We begin to study 20 projects of the competition for standard housing concepts, selected by the jury for revision in the second round.
Standard
For the basis of the assignment, the organizers of the competition used the chapters of the Standard for the Integrated Development of Territories (CDT), which AHML and KB Strelka have been working on since 2016 and which, according to plans, should be ready right now, at the beginning of 2018. Development has begun on the same standard volumetric spatial regulations (ODS) of the city of Saratov, selected as a pilot for its approbation together with Kaliningrad and Vladivostok.
"Typical" or research?
It seems obvious enough that the competition is also one of the means of testing the resulting standard. However, here we go into the area of assumptions, since the prospects for using competitive projects are the least clear place in the entire history of its implementation. The tasks are formulated beautifully and in their pathos - correctly, but indistinctly. First of all: did the architects work on truly standard designs, or did they help develop new norms for the future? Strelka magazine, a corporate publication of KB Strelka, calls the projected housing "a new generation of standard", in the title of the competition it is called "standard". In a commentary on the jury's decision, the head of the Ministry of Construction, Mikhail Men, said that, firstly, all this is still being discussed, and secondly, that the projects can be “redeemed and placed in a single register of standard projects” maintained by the ministry, from where they can be taken developers; or that developers will be able to directly “go out” to the authors of competitive projects, “or take decisions as a basis”.
At the same time, the TOR of the competition, at the very beginning, stated as the goal “… to create an alternative to standard design”. So it is not clear what is being designed: a typical housing or its alternative. For now, we know only one thing for sure - the revised 20 projects are planned to be shown in May at the "Environment for Life" forum in Kaliningrad.
I must say that this competition is not the first attempt to design a new typical housing. The Moscow government has been doing this for several years now, and those projects are much more like standard housing, right now ready to be sent to the series.
The task
The entries for the competition are, in fact, more like a study of the possibilities of changing the urban environment. Their similarity is determined by the terms of reference, which takes into account many parameters, primarily density and altitude restrictions, which are very moderate by modern Russian standards. The standard at the same time implies a limitation of height: 5-7 floors for the mid-rise model and 9, only 2 floors more for the so-called central model, and the desire for greater compactness of the building, directly stated in the TK. In a low-rise format, therefore, the site for any house, individual, block and townhouse, is limited to 500 m2, and the density of the mid-rise model is 1.5-2 times higher than the existing five-story microdistricts: 15,000-20,000 m2/ ha, without converting, however, 5-storey buildings into 10-storey ones. Density limit for central model - 25000 m2/ ha - approximately corresponds to the average density of the pilot renovation projects shown recently at the exhibition.
Otherwise, you can see a lot of robust parameters in the assignment, so you even want to consider it as a kind of textbook on modern residential construction. The projects were required: modularity and adaptability, a minimum of a frame, compactly assembled communications and "wet" zones, maximum opportunities for redevelopment, plus environmental friendliness, sustainability, accounting for climatic zones (a special section is provided for this in the TOR), calculation of garbage disposal, compliance with firefighters standards and standard distances between houses, trees, parking lots. It is not said so strictly about insolation, only sufficient illumination is recommended, but the task does not deny the existing norms. In terms of plasticity, a variety is recommended, the use of stair-lift blocks for crushing facades with ledges or ledges. Also, the task contains all the joys of modern ideas about correct urbanism and what is called a comfortable environment: courtyards without cars, bike paths, commercial and public functions of the first floors (their ceilings must be at least 5 m in height). The courtyard of the block - for mid-rise buildings, plots of 2-3 hectares with a maximum length of 200 m were proposed - it was recommended to divide them into parts.
On the other hand, the task contains some margin for the experiment. The participants were required to design 3 types of houses, for the mid-rise and central models these are: a small-apartment house-"tower" (in English it is called urban villa), it stands separately and is used to seal buildings; a sectional house, traditional in our open spaces, and an unusual gallery house. The latter is popular in Europe, while in Russia it is almost forgotten due to its low efficiency, since too many potentially useful meters go to the gallery. The authors of the assignment - that is, KB Strelka - apparently want to “shake up” the typology that has become established on the market, to offer unusual options.
