“For me, this is a very personal project,” says one of the founders of the “Archimatika” bureau Alexander Popov, “my parents, the architects themselves, when their work had something to do with children, always consulted with me. I was very happy because I felt that parents can make my life better and more interesting. And now it was important for me to build a school to which I would gladly give my son, making his life fuller and brighter. This is what happened in the end: every day I bring him here and I am very happy about it."
The loud name - "Academy of Modern Education" - is consistent with the ambitions of the developer and architects. While working on a project for a progressive residential area in Kiev, they, of course, studied the situation with educational institutions in the area. Public schools and kindergartens, ready to accept children from Comfort Town, were not too close, and it was decided for very young children to create a separate infrastructure within the quarter, allocating a plot for construction in the center, equally accessible to both Comfort Town residents and all residents of neighboring neighborhoods. Initially, K. A. N. Development”was going to transfer the school to the city, but the authorities were forced to refuse to accept it on the balance sheet, citing the lack of a budget and a plan for the commissioning of new facilities already drawn up for several years in advance. Then, despite the difficult economic situation and the absence of a stable tradition of paid primary education, they decided to take a chance and launch a commercial project. Actually, all these "introductory" and determined the structure and organization of the new private school.
Residential Quarter Comfort Town "on Regeneratornaya Street is assembled from brightly colored houses under a gable roof from 6 to 16 floors. The educational complex is below, only 2-3 floors. It gives architects the opportunity to make a kind of "pause", to add air to a rather dense building, but at the same time it takes into account its parceling and builds up their volumes commensurate with the residential building. It is also composed of several independent volumes of different sizes. Each house in the block is absolutely individual and each "block" of the training center received an individual architectural solution. “Public buildings should become the centers of new residential areas, - Alexander Popov is sure, - if in the case of residential development we were quite strictly limited in the choice of materials: it was necessary to take into account the possibilities of mass production, and the budget was initially small, then there was a place for more expensive materials and more complex plastic solutions that complement the modesty of the facades of residential buildings."
A kindergarten for 160, an elementary school for 140 children and an art school are visually separated into separate volumes, but at the same time they functionally represent a single organism. The idea was that parents could bring their children here in the morning and pick them up in the evening, after work. At the same time, after the end of the lessons, the teachers assigned to each class or group will take each of the students to the selected individual lessons: foreign language, chess, singing, drawing, lego, dancing, football, music, robotics, gymnastics and many other sections. The dream of any modern parent is that you can work in peace without getting lost in the middle of a business meeting and without depriving the child of his own interests, without limiting his opportunities.
The merger also allowed for much more attention to be paid to the various associated functional areas, thereby improving the quality of the infrastructure. For example, a universal gym and a spacious assembly hall, necessary for the work of all departments, received decent modern equipment, which would have been impossible given their low workload separately. Only a kindergarten or just a school cannot afford it. For the same reasons, a full-fledged medical center appeared in the complex, which also works to receive "external" visitors, and at the same time provides qualified assistance to the schoolchildren. Both streams are naturally separated. The kitchen is also heavily loaded throughout the day and is therefore well equipped. Part of the cafe bar even opens out into the common lobby, giving parents an opportunity to chat and grab a cup of coffee. Finally, in the evenings and on weekends, adults can also come here to play, for example, volleyball or dance. As a result, the workload and efficiency of the center is practically maximum.
Alexander Popov is sure that investing in education is the right and noble cause: “Of course, such a project will hardly be able to bring serious profit, but why not pay off and be generally successful? The Soviet system of Palaces of Pioneers has practically ceased to exist and we need to look for some other formats that meet today's demand for the development and socialization of children. You may consider me overconfident, but the role of the architect in this matter is very noticeable. The architectural environment ultimately determines the behavior of both teachers and children. Of course, a lot depends on specific teachers, the director, the caretaker, even the cook, but if the school is more like a barracks, then it will be very difficult to overcome the given rigid, suppressive character. So the main question that we asked ourselves while working on this project: what can architects do so that in the heads of our children there is light, a thirst for new things, mutual respect and the ability to empathize."