The subject of the competition, which was attended by 10 architectural companies from different countries, was the reconstruction of the Zhastar palace, located in the very center of Astana, on Republic Avenue. Built in 1973, when the city was not yet the capital and was called Tselinograd, the palace is rightfully considered one of its most important cultural centers - a cinema, exhibition halls, dance floors, and a health complex are located here. However, the palace has long ceased to correspond to the status and scale of the capital - the four-story building is lost against the background of much larger modern complexes, it is not able to accommodate everyone who wants to study in its sections and is morally outdated. That is why the participants of the competition were tasked with creating a landmark volume “for growth”.
“The functional program of the renovated Youth Palace is striking in its diversity,” says Nikita Yavein. - It is built on a peculiar combination of socialist idealism and a super-modern composition of premises. Discussion clubs, media libraries, gyms, stage platforms with complex transformations … Nowhere in the world do such conglomerates gather under one roof. And then dancing, playing, reading, thinking - all together, in one volume! It's even hard for me to imagine who will be able to conduct and manage all this effectively. But the more interesting it was for us to work on the project."
Such versatility of the reconstructed palace “Studio 44” emphasizes not only with the help of expressive volume, but also with urban planning means. Treating the palace itself as a complex literally stuffed with premises for various purposes, the architects at the level of the city center support it with a whole system of comfortable public spaces strung on a single axis and forming a 2.7 km long pedestrian boulevard. The promenade, which is planned to be built from the city park on the banks of the Esil River to the projected park on the street. Asan kaygy, will unite in a spatial megastructure a number of administrative buildings and hotels, the Congress Center, the Palace of Schoolchildren and the reconstructed “Zhastar”. “It is important that the boulevard is being built in the existing urban fabric without its radical reshaping and with the unconditional preservation of the existing trees. Our method is not urban planning surgery, but rather “urban acupuncture,” emphasizes Nikita Yavein. - We identify only those fragments of the environment where the transformation by means of landscaping and landscape architecture can give the greatest semantic effect, and we believe that such a "patchwork" principle of the formation of urban spaces will create a whole kaleidoscope of places of different nature, which will seem to flow into each other " …
Outdoor sports grounds, which are part of the Zhastar Palace, as well as the landscaped terraced roof of its sports complex will become an integral part of the new boulevard. In general, it should be noted that if earlier sports and cultural functions were side by side in one building, now the architects have decided to separate them. The sports complex is a whole group of structures adjacent to the palace building from the north: there was a place here for swimming pools for adults and children, and for gyms, and even for a mini-water park.
The renovated building of the Zhastar Palace itself is raised by Studio 44 above the ground by 5 meters. Under it, at an elevation of 5 meters, the so-called Youth Forum is being arranged - a recessed area sheltered from bad weather, intended for holding mass celebrations. The square is supposed to be paved and decorated with lamps and decorative sculptures, and a little to the south of it the architects have an open amphitheater facing the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. In front of the western facade of Zhastar on Respublika Avenue, an access pocket with public transport stops and a taxi stand will be organized, and for safe crossing of the highway by pedestrians, it is planned to build an overhead crossing, which will become part of the promenade, duplicating the new pedestrian boulevard at the level of the first floor of the building.
As Nikita Yavein recalls, the architects almost did not think about what kind of form the building of such a diverse institution should be. Only a cube is able to accommodate and bring numerous sections and creative laboratories to a common denominator. Or, as Nikita Yavein himself formulates, the "over-temporal" cube figure combines the clarity and rational compactness of the layout with the pronounced semantics of the image."
The facades of the building are made of diamond-shaped mesh cells filled with glass, and depending on the lighting they can almost completely disappear, revealing the internal structure of the building as much as possible and making it a full participant in the architectural image. The "content" of the cube is really spectacular - architects put together an intricate composition from volumes of different shapes and sizes. There are parallelepipeds, cubes, cones, and even a ball - the spherical volume of the Children's Center is supposed to be suspended on steel cables to the ceiling of the upper floor. Each block is distinguished by its own bright color and texture of finishing materials, and in the intervals between them and the outer shell of the building, a whole system of atrium spaces is formed - halls, foyers, terraces. It is interesting that Studio 44 partially corrected the functional program of the palace, basing its layout on the principle of interchangeability of premises. The blocks are grouped according to thematic principle, so that the audiences of the media library are adjacent to the transformable hall of the Discussion Club and can be used for holding its largest events. The possibility of transformation is also provided for the cinema and concert hall: the stage backdrop descends like a drawbridge, creating additional open-air seats for spectators and thereby uniting the hall and the open amphitheater.
As conceived by the authors, thanks to the glass walls and free arrangement of internal volumes, daylight will penetrate into the most distant corners of the renovated palace. But, most importantly, the transparent shell will provide quick reading of the entire structure of the complex, not only from the inside, but also from the outside. This "magic lantern" effect will not only simplify navigation around the complex, but will also create a memorable architectural image that will look especially impressive in the dark.