The recommendation to design bunk apartments with a separate entrance and a private front garden on the ground floors, exploited roofs and terraces - all this seems to be elements of luxury and psychologically does not fit into modern Russian ideas about mass housing - can be attributed to the same topic. The calculation of apartments in the TZ also includes a line from studios of 20 m each2 up to 4-room apartments with an area of 100 m2.
If with the height, density, as well as with all kinds of infrastructure and requirements for apartment layouts in the task, everything is so good that it begins to seem utopian-alien, then parking is limited, if not in Singaporean style, then in general it is tough. Which, incidentally, is typical of urban fashion. In the low-rise, that is, suburban, model, according to the calculations of the task, one parking place is for 2-3 people, in the middle - for 4-5, in the central - for 6-7. In other words, in the suburbs one car will go to a family with one child, in the mid-rise model for two such families, and in the central one and not for every two. Well, suppose there are hipsters and lone office workers who prefer the subway. Oh yes, not all Russian cities have it, but in
seven in total. In two more, construction has been stopped, in Chelyabinsk it is still under construction. What am I doing? It will be very good to organize the work of public transport so that these calculations of parking spaces become perceived as humane. No matter how residents of a comfortable environment begin to master new standards of the struggle for parking spaces.
Meanwhile, since there are no underground parking lots in all projects, most of the authors have even fewer parking spaces than in the assignment: 100-150, apparently counting on the presence of an overground parking in the next block. Few people managed to come close to the 235 places named in the task, and even more so to surpass them.
So, the fresh standards of AHML and KB Strelka, which were the basis of the competition program, offer the country a very moderate and comfortable density as a norm, insist on adaptability, diversity and other parameters that make the urban environment comfortable. Experimenting with a half-forgotten typology of residential construction. Parking is planned to a minimum, in part, perhaps because with an abundance of "nice buns" projects are designed for a low cost.
Of the submitted 307 projects, the share of mid-rise buildings accounted for 144 works - its humane parameters and consonance with the ideas of “new urbanism” attracted almost half of all authors (65 for low-rise buildings and 98 for central ones, respectively). The winners were also unevenly distributed: 8 mid-rise, 6 central and 5 low-rise. Obviously, the middle model is especially loved by both the authors and the jury. So we start considering the competitive works with the mid-rise model, although the prospects for its implementation in the vastness of the country look like, at least for now, a utopia in the spirit of communism by 1980.
Plan B: docking module
Russia
Cost: 31,000 - 39,000 rubles / m2
Max. height: 30.6 m
Apartments are stacked in houses as elements of a well-fitted Tetris, including bunk on the upper floors, where, for example, a kitchen-living room with a sloped roof can be located on the upper tier. Engineering communications are collected in a discrete "service wall", it runs closer to the central axis of each house. Ceilings 2.7 m. There are exploitable roofs and cutouts with terraces at the level of the roof of the second tier and many functions, including rather exotic ones, such as a sauna, a fair or hotel rooms for residents who need to retire. There are no front gardens on the ground floors, but a rectangle of "collective gardens" is drawn in the courtyard.
The solution has a structural "mirrored" grace of subordination and docking. The gallery houses are oriented, according to the recommendations, meridionally from north to south and are lined up along the long sides of a rectangle. Their corridors are zigzag: facing either east or west; the apartments here are mostly small. Sectional houses "with a central access type" are stretched from east to west along the ends of the site; these houses have more than 3-4-room apartments. There are no underground parking lots, but a number of overground ones adjoin the first floors of sectional houses from the side of the courtyard and are hidden by geoplastics, which makes the surface of the courtyard as a whole acquire a concave configuration, similar to a skateboard.
The “concave” surface of the courtyard is divided into three almost equal parts 118x45 m by transverse sections of sectional houses and “small apartment” towers, each with 8 floors, including a small “reserve” of the ninth with a sloping roof, which seems to violate the restriction. In the central one there is an internal passage, the lateral ones are free of cars. All three courtyards are connected by a pedestrian promenade ring.
