The first and only active house in Russia today, a joint project of Zagorodny Proekt and VELUX, won the annual all-Russian prize for the best wooden architecture ARCHIWOOD. The award went to the POLYGON architectural bureau (part of the Zagorodny Proekt company).
The ARCHIWOOD prize has been presented for the third time this year. The ceremony took place at the Central House of Artists, where leading developers and builders, architects and journalists gathered. That evening, awards were presented in five nominations: "Art Object", "Design of Urban Environment", "Public Building", "Small Object" and "Country House". The last nomination is considered the most important in the framework of the ARCHIWOOD award.
This time the authoritative jury, which included architects Werner Nusmüller, Nikolay Belousov, Alexander Konstantinov, Alexander Larin, architect and scientist Olga Sevan, actor Daniil Strakhov, architectural critic Dmitry Fesenko, could not choose one winner in the Country House nomination.
In the main nomination, the award was given to two projects at once - "Active House" (architectural bureau POLYGON) and Shanti-house in Crimea (Valery Borzikov and Ivan Kibirev). The organizers of ARCHIWOOD explained this by the fact that no clear evaluation criteria have yet been formed: when eco-friendly houses, houses with interesting engineering solutions and houses with original architectural ideas are fighting for victory in one nomination, it is impossible to choose only one winner. The professional jury, after much debate, decided not to award the first prize this year.
The architects expressed their hope that such a situation could become an important stage in the development of the competition and bring it to a new professional level. Architects Alexei Rosenberg and Peter Kostelov received a special prize for the "Switcher" group of houses in a cottage village in the Tver region.
“In the Active House project, the filling is important, all the latest technologies that ensure the life of the house. This is a pilot project, through which we want to show that active houses are suitable for use in Russia. In the future, in our country, it is possible to replicate the project, to build "Active Houses" in different regions. An optimized design can be obtained as early as this year based on peer review and home research. We believe that the development of Russian development cannot take place without the use of innovative technologies,”says Dmitry Aksenov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of RDI Group.
According to Alexander Leonov, the architect of the experimental architectural laboratory POLYGON, even the most modern technologies require a beautiful architectural setting. “For us, receiving the prestigious ARCHIWOOD prize for the architectural component of the project is another proof that we were not mistaken and are moving in the right direction. The project is actively developing, at the ARKHMOSKVA exhibition we have already presented new works by the finalists of the open architectural competition for the best project "Active House 2012" and the stand aroused great interest among the most famous masters and the general professional community"
Active House is an international project implemented jointly by the largest European and Russian companies: Country Project (Russia), VELUX (Denmark), Saint-Gobain Isover (France), NLK Domostroenie (Russia), Danfoss "(Denmark). The project is being implemented with the support of the Danish Embassy in Russia, the Union of Architects of Russia, the Institute of Building Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Association of Wooden House Building, the Institute of Building Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Passive House Institute and became the first project certified according to the developed Russian "Green Standard" of construction.
