s.
Talking about his project for the reconstruction of the Seasons building for Garage, Koolhaas focused on two main topics: on the one hand, he plans to preserve and restore the surviving fragments of the Soviet building, and on the other, to apply innovative solutions both in the design of the space and in its technical solution. New technologies will make it possible, among other things, to adapt the building to new exhibition requirements.
The interior of the Soviet building is very spacious and open, and the architect plans to emphasize this feature. The number of impermeable and fixed partitions will be minimal. The building will be surrounded by translucent two-layer polycarbonate, with ventilation and climate control systems installed. The façade will be raised 2.25 meters from the ground, and windows starting straight from the floor will blur the line between the park and the space of the exhibition hall for visitors. In addition, the polycarbonate plates will allow daylight to enter rooms freely.
The entrance doors of the center will be designed as 11-meter-wide panels, and they are planned not to be opened as trivial doors, but to be lifted up. The doors are located opposite each other, and when the doors are raised, it will be possible to see the opposite part of the park right through the space of the "Garage" - to the skylight.
The two-storey building will be supplemented with a mezzanine, where a conference hall will be located, combining the functions of a lecture hall and a cinema, a children's room and a media library. Above the stage in the conference room, as a decoration, there will be an impressive window overlooking the foyer, which will be covered by a suspended black screen during film screenings. Everything has been thought out to the smallest detail: the transparent floor in the children's room will allow parents to watch them sitting in a cafe on the ground floor. The furniture of the cafe will be designed in the Soviet style, for example, Koolhaas showed an image of a chair designed by Ivan Leonidov.
Rem Koolhaas emphasized that he was impressed by Garage's serious intention to develop educational programs for children and youth. For such events, it is planned to transform the first floor into an experimental zone, where, in addition, exhibitions and promotions will be held. The second floor will be dedicated to more specialized exhibitions: paintings, sculptures, photographs and videos. Old brick walls covered with greenish
mosaics will be preserved and even restored in places, however, falling white panels will appear under the ceiling along the perimeter of the hall, which, if necessary, will help temporarily rid the space of the ascetic Soviet tonality.
It is proposed to replace part of the floor on the second floor with a movable grate, which can be raised to the ceiling - then this part of the hall will become double-height and especially large exhibits will be freely placed in it.
Being predominantly an urban architect, Rem Koolhaas has recently become interested in park and landscape architecture: he is convinced that it is today that is developing especially dynamically. Koolhaas also noted that the open-air space around the new Garage building will be thought out later. This is likely to happen after the completion of the "Hexagon" reconstruction project (ex.
pavilion of Mechanical Engineering, built by Ivan Zholtovsky in 1923) - the model of its reconstruction was shown at a press conference, but no one went into details.
According to Dasha Zhukova, due to its flexibility and versatility, the new space will make it possible to bring more complex and large-scale works and collections to Garage, and the building itself, upon completion of the reconstruction, will become an important and striking representative of modern architecture.
