Petersburg has been waiting for an analogue of Moscow Strelka for a long time. The city offers many challenges, to which there is no one to answer - urban education is still little represented here, although new curricula dealing with this popular topic are already emerging (we recently talked about one of them, the Master's program “Design of Urban Ecosystems”). In a word, a lot is expected from the new Sreda Institute, where teaching will begin in September this year.
The institute has already announced the recruitment of students, and on Sunday the presentation of the master's program “Building the city now” took place. The event took place in a rather informal and creative atmosphere: Sunday evening, the loft space of the Bulthaup gallery, a DJ, wine tables and the speakers were half an hour late.
The conversation was mainly in English, so that future students had a better idea of the educational process: now most of the teachers are from Spain (however, according to the heads of the institute, they are not in the mood to focus only on Spanish experts, teachers from the USA, as well as England and other European countries). One of the founders of the institute, Maksim Shpakovsky, a young entrepreneur and consultant in the field of development, who in 2012 founded the Make it center in St. Petersburg, an educational platform on the territory of the former Lenpoligrafmash plant, where the development of visual culture, design, architecture and urbanism of the city. Oleg Pachenkov, co-founder of Sreda, director of the Center for Applied Research of the European University at St. Petersburg, could not attend the presentation, but recorded a video message to the guests, in which he said that the institute's program was formed after familiarizing himself with the experience of many European universities and now stands out even against their background - thanks to interdisciplinarity and intercultural integration.
The main emphasis is placed on the synergistic approach to the educational process in Sreda. The leaders of the program, sociologist Olga Sezneva and professor from Barcelona, Enric Massip-Bosch, spoke about this. Urban problems will be considered from all sorts of angles, among the invited experts - ecologists, geographers, writers and sociologists, and among the students the founders would like to see not only architects and designers, but also sociologists, humanities and economists. At the end of the presentation, heads of workshops, young (outwardly indistinguishable from student-listeners; however, the management of the institute comments, they are all people with their own practice and successful careers, working on the implementation of projects in different parts of Europe), architects and teachers from
The Polytechnic University of Barcelona and the International Architectural Institute of Catalonia.
Training under the program lasts a year. The main part of the process is the aforementioned workshops, that is, work on real urban situations in a group of five people. For example, students will need to rethink the role of specific public spaces in a historic center without compromising the interests of residents. Each group has its own mentor - a young Russian or Spanish architect, and each workshop has its own topic and leader. Daniyar Yusupov will be responsible for linking the workshops with the Russian context. Group work is complemented by lectures. In the first semester, four workshops are planned, devoted to the historical center, territories near the water and the industrial belt, Soviet development, as well as planning new territories. In the second semester, there is a more in-depth research work on the problems of the historical center and new territories.
At the end of the training, the student or group defends their project, after which they are awarded the Master of Urban design & Research degree, accredited by the University of the City of Barcelona (BarcelonaTECH). Particularly for this reason, and also because many foreign teachers are planned to arrive, the tuition fees are quite high. For the year you will have to pay € 6,000, if you receive a grant - € 4,400. This is close to the cost of a year of study at the Moscow MARSH, although it cannot compete with the free tuition of Moscow's Strelka. It will be difficult for young specialists to afford such an expensive training; meanwhile, with partners such as
SetlGroup and KB ViPS from Sreda could be expected to be more accessible. However, Maksim Shpakovsky assures that now the organizers are negotiating with representatives of various companies and are trying to find an opportunity for students to fully cover the cost of training or get an installment plan.
According to the founders of Sreda, there are ample opportunities for graduates: to open their own architecture studio, work in the consulting department of the institute (SredaConsulting), build a scientific career or implement an urban project. In addition, the institute is currently working on the formation of a board of trustees, presumably which will include Irina Irbitskaya, Oleg Romanov, Svetlana Bachurina, the chief architect of St. Petersburg Oleg Rybin, as well as Harvard lecturer Neil Braner and the deputy mayor of Barcelona for urban planning and architecture Antoni Vives and many others (the final composition of the council will be announced in August). These people share the values of the institute and will contribute to the development of students' careers and projects.
The mood of the founders of the institute, and in general the stale program, look quite ambitious. Urban studies have firmly become fashionable, and there is also interest in new forms of education, especially in foreign specialists: although, as usual, not all of them had sat through the presentation until the end of the presentation, at least a hundred people came to it.
The Sreda Institute also promises to support the practice of public lectures already tested by MARSH and Strelka. “We plan to organize an annual series of public open events on urban studies, in which, among other things, experts who come to us will speak,” explains the head of the institute, Maxim Shpakovsky, “one of our goals is to create an environment for the development of skills and knowledge in the field of urban studies, therefore we want to contribute to this in various ways, making the results of our educational process as open as possible. Shpakovsky also urges not to compare the institute with Strelka: Wednesday is something completely different, primarily from the point of view of the educational process and the place of action. According to him, they will develop scenarios for the development of a non-capital city and actively study what cities people want to live in today.
To enter the Institute "Environment", you need a master's degree or its equivalent (the minimum requirement is five years of professional education and a year of work in the specialty) and knowledge of English (50% of training will be in English). A plus will be the presence of a project or publication. Documents are accepted until July 31, all details are on the website of the institute.