The lines of the gallery houses are torn apart by wide driveways and cut through by arches, which should ensure the "docking" of the quarters with each other and their connection by internal driveways. Transit thoroughfares run along the outer borders of the blocks, north and south. Larger city streets run along the eastern and western walls, and therefore along the sectional buildings. ***
Escher: something southern
Russia
Quarter area: 2.87 hectares
Building density: 15 110 m2/ ha
Units: 420
Max. height: 29.1 m
Coef. glazing: 0.17-0.15
Parking: approx. 160
Here, first of all, the abundance of oblique angles is striking, which on the plan form fashionable forms of the crystalline type, and in the volume - a variety of angles, reinforced by the plastic of depressions, protrusions and terraces, which are abundant both on the roof of the lower public floors and in the upper parts of buildings. … All this resembles a rather complex volumetric puzzle. Non-residential - probably both commercial and public - premises help to form oblique corners, as well as the abundance of pivot axes that form the variability of the sections: it can be this way, it can be done this way.
The project is distinguished by the openness of the outer front, pedestrian permeability is ensured, a small boulevard with branches is formed inside, but the small courtyards are very small and open. The houses have emphasized small windows: the glazing area is only 15.5% of the facade area, as well as the abundance of terraces and open balconies that fold into open rows even in non-gallery houses, give the project a distinctly southern flavor.
There are no underground parking lots; in addition to the outer contour, flat parking lots are given a rectangle of the quarter's territory. Parking spaces are about 160 for 420 apartments. Height: 5-7 floors plus high public first. The height of the ceilings in the apartments is 3 m. The number of storeys varies between 5 and 7, as in the TK, but the height of the houses is approaching eight, since the first floors are everywhere - about 6 m in height.
DNA ag: diversity constructor
Russia
Cost: 35 390 - 38 800 rubles / m2
Coeff. glazing: 0.36-0.41
Parking: approx. one hundred
The architects of DNA AG emphasized modularity, variability and adaptability, deciding the project as a set of elements and principles, designed to be flexible in combination within the framework of a common approach. The approach largely appeals to the peculiarities of the historical city - in addition to the height of up to 5-7 floors and the variety of facades, built, however, according to a single module, the asymmetry is borrowed from the historical city, implying a certain degree of freedom in the arrangement of volumes; the plan resembles the Moscow courtyards of the 19th century, sung in the "Pokrovskie gates", although it is more regular and motivated by the subordination of private and public spaces.
The asymmetry of the plan is set by a ledge that makes room for the outer city square, where it will be convenient to arrange cafe tables. The facades of buildings along the streets are just as steep: quite often they depart from the red line, leaving room for front gardens and complicating the plastic of the building front. Several one-story lintels are planned between the houses to accommodate cafes and shops, as well as to create the effect of openness, visual rays that reveal the space of the courtyards and views from the apartments. Apart from retail, on the first floors, there are also apartments, with front gardens on the side of the courtyard. However, they are interchangeable: in the block, depending on the need, there may be more apartments or more cafes.
Apartments, like facades, follow the principle of flexible modularity. The frame of columns with a pitch of 6.6 x 6.6 m is taken as a basis, toilets and bathrooms are assembled to risers, which creates maximum flexibility in layouts: therefore, the authors rather offer options for placing apartments than a ready-made scheme.
Approximately in the center of the quarter, the architects envisaged a building of a public center and a local square, behind it - a large pedestrian courtyard, in the other half, two very small courtyards, thus building a rather complex hierarchy of urban spaces, as external ones, suggesting a more complex, heterogeneous structure of urban space composed from such cells, as well as internal ones with different properties and "faces" - the project thus acquires pronounced urban planning features, and refers not so much to one block-"cell" as it becomes a reflection on the urban fabric: based on an orthogonal grid, but tending to adjustments and elements of motivated everyday irregularity.
