Grand Prix of the XIII Festival “Landscape Architecture. A View from Home”was awarded to the program for the development of recreational areas around Moscow (team of authors: Alexander Khomyakov, Anastasia Stepanyuk, Maria Rudakovskaya, architectural bureau of the CityStroyService company). The concept, called the "Ring of Moscow Region Parks", is a picturesque necklace of comfortable recreation areas, which actually duplicates the route of the future Central Ring Road. There are thirteen such parks in total, their area varies from 100 to 150 hectares, and they are located at a distance of 20-45 km from each other. In fact, this project proposes to form a new belt of objects of attraction for tourist activity in the Moscow region, located exactly in the middle between the cities of the Golden Ring and the capital. And in order to make the new recreation areas more attractive, the authors design them as different as possible, stringing polyfunctional parks, that is, offering a variety of leisure formats, and specialized ones, each of which will have some kind of “trick” ", Which can interest even residents of other regions. According to one of the festival jury members, editor-in-chief of the Architectural Bulletin magazine Dmitry Fesenko, who was the first to nominate the Ring of Moscow Region Parks for the Grand Prix of the show, this project is a wonderful alternative to the pretentious Russia Park, which the authorities intend to build in Domodedovo district, and the radiation development of Greater Moscow as a whole.
Another park - in the floodplain of the Yauza River (team of authors: Galya Likhterova, Yekaterina Samukhina, Oksana Zabolotskaya, Yekaterina Feofanova, IEPiI JSC) - became a laureate of the festival in the category "City territories". Located in Severnoye Medvedkovo, between Sukhonskaya Street and Olonetsky Proezd, this park with a total area of 51.5 hectares does not have a loud name, but is very loved by the locals. The reconstruction works continued from May to August this year: bike paths, playgrounds and sports grounds, a skateboard and picnic areas appeared here. Also, in the area of the park, the Yauza riverbed was cleared, and for those who prefer contemplative leisure to active rest, new benches and gazebos were installed.
In the nomination "Project of City-wide Territories" the best was the concept of integrated development of the territory of the 62nd Army embankment in the Central District of Volgograd (team of authors: the architectural and landscape center "Green ART" with the participation of V. A. Rusanov, A. V. Chuikov, Z. A. Chuikova). The architects propose to saturate one of the main embankments of the city with functions as much as possible - according to the project, a cafe, a restaurant, an exhibition hall, pavilions, a yacht club and landing stages, a sports area, a pedestrian promenade with a bike path and even, possibly, housing should appear here. All newly erected objects are treated not as capital structures, but rather as pavilions - elegant, light and subtly reminiscent of similar buildings by Dutch or, say, Danish architects.
In the nomination "Urban courtyard spaces" the jury decided not to award the first place - according to Dmitry Fesenko, none of the works submitted for the competition "did not reach the standard." "Silver" in this nomination was given to two projects at once - the improvement of a quarter in the residential complex "Yuzhny Bereg" in Krasnoyarsk (team of authors: Olga Smirnova, Olga Sorokina, Tatiana Zvereva, design and production landscape firm "Semiramida Gardens") and a roof garden club house "Tikhvin" in Yekaterinburg (team of authors: Svetlana Okulova, Vladimir Kuchin, Anastasia Fokina, Svetlana Okulova (junior), Pavel Obelets, Tektonika LLC). And if the Krasnoyarsk project is a completely traditional courtyard space with playgrounds and sports corners, then Tikhvin should be mentioned separately. In the local Yekaterinburg press, this house is modestly referred to as "the main citadel of the Sverdlovsk elite", and a corresponding garden is laid out on its roof. A complex pattern of paths, a green labyrinth, a playground enclosed with a transparent fence for greater safety, arches and stairs - it seems that there is not a single element here that would not try to maintain a respectable image.
And if among the implemented projects of courtyard spaces there was no unconditional winner, then among the concepts "gold" was still awarded. The first place in the category “Project of urban courtyard spaces” was awarded to another roof garden, namely the green oasis crowning the multifunctional complex “Negotsiant” (Tatiana Bakhareva, design studio “World of Flowers”). In the elite on Yakimanka, a whole parade park with a fountain and statues will be laid out, however, pedestrians and motorists are unlikely to ever guess about this.
In the most numerous nomination of the festival "Household plots" awards this year were presented on the basis of the aggregate of merits. In fact, the jury chose not the best projects, but the best authors working in this genre. The Honka Land landscape bureau received gold for two projects - Anglo-Russian Garden and Pure Minimalism, and the Arbor group of companies for as much as three - for the improvement of private plots in Khost and two villages near Moscow. As for "Honka", it is true to itself - in both cases, wood is used as variedly as possible, the natural warm texture of which becomes the main decoration of projects. Arbor relies on the full range of "landscape" materials, creating fantasy parks with artificial hills, terraces and alpine slides. In the village of Little Italy, for example, architects have turned an area of about 10 hectares into a spectacular estate, where most of the buildings are hidden under man-made ramparts, which at the same time serve as a substitute for fences.
But among not yet implemented projects of private household plots, the jury singled out a specific work - the improvement of a private garden in Lodeynoye Pole, Leningrad Region (team of authors: Yuri Fomenko, Anna Adasinskaya, Maria Morozova Landscape and Architectural Bureau "MOX"). In the plan, the garden has the shape of an irregular oval, inside which the architects organize flower beds, alleys, a reservoir and picturesquely winding paths.
And although “View from Home” is a festival dedicated to landscape architecture, it traditionally does not ignore the objects around and for which man-made landscapes are usually created. True, since for this show the buildings still play a secondary role, the nomination dedicated to them is appropriately named. This year, the first place in the "Subject in the landscape" section was won by two objects at once -
"Greenhouse" by Totan Kuzembaev and "Country Origami" by Peter Kostelov. Kuzembaev's building is a greenhouse house with a transparent roof and walls, "put on" a wooden frame, which fascinates with its laconicism and seeming simplicity. The volume of Kostelov, on the contrary, is intriguing with an intricate composition - the snow-white pavilion made of wood and metal is really complex according to the origami principle, where modules of different sizes form a complex system of spaces flowing into each other. And if the "Greenhouse" is absolutely self-sufficient and interacts with the surrounding landscape, mainly due to the glass facades and the greenery growing behind them, then the "Country Origami" is an object that comes into the most active contact with the space of the site: there are no traditional windows, no doors, only niches of various depths and stairs leading to the exploited roof. True, in case of bad weather, Pyotr Kostelov provided horizontal and vertical awnings covering the light openings, so that the pavilion, although it is as open to nature as possible, is always ready to protect its inhabitants from wind and rain.
The festival did not pass by its attention and works of land art. True, here the choice was more than obvious: the best work in the Art Object nomination was the most notable work of the year - the sculptural installation by Nikolai Polissky "Universal Mind".
