Post-olympic syndrome
Modern Olympiads require the creation of an expensive and often disposable infrastructure. Often a city or even a state is unable to solve a problem created to satisfy ambitions, and then areas with decaying gigantic structures appear. As examples, we recall Sarajevo with the 1984 Olympics, Athens, which built several facilities in the suburbs of the Greek capital for the 2004 Olympics for 15 billion dollars, and
Rio de Janeiro with the 2016 Olympics. However, there are also opposite examples, when the built infrastructure successfully covers investment debts and is in demand by the city and townspeople already as health centers or recreational areas, or simply as new urban areas with specific buildings. Beijing and London have coped well with the Olympic legacy.
The 2014 Sochi Olympics required huge investments, the total amount of which is estimated at 1.5 trillion rubles. It was assumed that later the sports infrastructure would be partially redesigned, partially dismantled and transported to other Russian cities, and the hotels would be filled with tourists - expectations did not come true in the best Russian traditions, about which Chernomyrdin so eloquently spoke. In the absence of a comprehensive program, the region began to evolve in full accordance with Darwin's theory. Some projects turned out to be more successful and viable (the Fisht arena hosted the matches of the World Cup-18), some - less, for example, a giant media center that did not become a shopping center, is now reprofiling into a “covered city” uniting under one roof for entertainment, commerce and culture.
One of the most successful, positive and, of course, promising projects that started in the post-Olympic Imeritinskaya Valley was the Sirius Educational Center for Gifted Children, created by order of the President of the Russian Federation in December 2014 on the basis of the three-star Azimut hotel, which was bought out and converted to accommodate and study students. The project turned out to be so successful and responded so well to the strategic objectives of the state in the field of social and cultural policy that two years later, in 2016, the question arose about expanding the center; now a program is being developed to create a new university complex on its basis, and possibly a large-scale educational and cultural cluster in the Imereti Valley.
Extra education
The project of the Sirius educational center, named after the brightest star in the night sky, is being implemented by the Talent and Success Charitable Foundation, whose task is to create educational centers for children throughout the country. But the main efforts of the team are concentrated in Sochi, where a unique system of extra-education has been created and is functioning, focused on identifying, developing and further supporting gifted children and adolescents in the field of science, technology, art and sports.
The duration of the course at Sirius is only 24 days, and during this time 600 students are engaged in three areas: "Sports", "Art" and "Science". Each block is designed for 200 children.
Any Russian child and teenager between the ages of 10 and 17 who has victories in Olympiads or other awards can get into the Sirius educational center. To do this, you need to fill out an application
on the site of the center. Leading teachers of sports, physics and mathematics, chemistry and biology schools, as well as outstanding figures of Russian art in the field of academic music, classical ballet and fine arts, train talented children at Sirius. Among the lecturers and tutors of Sirius are Mikhail Piotrovsky, Valery Gergiev, Anatoly Chubais, Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Sergei Roldugin and so on.
One of the center's key ideas is contacts between talented children in different fields, the intersection of completely different social circles, which allows you to broaden your horizons and get rid of stereotypes.
The hotel, converted into a dormitory building, copes well with the task of accommodating students, but, as it became clear almost immediately after the launch of the project, its planning and technical capabilities are clearly not enough for a full and effective educational process. Soon after the launch, the management of the foundation decided to build on its territory, which covers an area of just under 11 hectares, several more buildings adapted for classes in one of the three key areas of study. For the design we invited the team of "Studio 44", whose account is not only successful construction
station "Olympic Park" here in the valley, but also several projects of unique educational centers, such as the Academy of Dance under the leadership of Boris Eifman, the main educational building of GSOM SPbSU, the sports and recreation complex of the judo school, the Palace of Schoolchildren's Creativity in Astana, the Republic of Kazakhstan others.
In the shadow of the mountains and in the light of the stars
The task might seem easy only at first glance. In the large park area separating the former hotel from the beach, there were already several sports grounds, auxiliary buildings and an artificial reservoir. It was not easy to place three more buildings on the site with extensive functional content, taking into account the regulatory requirements for educational institutions, preserving the park character of the site and not blocking the sea view from the windows of the dormitory building.
In addition to overcoming planning and programming difficulties, it was necessary to find a volumetric-spatial solution that would meet the already established nature of the development of the coastal zone of the Imeretinskaya Lowland and the complex of Olympic stadiums with their recognizable silhouettes located next to Sirius.
“The Olympic facilities have created an unexpectedly positive urban development effect,” says Nikita Yavein. - A large number of original buildings led to the formation of buildings with a pronounced silhouette, echoing the silhouette of the mountains growing in the background. The outline of each new building had to continue the theme that was started."
The architects pushed away from the plasticity of stadiums, first of all from the neighboring Fisht, and combined it with the image of a pebble - a rolled pebble with which children love to play on the beach and paint, turning it into souvenirs in memory of the time spent by the sea. As a result, the result is streamlined, low (2-3 floors) volumes, spherical and elliptical - the shape conceals their real dimensions and serves as a contrast to the angular hotel building. And as a reminder of children's crafts made of pebbles, with multi-colored inserts on the facades.
They resemble a temporary pavilion architecture, organically integrated into the park landscape. It is interesting that the pavilion motif appears again and again in the works of Studio 44, which does not specialize in small architectural forms, and Nikita Yavein himself does not hide his sympathy for him. In this case, this "weakness" became the strong point of the project.
