Palace of Culture in Zelenograd
Architects: I. A. Pokrovsky, D. A. Lisichkin, L. Makovskaya, A. G. Stiskin.
Engineers: B. M. Zarkhi, N. Ivanova, I. Shipetin.
Zelenograd, Central Square, 1
Construction: 1968-1983
Olga Kazakova, historian of architecture, director of the Institute of Modernism:
“Zelenograd was built as a city of microelectronics and was originally designed for young and educated residents, for the Soviet intelligentsia. In addition, a very important university was designed and built in the city - the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, MIET. So there should have been - and there were - a lot of both young people and children in the city. According to information from the newsreel magazine, the average age of a resident of the city of Zelenograd in 1967 was 23 years old.
Of course, such a city could not do without the "cultural and entertainment" component. And in 1968 the first stone of the Palace of Culture was laid according to the project of architects Igor Pokrovsky (he was also the chief architect of Zelenograd, which was still actively under construction at that time), Dmitry Lisichkin, Lyudmila Makovskaya and Dmitry Stiskin and engineer Boris Zarkha. At the same time, very in the spirit of the era, a "time capsule" was laid - a message to descendants.
The building of the Palace of Culture was conceived as part of the modernist architectural ensemble of the center of Zelenograd. It is located against the background of the famous "house-flute" by Felix Novikov and Grigory Saevich and in the plan is an almost equilateral triangle. The triangular "module", based on the shape of special floor slabs developed specifically for the Zelenogradsk Palace of Culture, is then repeatedly repeated on a different scale, starting from the planning one - the alleys in the terraced Victory Park, in the upper part of which the building is located - converge in a triangle - and ending with the details of its interiors: the main, unifying theme of the interior space, giving it originality, was a complex cellular ceiling, consisting of triangular honeycombs with a side of 9 meters, similar to which were not found in the Soviet Union.
The different heights of individual parts of the building make it picturesque and expressive. All three facades are dynamic in their own way. Their architectural solution is based on a combination of different-scale volumes, the contrast of glazed surfaces and light planes, covered with a specially developed textured mixture. In general, the appearance of the Zelenograd Palace of Culture bears some resemblance to the theaters that were built in Germany in the 1960s.
The interior space of the Palace, as conceived by the architects (the architect Dmitry Stiskin mainly worked on the interiors), was decided as a single whole, while the difference in levels made it possible to use individual groups of rooms as completely isolated spaces. The main entrance leads to the combined lobby, conservatory café and main club floor. The building was planned for a theater for 800 seats, a cinema and concert hall for 1200 seats, club halls for drama, dance and choral groups, a double-height film studio for an amateur film studio, a double-height sculpture hall, halls for painting, drawing, a dance hall for 150 couples - the palace was ready to satisfy the most diverse cultural needs.
The construction of the Palace of Culture, like some other buildings in Zelenograd (for example, a high-rise hotel located next to it - a business center), dragged on for many years. Its opening took place only in the spring of 1983. Today the Palace of Culture continues to perform the same functions as in the days of the USSR. According to polls of Zelenograd residents, this building is not among their favorites from an architectural point of view. But this is still a matter of tastes - this building cannot be denied originality, and according to the reviews of the theater studio directors working there, the Palace of Culture is thought out and executed almost perfectly from the functional point of view."
