The sand city I built
long ago washed away by the wave.
Armen Grigoryan and the "Crematorium" group
The improvement of public spaces is a popular business these days, but not all of its elements can be called worked out. We are used to paving, benches, linden trees and maples - and the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg built a huge sandbox with an area of 190 m in front of the main staircase2… The idea belongs to Boris Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Yumasheva, the implementation - to the Yekaterinburg architects Ashot Karapetyan and Peter Lyubavin.
The sandbox does not suffer from "baby mushrooms". In general, it looks like a large flowerbed, contrary to tradition, covered with sand (on expanded clay cushion, with a total volume of 100 m3). The sand is surrounded by a pine border on a metal frame: the structure is easily demountable, it can be hidden in winter. You can sit on the fence, in addition, it has built-in ramps, benches and a couple of sun loungers. The architects call the kalevid-triangular shape of the object adaptive - it is drawn so as not to obstruct the views and pedestrian paths and not harm the existing trees: two of them fit inside, for one a semicircular cutout was made in the outline of the border.
According to the authors and initiators, the sandbox is intended for both children and adults: here you can “walk on the warm sand”, and sand castles were built at the opening on June 24. Architects also suggest using the object as a stage.
Of course, the sandbox has become the largest in its city, and such examples in the country also somehow do not come to mind. And it is impossible to refrain from free or even too banal reflections about the youth of not too developed Russian democracy, about sand castles with their unenviable fate. Hide the sandbox, winter is coming.
