RC "Respublika" is the largest project of both ARCHIMATICS and the country. On the outskirts of Kiev, not far from the new Teremki metro station, the KAN development company will build, in fact, a small city with more than 14 thousand apartments on average - 7-9 residential floors. ARCHIMATIK also owns the authorship of the entire infrastructure of the residential complex - from landscaping and social facilities to the Respublika shopping center - a huge mall that can accommodate both a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster. Special attention is paid to public areas in the project.
The whole complex is subordinated to a well-thought-out hierarchy of spaces. Closed courtyards of urban blocks, with a natural environment and paths among lawns - only for residents. Outside, between the quarters, there are pedestrian paths that lead to squares where social life will be concentrated: these can be sports and playgrounds or gardens, recreation areas with elements of landscape design, or, as in the first stage, a community center.
To locate the public center, the architects had an area of 100 by 100 meters between the first four urban blocks of the complex. The author of the project, Nikolai Morozov, says that he wanted to make communication between the residents of the quarter as comfortable and interesting as possible. Therefore, the idea was born to combine heated premises with open areas to create an all-season "communicator". At the same time, it was important to avoid resemblance to a shopping center: the community center had to be identified precisely as an element of improvement.
The main idea is as follows: in the center there is a decorative landscape part and a large playground, around which "islands" of restaurants and shops are built. They are united by a "green" roof, which is perceived from the inside as a visor. The openings in the roof and skylights give the rooms a lot of natural light. Free roof passages continue the paths of the footpaths. The total area of the center is 1670 m².
In general, it turned out to be exemplary,
according to Grigory Revzin, the area where "you exchange with other people you do not know, and not only money and goods - also social attention, news, unusual behavior, mood."
The scenario is as follows - adults sit, relax and communicate, while the children are busy and also communicate, but they are nearby, you can see them, everyone feels calm and safe. This is one of the reasons why the roof was not made fully operational. If a child, in a fit of research activity, goes to a roof, albeit a safe one, coffee is no longer so pleasant to drink.
The playground is a special story. Working on the project, the architects wanted to find non-standard solutions, to create an ideal space for leisure. For the sake of searching for new ideas, we created a children's focus group to find out from the first source what an ideal playground should be. A children's studio came to the rescue
Arch4Kids, with which ARCHIMATICS has a good relationship.
Pupils of the studio from 10 to 15 years old received a real task - to come up with a concept of a playground for a community center. The result, according to Nikolai Morozov, exceeded all expectations - even the specialized studios that deal with the sites did not offer this. The concepts were worked out and full of fresh ideas - for example, the entire ARCHIMATICS team, who quit their work and gathered to defend projects, was impressed by the idea of "connecting the Middle Ages with cheese." Architects received not only a positive charge for their working day, but also a lot of insights for their work. I liked one of the concepts so much that at the next stages of the project development it will be offered to the customer.
Continuing the children's theme, one cannot fail to note the similarity of the community center with the famous
An "oval" kindergarten in Tokyo, designed by Takaharu Tezuka. The same open area in the center, trees sprouting from the roof, but instead of a cafe, there are classrooms and rooms for games. Although the architects emphasize that they were inspired by completely different prototypes.
The sloping part of the roof, reminiscent of a hill, will turn into a slide for sledding in winter, the rest is closed. It is the green roof that makes the community center perceived as an element of improvement, in addition, it is pleasant to look at it from the windows of nearby houses. The roof was nominated for the Ukrainian Urban Awards 2018 in the category "Construction Innovation / Green Roof" and received a lot of positive feedback from the jury.
Many features of the Respublika RC concept are built according to the principles of modern urbanism: pedestrians are the main ones, cars are "outside the perimeter", there are squares, each with its own activity, there is something to do in winter, summer and rain. It's easy to imagine these streets filling up with people because they are invited to leave the house and everyone is offered something to their liking, transforming neighborhoods on the outskirts into a wondrous little town.
