Ruben Arakelyan, architect, diploma supervisor:
“It is important in the conditions of new economic realities to identify the potential of the existing resources of the city. It is important to learn how to use it and, by attracting small local investments, improve the quality of the urban environment. Based on this, within the framework of the diploma project, it was decided to investigate the topic of abandoned places within Moscow in order to rehabilitate them. Pedestrian surveys revealed more than a hundred abandoned places within the boundaries of the Garden Ring. Then we began to consider for ourselves two options for working with the identified objects - either try to discover the potential of each individual element, or find their interaction. As a result, we settled on the second option and found the accumulation points of such abandoned buildings and territories on the city map. One of the most characteristic areas and became the subject of design.
Having decided on the site, we began to look for the most effective ways to bring it back to life. It was a zone of absolute experiment, so it was necessary to monitor all available analogs, to study the world experience. The most optimal idea seemed to be the introduction of an educational function. We found a correlation between abandoned places and forgotten professions that are considered not prestigious all over the world. Even a superficial study was enough to understand that in Russia manual labor professions are classified as not prestigious. Thus, we came to the idea of creating technical schools on the basis of abandoned buildings in Moscow.
In addition, the idea arose that the restoration and arrangement of the technical school can be partially carried out by the students themselves, who, simultaneously with the educational process, would acquire practical skills. Since most of the objects under consideration are architectural monuments, the invasion of their "organism" is minimal, point-like. Mostly at the level of interiors. In addition to rehabilitating buildings in this way, we expect to rehabilitate the profession as well. The technical school will merge into the fabric of the city, people will see how the buildings are being renovated. Perhaps this exposure of the manual labor process will change the attitude towards the profession.
I want to note that this work was supported by the chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, and wrote an excellent review. He agreed that the city needs such pinpoint anatomy, acupuncture and rehabilitation, requires revealing the hidden potential to improve the quality of the environment."
*** Moscow. Intervals. Education laboratory
Alina Nazmeeva
The diploma project consists of two parts - research and architectural. The study covers the central part of Moscow within the Garden Ring - in particular, abandoned houses and vacant lots located here. Field studies on foot allowed dividing the historic city center into segments and identifying “loss” zones. In total, 136 abandoned buildings and territories, 55 vacant lots and 79 buildings closed for reconstruction were discovered. The greatest concentration of such places was found in the area of Ivanovskaya Gorka - about 22 objects. On their basis, it is proposed to create a technical school focused on teaching manual labor. The buildings of the technical school are distributed among the identified abandoned houses. All buildings are connected by a system of walking trails.
The implementation of the project is divided into stages. In the diploma work, the first stage is considered in detail, which provides for the renovation of key buildings - and this is the technical school itself, the student dormitory and the workshop. After a detailed study of the history of the buildings that are proposed to be reanimated, the author proposed a program of minimal transformation. The facades and their outer contour are completely preserved. The changes only affect the interiors. The dormitory has small private living cells that resemble ship cabins in structure. At the same time, the public space has been expanded to the maximum. Students assemble their living quarters themselves from glued timber. The same approach is used in the workshop and the technical school. However, on the facades of the latter, some author's solutions still appear in the form of a gallery of lightweight temporary structures.