Another, this time, the space association involuntarily arises when looking at the projects of new hulls, the aerodynamics of which are similar to spaceships from the science fiction films of our childhood. Nikita Yavein here does not deny the validity of the comparison: “There is an established and very important symbolism for the Center - Sirius, space, stars, potential, people of the future. And we found a way to highlight this theme."
The figurative component of the proposed volumetric-spatial solution is complemented by its effectiveness. The advantages of "space pavilions" can be confidently attributed to the following qualities:
- planning freedom;
- a combination of compactness and strength due to the uniform distribution of natural loads;
- minimizing the area of the shell and, as a result, reducing heat loss
As a result, a clear and clearly traceable design code of the new cases was formed, providing an ensemble with all the originality of the shape of each case.
Thor of knowledge
The first of the new buildings of Sirius began construction of the School pavilion, which will house classrooms and laboratories. It is located as close as possible to the bedroom building and is connected to it with a warm transition. The building has been given an unusual circular shape, in the center of which there is a spacious landscaped courtyard.
The reason for this configuration of the building was a huge tree - both customers and designers considered it impossible to cut it down. Nikita Yavein says: “It was the only possible site, optimal in terms of communication with the main building, to accommodate the“School”and when we discovered that a beautiful elm was growing on it, I remembered the legends about schools that emerged from conversations between teachers and students in the shade of a tree. We decided to preserve the tree and make it the center and symbol of our "School". This is how the donut form appeared.
The circular corridor made it possible to optimize the layout of the building, linking five lobbies into one system, each with an exit to the outside. Along the perimeters, internal and external, of the building, on the first floor there are laboratories, on the second - classrooms, and on the third - the offices of teachers and administration. The study rooms are separated by transformable partitions, which allows you to arbitrarily change the size of the room depending on the number of students.
Apart from the shape of the building, the constructive solution of the shell is responsible for the space and high-tech image of the School. The double roof consists of an inner covering made of corrugated sheet, steam, heat and waterproofing, as well as an external decorative system, carried out on a metal frame by 160 mm to the outside, finished in honeycomb aluminum with slots for windows and skylights in multi-colored frames. Precisely calculated arrangement of translucent structures made it possible to bring the internal illumination of classrooms to Russian normative indicators.
Optimal shell
The "Sport" building, which is a two-storey oval building in plan, is located on the opposite side of the site from the "School", closer to the "Fisht" stadium, and to some extent repeats its humped silhouette. The asymmetrical body shape resembles a drop or half of an egg. According to the program, it houses two swimming pools: a large swimming pool, 25x16 m and an outdoor salt water pool, located partly under the roof, partly in the open air; a multifunctional hall, 12x24 m, a mini-football field 24x40 m and several other training rooms. Outdoor playgrounds for football, volleyball and tennis will be built next to the building.
According to Nikita Yavein, “it was a planning and spatial experiment on the most compact arrangement of all the premises required for the program and the creation of the minimum possible volume of the shell. The ceiling heights required by the norms - about 10 meters - were decided to be observed only in the central parts of the halls. On their periphery, we allowed ourselves to lower the roof to 5-6 meters, logically assuming that international competitions would not be held here and no one would kick a ball into the ceiling from the edge of the field. As a result, we covered all the necessary function with a flexible "cloud" mounted on curved metal frames."
All rooms are concentrated on two terraces that cascade down to an outdoor pool with artificial seawater. On the upper terrace there are sports grounds, under them are changing rooms, showers, toilets and other technical rooms. Thanks to a single shell with anti-aircraft windows, the entire space is illuminated with natural light during the day.
Tent of arts
The third building is intended for music, choreography and painting. In addition to classrooms, it houses a concert hall for 350 spectators and two more rehearsal ballet halls. The location in the part of the territory crowded due to the artificial reservoir and the orientation from north to south made it difficult for the architects to work on the planning. As well as the task of combining halls for drawing, musical rehearsals and dances so different in their parameters and requirements under one roof. Somewhere you need light, somewhere not, somewhere you need a height, somewhere, on the contrary, an area. “This building was the most difficult,” says Nikita Yavein. “We had to create a self-sufficient world under a single tent, in which rooms for practicing different arts, united by a triangular atrium, harmoniously coexist, tightly compressed, like pieces of a puzzle”.
On the ground floor there are two choreographic halls with utility rooms. The halls are separated from the lobby by a partition with frosted glass, which creates a special theatrical effect when rehearsals are in progress. The double-height concert hall is arranged in the form of an amphitheater, around which there are classrooms for music lessons in a circle.
The second floor is given over to administrative premises, music library and rehearsal rooms. The third floor of the building houses classrooms, teaching rooms, and a large art studio and exhibition gallery, illuminated by natural light from the north side. The studio and gallery can be accessed directly from the main atrium.
Chain reaction
Now on the territory of the educational center the construction of the "School" building is being completed, the next step is the construction of a sports block. But it is already obvious that these three buildings will not be enough. The Foundation sets itself a new ambitious task - to include in the extra-education system not only the secondary school program, but also the higher school, as well as to activate the advanced training program for teachers and professors. To expand the center, other vacant hotels in the Imereti Valley may be purchased.
One successful project begins to change the future of the entire region, defining a new strategic task - the creation in the south of Russia of a scientific or scientific and cultural cluster based on the post-Olympic infrastructure and the construction of facilities from scratch. These goals were not included in the original plans for the development of post-Olympic Sochi, but it turns out that spontaneous decisions can be viable. Like a chain reaction, behind one successful project, a comprehensive long-term program begins, in the distant future of which there is an image of an ideal city on the seashore, a city focused on the development of the creative and scientific potential of adults and children.
