Near the new stadium of the Spartak football club in the northeastern part of the Tushino airfield, in the Pokrovskoye-Streshnevo area, it is planned to build a universal sports hall for 12 thousand spectators. The stadium, named Otkritie Arena, began operations in August 2014. Its scaly facades, designed in the colors of a football club, were developed by the British bureau Dexter Moren Associates, based on the previously created arena project by the bureau AECOM. In the same year, the Spartak metro station, unfinished and mothballed back in 1975, was hastily opened. The construction of the universal hall should be the final step in preparing this site for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
A significant area intended for the placement of objects of the multifunctional complex of the football stadium "Spartak" is bounded from the south and west by the channel of the Moskva River, the northern border is fixed by the Volokolamskoe highway, and the eastern border is the valley of the Khimki river. Residential buildings and utilitarian buildings are quite close to the site. It is assumed that upon completion of all construction work, the complex will become the central point of this area, a place of concentration of public infrastructure and a powerful transport hub. Therefore, all previously unaccounted functions are automatically transferred to a new, not yet constructed object. In addition to an additional football field, it should serve as both a concert hall and a platform for holding public events. Located closer to the metro station and significantly covering the red and white volume of the arena, the hall also becomes the main facade of the entire complex. In addition, it should be borne in mind that the site itself is in extremely cramped conditions, sandwiched between the metro line, existing buildings and the routes of pedestrians and cars. These were the initial data proposed to Karen Saprichyan and Alexander Asadov for the design of a new sports facility.
An area of about 1.34 hectares southwest of the existing stadium was allocated for the construction of the universal hall. In contrast to their rounded neighbor, the architects drew here a rectangular volume, with its extended facet deployed towards the exit from the metro. The central entrance to the building also looks here. The covered five-storey arena with a high roof "top" was initially conceived by the authors even brighter and more colorful than the stadium. According to Karen Saprichyan, they wanted to cover the entire building with an amorphous shell, similar to a stole or a Russian scarf with national ornaments. According to the authors, this decision was very suitable for Spartak, which has always been a very national, Russian team. However, the customer asked the solution for perforated facades to be considered the second option, and to develop a modern, glass one as the first.
Having met the requests, the architects nevertheless endowed the new, glass version with additional meaning, again appealing to Spartak, but now to the name that the team has been wearing since 1935 - to the name of the hero-gladiator, the leader of the Roman slave uprising. Associations with ancient Rome forced to give the parallelepiped of an indoor football stadium a resemblance to the peripter of an ancient temple: the glass surface of the curtain façade is curved in uniform waves, and the architects covered their protruding parts with corrugation of thin vertical folds, similar to flutes. The depressions, on the other hand, are smooth, transparent and resemble intercolumnia. As if a glass veil outlines the contours of the Doric colonnade, turning into a cast-memory hanging in the air - the columns have neither bases nor capitals. At night, all these features of the facade will be emphasized by dynamic lighting.
The upper part of the building - the attic of the “temple” devoid of pediments, is pushed deep into the interior and is not visible from everywhere. Its architects covered it with bas-reliefs on the themes of sports and ancient myths. Thus, the architect-artist Karen Saprichyan not only turned the building into a sculpture on the theme of peripter, but also endowed it with a fair amount of monumental art, being faithful to both the idea of gesamkusntwerk and the rules of antiquity. Although it must be admitted that the "entablature" will be clearly visible only from a distance - when the observer approaches, the reliefs will disappear behind the edge of the glass waves, but it will be possible to walk under their console along the glass walls of the noticeably deepened first floor.
As for the "fifth facade" - a top view, here the deviation from the historical prototype is especially obvious. A simple and modern flat roof is replete with pyramids of skylights with a total opening area of 384 m2… They occupy the entire space above the football pitch below so tightly that they easily provide adequate lighting and ventilation inside.
But no matter how interesting the invented external appearance of the building is, its "filling" is more important. Incredibly complex structures, large-span steel struts and spider webs create a versatile multi-functional space. As mentioned, its use is not planned to be limited to football matches and training. Having laid a special covering on the field, it can be used for cultural events, concerts, performances and exhibitions. Roof structures are designed to carry heavy equipment and decorations of any complexity. For spectacular events on the upper farms, 120 winches with a carrying capacity of two tons each have been designed, which will allow for such extraordinary shows as the Circus Dusoleil. In 2018, it is planned to arrange a press center in the projected building.
In addition to the field and four spectator stands, all the necessary premises are located along the perimeter of the building on each floor - from the lobby and buffets on the first floor to the administrative premises and the working area for media employees with operator rooms on the fourth. The wardrobe, along with the sports equipment storage rooms, is located in the underground level, freeing up more space for the grand foyer upstairs. On both sides of the universal sports hall, there are high ground garages that respond to the style and image of the central volume. The roads and cobbled sidewalks, the green lawn and young trees, the poles of street lamps and the inclusions of city furniture were looped around.
