The architectural school "Evolution", created within the framework of the "Promotion" project, completed its work in May. The pilot training course - mastering workshops - lasted one and a half months. Final projects were presented at Arch Moscow. At the same time, the organizers summed up the results of the workshops and presented diplomas to all participants.
School enrollment began at the end of March, a week before the start of the training course. Almost 90 applications were received in a short time. Of these, 47 students were selected on a competitive basis. The school curators divided them into four groups, each of which was looking for new conceptual solutions for the four most problematic areas of the Lefortovo district. The main goal of the organizers of the "Evolution" school was to attract the attention of the general public and developer companies to the problems of the integrated development of the district.
We present the best, in the opinion of the curators, projects, as well as publish the comments of the initiators and curators of the school, Peter Vinogradov and Vika Abel.
Peter Vinogradov, architect, initiator and curator of the Evolution school, ideologist of the "Promotion" project:
“The school was conceived several years ago as a large-scale educational project. For the last six months, we have been closely engaged in its creation, but we started extremely quickly: a week before the start of the training course, we announced a recruitment, received an unexpectedly large response in an express format, selected participants and started work. By this time, the backbone of like-minded people, ready for experiments, had already formed. Some of the curators wanted to try themselves in pedagogy for the first time, like Sergei Michurin and Pyotr Vasiliev, someone hoped to move away from the standard educational process, and someone, for example, Ilya Zalivukhin, together with the students decided to make a serious project as part of and continuing our own research.
I have taken part in such educational programs more than once. It all started with forums in Minsk. Then there were workshops in St. Petersburg and Moscow. This experience of intensive design in 10-12 days is very invigorating. And the result is often good. For ourselves, we chose a slightly different format - a month and a half of work and design freedom practically unlimited by the task.
Our creative workshops and experimental site Provodka are located in Lefortovo, on the territory of the Kristall plant. We know the area from the inside, that's why we offered it as a design site. In addition, we have been interacting for a long time with the graduates of the MARCH architecture school - a team of students of the NLTR program. They previously worked on a concept for the development of industrial areas in Lefortovo. This concept, supplemented and rethought, formed the basis for the work of the Mastering workshops. We examined four problem areas, codenamed "Echelon" (railway), "Sputnik", "Cliff" (embankment of the Yauza River) and "Dikoe Pole" (Park of Cossack Glory). Abandoned, wild places were deliberately chosen: a piece of a ragged railway - a strip of alienation between the past and the future, a dead embankment given over to cars, an empty park not in demand by the townspeople.
Each of the four groups took their own territory. The result is very different work - from artistic and experimental to serious urban planning. The students of our workshop with Sergei Zolotukhin have made a number of projects, which I call nothing other than creative extremism. We also paid great attention to the renovation and improvement of the embankment. Ilya Zalivukhin's group has developed a large-scale urban planning project, the level of elaboration and quality of which is such that it can be freely presented at any city council. Alexey Komov has found the optimal solution for Wild Field. And Pyotr Vasiliev with Sergei Michurin examined the Sputnik site - it also turned out very boldly, experimentally.
The school, it seems to me, has confidently demonstrated its worth. We plan to continue working in the workshop format. This year alone, 3-4 more courses are planned. One of the nearest ones will be visiting and will affect the territory of the center of Tula. Negotiations are already underway, there is interaction with the city authorities and the public. The next possible topic is the study of social education.
School is a good mechanism for starting project work. Exploring this or that site, we provoke and contribute to the beginning of its real development and development. We do not have hard limits, but there is scope and very different approaches. Today there are many educational projects that produce works of about the same level - equally good. We tried to break this situation, create ideological competition at the level of approaches, combining the efforts of differently thinking people."
Vika Abel, "Architect" of public relations, founder of the Institute for Synergy, Culture and Social Sciences:
The Evolution School and its pilot project, Mastering Workshops, are the first step towards a full-fledged educational process. For now, we plan to work in the format of short-term training courses, but in the end we expect to come to an architecture school with our diploma. We offered the participants "liberal", as one of the school's experts Dmitry Fesenko defined it, TZ: a problem was simply posed, and then everyone went on a free float. The direction was determined by the curator. Everything was built on the will and charisma of each curator.
The students were divided into four groups, but within the groups they could work both in a team and individually. The projects turned out to be very different. Again, using Fesenko's terminology, in all four groups, two main approaches to design can be distinguished - “deductive and inductive”. The inductive approach is dictated by the characteristics of the site. These include the work of students Sergei Michurin and Alexei Komov. At the same time, Komov's group proposed environmental solutions, the main thing in the project was the “spirit of the place”. Michurin and Vasiliev had a much larger approach and was based on a detailed study of the territory. Pyotr Vinogradov and Ilya Zalivukhin demonstrated a deductive approach, when everything has a personal, author's vision, applicable to the territory.
