The architectural workshop of Yuri Vissarionov has completed work on two versions of the architectural and urban planning concept for the expansion of the Russian University of Cooperation in Mytishchi near Moscow. The site is located near the Perlovskaya station of the Yaroslavl direction of the railway, at a distance of 800 meters from the 93 km MKAD. No one here is trying to form a campus or an innovation cluster that is fashionable today: probably, there are no financial or land resources. Practical tasks are being solved here: “to be able to increase the number of students, postgraduates and attract highly qualified teaching staff, including from other regions of the Russian Federation, it is necessary to build additional accommodation”. Briefly and clearly.
And the design area is really small - less than half a hectare, which should accommodate an educational and administrative building with an underground parking, a sports and recreation block, premises for students, graduate students and the very "teaching staff from other regions of the Russian Federation." The land was allotted to the university, which has proved over the years of its existence the relevance of the professions offered here, in 2012 - to the centenary of the educational institution, which once grew out of the Shanyavsky National University.
The site in question opens onto Vera Voloshina Street from the south-west, in the north-west it borders on the courtyard of a 12-storey residential building, in the north-east - on the territory of the kindergarten, and in the south-east it is separated by the Yauzskaya Alley from the main territory of the university, being at the same time its continuation both from the functional and from the compositional point of view. Trade and social and cultural facilities located within walking distance make the place comfortable for placing not only an academic building, but also a hostel here.
The options proposed by the architects differ not only in the volumetric-spatial and figurative solution, they also have different technical and economic indicators. Meanwhile, both combine the functions necessary for the university: housing for teachers and graduate students, a student dormitory, a large double-height gym, a swimming pool with the necessary underground parking (2 tiers) and small premises for cafes, shops and administration on the ground floors.
The first option is more plastic and radical. Here, an important role is played by the comparison of heterogeneous and multi-colored volumes, which clearly demonstrate the functional diversity of the premises. The buildings (which, by the way, can be traced in both versions) are grouped with the classic "peace", the letter P, around a small vertical proportions of the courtyard, open to the street. They are quite high - up to 17 floors, the site is small, you need a lot of meters, which makes both compositions inevitably compact.
Further: in the first version, the facades follow the variety of the purpose of the premises, they are built from the inside out, as the greats taught - especially on the first floors. The gym and the swimming pool occupy four floors of the left-hand building - their facades are covered with matte white glass, as if misted over, and should be mesmerizingly glowing in the evenings. Above, on the roof of the gym, there is an open terrace covered with round Corbusse props - an air gap, it carries the next four floors of a student dormitory, lined in dark gray - its coal volume, of course, sets off the whiteness and glow of the sports part.
With the second leg of the letter "P", on the right, the same thing, only here the transparent glass of shops shines with warm light, enclosed between the dark gray terrace of the base and the volume of four floors of the teaching apartments. Further, the volume, however, without changing its function, changes the "skin": the walls of the next floor recede slightly and become brown-brick, with slight ripples, as is customary now, imitating the old days. The brick volume, still retreating from the edge, stretches in depth, "growing" out of dark gray. However, the brick also grows below the gray volume, as if through and through, and if you look from the Yauzskaya alley, then in the lower floors we see a wide march of the main staircase leading to the second floor between the wide flanking volumes: glass and brick.
At the corner of Vera Voloshina Street and the alley - at the place of a key, almost a crossroads, and therefore allowing for a dominant, the architects put a white tower, square, high, on a brick beam. The white tower finds support and continuation in the distant building, where the same white, but already horizontal volume, similar to a horizontal skyscraper, is transversely substituted.
The description is replete with verbs - put on, threaded, put on, threaded through - because the project itself carefully follows the plastic commandments of ASNOVA, emphasizing various types of interpenetration of volumes and materials. The effect of the composite shape tends to be convincing, material: what could be more reliable than an air gap of one floor of the terrace between the gym and the dormitory? It separates sporting and residential functions to help meet standards; but how nice it would be for students to take a break from sports and study on this terrace. It will be perfectly possible to bring a girl here. Meanwhile, for all the persuasiveness of the plastic designer, we note that he is not true everywhere. Somewhere, especially in the first floors, plastic manifests a function - in particular, it denotes and visually separates the gym and the cafe, embodying one of the favorite principles of classic modernism and providing a touch of retro. Above, the game with volumes works for itself and for the city, forms a dominant, intrigues a passer-by, but no longer reflects the variety of functions. But it is somewhat reminiscent of a warehouse of containers - or books on an unassembled student, or teacher's, table. Which, too, was probably deliberately invented. And who said that you must always follow the rules, especially the outdated ones? You can sometimes pay tribute to the passion for the construction of MVRDV.
The second option is more restrained and looks more like a group of residential buildings executed in a modern style, a little in the spirit of "Airbus": look at the cage of wide windows; a little - "Welton Park", to which the pixel shading of spring gray and light green spots on a white background refers, in places turning the wall into an enlarged fragment of the carpet. Here another modernist theme is read, a later one: the theme of a building-plate, like the "Tourist's House", which also adds a slight touch of nostalgia for the seventies, which is so relevant now. The volumes are higher and more compact: here we managed to fit the main meters into two high volumes, one in the depth, the other along the alley, there is a small bridge between them, and nothing has been built over the gym.
The plates have “blank” and “transparent” walls - in fact, both are not quite, but the separation of the front and rear is noticeable. Transparent - a grid of windows with a thin cut, there is more glass here, and they are facing, open to the street and to the alley - the buildings are not introverts at all. Compared to them, the walls, the windows of which are optically hidden among the pixels, seem dull, variegated, monolithic. Next - variations; hatching windows can do without pixel coloring, but it still emphasizes the solidity of the white wall. Volumes also visually grow into each other, and also "grow" a tower at the corner, but here they camouflage this feature more, hiding the true scale and rhythm, confusing. And the tower is not as accented. In the first version, they were also a little confused, but more in a logical way, but here - in a more picturesque way.
The first floors partly recede into the depths, partly remain in the plane of the facades; alternate glass planes with bright light green walls - sources of colored glare and reflexes. But all together makes the lower tiers lighter, more transparent, and works for the effect of levitation, supported by the console hovering over the street of the right "tower" and the "TV" of the sports center, hovering very low above the ground, leaving only a thin gap. Everything is thin, white, light.
*** Both the first and the second proposed options solved problems that went beyond the set goal - they at least managed to maintain a balance between a bright, eye-catching form and not too attractive, but already familiar urban environment of the place. Attract and not destroy. Time will tell which of them the customer will focus on, which will more accurately answer the tasks set for the university. Today, only one thing can be said: either of the two options is worthy of implementation.