The streets in this project are ranked three times: inner lanes with limited but still traffic inside, plus two normal city streets and two small city streets outside.
There are no underground parking lots, flat ones are located only along the perimeter of the block - about 100 spaces, but since we are in the adaptive paradigm, parking can be underground, if it fits into the budget, or aboveground, in one of the neighboring blocks, heated and external similar to residential house, - the architects clarify.
Despite the fact that this quarter is an example of standardized development, the architects are skeptical about the idea of direct replication, view their project as a study of the standards of normal mass housing and emphatically strive to get away from everything typical - as if they are laying flexibility in the “code” of their proposal and giving an example subtle approach for the subsequent adaptation of the project. The hand will not rise to repeat this sentence several times in the same way. Which seems to be a very nice feature of the project, and needless to say that it is consonant with the name of the bureau. ***
2Portal: Thinning
Russia
Quarter area: 2.9 hectares
Building density: 19 740 m2 / ha
Max. height: 25.8 m
Coeff. glazing: 0.24-0.3
Parking: 242
The project is distinguished by the grace of lines, adherence to pitched roofs and the desire to visually narrow the thickness of the volumes, turning them figuratively into two "glued" along the long side of the house. Rooftop terraces, of which there are also many, are carved between the pitched roofs. The ventilation outlets are stylized as chimneys. However, it turned out more like Stalin's brick five-story buildings than apartment buildings of the 19th century, but the lines of the glazed loggias are thin enough to give the appearance of the houses a special delicacy. On the lower floors, at the ends of several houses, galleries on thin "legs" are provided.
The outline of the quarter approaches a square, the orientation is diagonal, at an angle of 45 degrees to the cardinal points. On the north-western border, the houses have been moved away from the red line and the place has been given to squares and sports grounds. On this side, there are 4 small-apartment "towers", sectional houses with a company with one gallery form in the southeastern part two courtyards of varying degrees of openness. Exactly in the middle, the site is cut by a pedestrian boulevard that runs from the south-east to the north-west; approximately in the middle, a small inner square with a fountain adjoins the boulevard.
The parking lot in this project is 242 places for 1025 people of the estimated population. In addition to the outer contour, they were given two symmetrical squares at the southwestern and northeastern borders of the quarter. There are no internal passages, except for special equipment, but it should be close enough to go from parking lots to houses.
Boustany - Suphasidh - Desfonds + A2OM: "unpredictable system"
International team
An international consortium, including the Russian bureau A20M, a recent participant in the youth biennale, whose portfolio includes two low-rise residential complexes, one near Moscow, the other in Luxembourg, - suggested, despite the existing restrictions, a construct made of glued laminated timber, - “pushing Russia to that so that it will become a leader in sustainable construction in the near future”.
The project is based on a 12x12 m modular grid with a 45º turn. A shallow diagonal grid is superimposed on the same line, creating the opportunity for the diagonal construction that prevails here. The houses are thin, in the assignment the maximum thickness was 18 m, here 12. Small apartment buildings are thicker, and are placed at the entrances to the quarter, marking them - the facades of the mini-towers are glass. The rest, long houses, are stacked at different angles and generally resemble a neighborhood layout, albeit with greater unpredictability. Inside there is a number of wall joints at 45º.
Outwardly, the project is very laconic, it does not offer any variegation, textured surfaces, sinks and ledges, the altitude varies not with ledges, but also with smooth diagonals, like mountains. The project denies the repetition of typical neighborhoods and offers "endless variety" within two given grids. Perhaps he looks the most modernist, not at all trying to stylize the techniques of the old city.
The corners make it possible to form several small public spaces on the outer contour - the authors call them “city rooms”: one of them is given to the market, the second to the garden, the third to the stage with the amphitheater, and the fourth to the “kiosk”. The kindergarten is also placed on the outer contour of the quarter, like a stadium, open outside, apparently, to attract nearby athletes.