In addition, we immediately declared a social approach and attention to problem areas. It is clear that there are almost no sites ready for construction. There are more than enough problem areas - there will be enough work for the next hundred years. Meanwhile, they require extremely careful study and search for non-standard solutions. Our school is ready to develop such new and non-standard solutions at the intersection of architecture and urban planning, development and sociology, economics and management. This is its main practical value”. ***
Workshop
Petra Vinogradova and Evgenia Zolotukhina
Extreme. For life Pilot projects / Renovation / Improvement
In their works, the students of the group started from the rich industrial history of the area, where many industrial objects either changed their purpose or were completely destroyed. The concept of the industrial museum is a kind of projection of the iconic industrial zones, the "traces" of the vodka distillery, the former Manometer, and the Serp and Molot distillery.
An abandoned railway leading from nowhere to nowhere is the Echelon section. It has been read in a wide range - from the applied activities of the fairground train as a social attraction to experimental parking-nests, subtly ironic on the theme of green architecture.
"Cliff" is an embankment area that requires revitalization of the coastal area and its return to the city and people. To do this, it is proposed to hide the traffic flows in a tunnel, and to improve the pedestrian embankments, to organize spaces for recreation and sports, to provide bicycle paths connecting the two banks with each other.
Reconstruction of fuel oil storages at the Kristall plant was conceived as a functional superstructure, completing the plastic of two polyhedrons in the form of interlocking gears. The volume will serve as a new community center. It was proposed to build a bridge through it, connecting the territory of the "Hammer and Sickle" plant with a new comfortable embankment. Such a point object, according to the authors, will be able to set the tone for the renovation of the entire territory.
Workshop
Ilya Zalivukhin and Vsevolod Medvedev
New Moscow in Lefortovo
Urban planning / Social projects
The project covers the territory from the Kursk railway station to the Hammer and Sickle plant. This area, according to the designers, has always remained "on the outskirts" of the city, and the construction of the Kursk railway station only exacerbated the problem. There are few residential and commercial buildings and many abandoned plots here. The transit embankment of the Yauza River cuts the area with a noisy highway. The creation of public spaces does not solve the problems of the territory. As an alternative, a full-fledged city-wide two-circuit system of streets and roads is proposed. Simultaneously with the rethinking of the role of public transport and its comprehensive modernization, this approach will generate the necessary conditions for the further qualitative development of all districts of Moscow.
The authors of the project see their main task as the formation of a truly lively area by organizing multifunctional spaces on abandoned territories, developing pedestrian and transport links, filling with various public functions, housing and work. High-rise office and commercial buildings adjoin the TPU of the Kursk railway station, behind them - the discharged existing residential buildings. The role of the high-rise dominant is played by the Evolution tower. The main goal of the project was the call to put the historical city in order, not to move the capital outside the Moscow Ring Road, but to make Moscow a real capital within it.
Workshop
Alexey Komov, Daria Kozinskaya and Ilya Khvan
Big game of traditions
Renovation / Improvement
Unlike the popular Lefortovo Park, the elongated green rectangle of the Wild Field exists restlessly and aloof. The powerful park potential is blocked by the grip of high-security military and industrial facilities. The task of the project is not just to revive the environment, but to breathe new life into it, to release the hidden energies of the territory, to give it an identity with a modern environmental language.
The site is divided into three sectors: the park of Cossack Glory, covered with a "wooden box" symbolizing the outpost on the borders of the empire, the Normandie-Niemen park on the site of the space limited by military objects, and the Forest, whose uniqueness the authors emphasize and bring to the level of Bosch. All three parts are connected by an internal tourist route of the monorail. The result is not just a public space, but a tourist attraction of a new format.
Workshop
Sergei Michurin and Peter Vasiliev
Expanding the boundaries
Pilot projects / Renovation / Improvement
The workshop preaches an intellectual approach to the renewal of the Lefortovo district and its urban significance. A lot of open data was collected, a task was formulated for transforming the area, and as a result, a project proposal was given that solves both general and local tasks of each of the sites.
The key idea is the formation of the Lefortovo green belt, a cultural and recreational ring connecting the entire region. On the site "Sputnik" it is proposed to create a cluster of memory of the region, where the history of three centuries - the XIX, XX and XXI centuries is intertwined. The site near the new metro station is designated as a zone for the formation of a cultural and educational center with an internal multifunctional area. The wide boulevard between the existing metro station and the one under construction is being transformed into a transit route, ennobled with cultural monuments.
The industrial area regeneration program includes the Hammer and Sickle plant center, which is connected by rail to the Kristall plant. It is planned to run a tram along the old railway tracks. In addition to new transport arteries, there are new objects of urban life with a pronounced industrial character of architecture. "Pilli" is a project of a water complex on the site of the former treatment facilities of the "Serp and Hammer" plant. Dom-Kommuna is a residential complex with a consumer services system, a car park and offices.
The embankment of the Yauza River, located between ArtPlay, Winzavod, Arma and Kristall, was proposed by the students of the workshop to turn it into a new cultural cluster, a space for art exhibitions. At the same time, it was decided to move the traffic flows into the tunnel. So the city will receive a new center of gravity, thanks to which the abandoned and closed areas around will receive an impetus for development. ***
