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The nostalgic image of the quarter, invented by Mikhail Beilin and Daniil Nikishin, is quite recognizable, as it is styled after the Sim City game. The authors packed a lot of ideas into their project. They created a hierarchy of mini-zones in the quarter and combined many typologies in it (towers, terraced houses, townhouses, etc.). Courtyards and courtyards differ in the degree of privacy: an area with a "campanile" -tower - for residents of the quarter and guests passing through it, a linear courtyard along the perimeter of the quarter - for residents, inner patios - for a mini-community of 20-25 apartments.
Mikhail Beilin and Daniil Nikishin were guided by large neighborhoods such as Leninsky or Kutuzovsky Prospekt, in which they grew up, and provided for transit traffic through them along a green street, less noisy than avenues. Naturally, public functions were located along this inner street and outside the quarters. It is surprising that in architectural terms a variety of houses are collected and not necessarily outstanding. However, this kaleidoscope of the eighties 'counterpoints', brick townhouses with gable roofs, Scandinavian residential architecture and some kind of transformer booths is organized into a common structure. It has the pleasant intelligibility and at the same time the randomness of the historic city. The scale of man, the fragmentation of the facades, the small number of storeys, the elaboration of the landscaping, the brick paving with a single carpet - all this ultimately ensures the comfort of a pedestrian and a resident. In my opinion, such a structure is best managed by Mikhail Filippov: within the quarter, he seems to accidentally combine houses from different eras, but they are organized in a large form, for example, an amphitheater. This is the effect of a built-up ruin, spied on by him in European cities. At Citizenstudio, the same plot is dissected using almost completely modern material. The role of the fastening frame is played by the boundaries of the quarter, peculiar city ramparts, cardo and decumanus axes, as well as the central square with a campanile. The result is a quarter-city.
The project is called Homelands. How to translate this is not clear, because in the Russian language the word "homeland" is not used in the plural. The architects proposed a variant of the translation of the “territory of the house”. According to Mikhail Beilin, they pondered what the concept of a house is for a person. There can be a lot of answers, and their sum makes up the quarter and the city as a whole. The vector of Citizenstudio bureau activity is obvious from the name. This is the "Studio of the Citizens". The relationship between man and city is the main interest of architects. And if we take the English name, then another meaning is added: “Studio of townspeople and citizens”.
The author's description of the project can be found here.