A pedestrian boulevard is continued inside and geoplastics up to 5 m high is actively used; besides the hills, two ponds are proposed. This project is the only one that made it to the final, in which a certain number of underground parking lots were proposed: under some houses and under the market, at least.
Anarcitects Studio: A Parametric Future
Netherlands
The Dutch Anarcitects cited the modularity and adaptability categories requested in the assignment to a digital BIM-based scheme and called their project based on the "augmented standard". The system consists of basic forms and modifiers - the latter are needed where basic forms cannot cope with the task. In short, almost everything is possible in such a system - any setting, it itself looks like a standard, only by definition more complex and flexible, and not like a project that can be assessed by its visual qualities and a set of proposals for urban comfort.
The project has been turned into a library of shapes, which in themselves do not seem to be important, because they are very customizable, interconnected and open to transformation. So it makes no sense to evaluate the visual part of the project, with its parametric principles, it goes into some other weight category, although for an ideal typical construction this is probably interesting as an approach. The visual, offered as an example, looks quite tough and "checkered": attention is attracted by various volumes, giant mansards and "Carlson's houses" on the roof.
It looks sharply different from all the others and therefore - especially unreal, although exciting in its own way.
Ad Hoc Architecture: Realism
Russia
Land area: 3 hectares
Building density: 17 200 m2 / ha
Cost: 90 811 - 141 214 rubles. / m2
Coeff. glazing: 0.2 - 0.4
Parking: 112
The Russians of Ad Hoc proposed a rather rigid "panel" imagery, reviving the facades with large-colored balconies with large terrace cutouts, which mark the difference in typologies: the cutout at the gallery house is a two-storey-high through hole, the terraces of sectional houses were placed on the roofs, in "small apartment" houses for terraces one rib has been cut off, which makes them look like chairs randomly placed around the yard. There are wide glass lintels over the 5-storey arches.
Sectional and gallery houses form the boundaries of the quarter, it is cut diagonally by a boulevard, along the perimeter of the courtyard there are driveways for special equipment. At the corners of the diagonal there are triangular city mini-squares. The courtyard space is rather integral, the division into zones is given conditionally, without fences.
Parking lots - 112, 2 times less than in the task, they are located only along the perimeter. An unexpectedly high cost per meter - from 90,000 to 112,000 rubles. There are basically seven floors. The project looks large, sweeping, simple and somehow the least utopian of all, close to the reality of life.
DO Architects: an unexpected proposal
Lithuania
Max. height: 40.65 m
Cost: 27,400 - 77,300 rubles. / m2
Parking: 418
Apparently, a mistake crept into the project of the Lithuanian architects: together with "small apartment" houses, they feature 12-storey towers. The project generally surprises with unexpected parameters: there are twice as many parking spaces as in the task - 412. There are more than seven hundred apartments, and the density is one of the lowest, 15,000 m2/ ha.
In addition to 12-storey towers that go beyond the limits of the assignment, DO offered 4-5-storey buildings without elevators, but with front gardens and low construction costs - about 28,000 rubles per m22… The other two types of houses cost 77 and 65 thousand rubles per square meter, respectively. Although, judging by the data presented, there is some confusion in them: in houses with elevators, at least a technical basement is not shown.
The territory rectangle is divided into three parts. Two of them are closed quarters, whose courtyards are occupied by parking lots on a grassy lattice and front gardens of the first floors. There is a pedestrian boulevard between the two blocks. The third section is entirely devoted to recreation, there is a kindergarten with a ring-shaped donut plan, a playground, sports and dog grounds. It looks like a square and is separated from residential areas by an inner street. Streets along the perimeter are ranked: two internal (residential), two local (local). The terminological difference is not entirely clear, but the first boulevards are more likely, in them lanes are separated by a row of trees and you can park on both sides of each lane, which also increases the number of parking spaces; and the latter are two-lane without a separator.
The project, despite the inaccuracies in the presentation and inconsistency with the assignment, seems non-standard and interesting: as it will be, it offers to “think a little more”, not trying too hard to fit into the standards. Perhaps that is why he ended up with the top twenty winners.
