In the outgoing academic year 2018/2019, students of the Moscow Architectural Institute of the Department of PROM under the leadership of Vsevolod Medvedev, Mikhail Kanunnikov and Elizaveta Medvedeva worked on projects of educational institutions. The teachers offered them three directions: a school for children with disabilities, an educational colony and a boarding school for orphans.
Vsevolod Medvedev
Head of the Fourth Dimension Architectural Bureau, Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture of Industrial Buildings of the Moscow Architectural Institute:
“We decided to develop special schools. Each of them is interesting for its peculiarities. For example, an educational colony is a school with a strict division into groups of adolescents and a training and production center, as well as a guarded perimeter of the entire territory. A boarding school for orphans is a complex combination of school and housing. A school for children with disabilities is an amalgamation of tough communication, social and sanitary requirements.
Real sites in Moscow and the near Moscow region were chosen as sites for the design: abandoned pioneer camps, educational colonies requiring reconstruction, inactive schools and boarding schools.
We traditionally proposed to expand the composition of the project in relation to the basic task of the institute. The main message of each project is the search for a new image of the school and its planning structure. The students were asked to understand, feel and try to find their own approach to solving the problem of interaction of special children with society. Even if it is contrary to the current design standards. They are fickle. The approach to education is changing, building technologies and structures are constantly being improved. Along with this, schools should also change - starting with the building and ending with the very method of teaching children."
We publish the 10 best student projects on the "School" theme:
Anya Vorobyova
School for children with autism spectrum disorder
The idea of the project is to create a favorable environment for the development and successful education of children with autism. The main tool is a special approach to the formation and filling of the internal space of the school.
The educational part is calm and detached, which allows you to focus on the educational process. All rooms differ in size and shape. Generic classes look more traditional. Special classrooms with laboratories and creative workshops for music and painting are rounded or curved outlines. Individual solutions for each room make it easier for children to navigate the space.
The offices are equipped with transformable furniture and sliding partitions. Thus, the space adjusts to the needs and requirements of the child. An important detail is the "islands of solitude", sensory rooms for resting alone with oneself.
The learning area is adjoined by recreations - also transformable - with conservatories, areas of communication and "islands of solitude."
The educational part is connected with the so-called "urban adaptation" zone by a glass atrium, where all play and entertainment activities are located vertically. According to the author of the project, this is a kind of window to the outside world, which preserves a sense of security.
The architectural image of the building emphasizes its openness. Children with autism do not always make contact with society easily. And the building seems to be trying to establish this contact for them. Its laconic rectangular volume is literally indented with glass concave paraboloids. And only the front fence made of perforated panels draws a certain border between the school and the city, allowing children to feel comfortable and protected inside.
Yana Kurilova
School in Bykovo / Hidden School
The forest school project was developed for children with respiratory diseases. The design site is located in the most favorable environment for them - in a pine forest on the territory of the Bykovo village of the Moscow region. Currently, there is a functioning boarding school.
The author of the project tried to preserve all the trees on the site. Therefore, the volume of the school turned out to be quite spread out, with noticeable displacements of individual elements. The body of a flat-roofed building is raised above ground level by one floor on slender "legs" - columns resembling pine trunks. The facades are made of glass and mirror panels. All this makes the architectural intrusion into the forest delicate.
Inside, the entire building is divided into self-sufficient modules of classrooms and classrooms. It was the shift of these modules that allowed the pine forest to remain intact. The classrooms are connected by a single recreational space. It has been converted into a large library with bookshelves along the walls, private reading corners and areas for socializing with friends.
The second floor is surrounded by a balcony. In warm weather, you can go out to get some fresh air. In addition, classrooms are equipped with sliding glass partitions. With their help, classrooms are transformed into open summer rooms. For winter walks, there are three greenhouses on the ground floor level.
Varya Nebolsina
School for children with hearing, vision, speech impairments
The main idea of the project is to create a unified educational space for healthy children and children with hearing, vision or speech impairments. Joint learning, according to the author of the project, is an important experience of socialization, preparing children for further independent life.
The school is located in Moscow, on March 8th Street, next to a rehabilitation center for children with disabilities. According to the author of the project, such a neighborhood will allow the school to work in conjunction with the center.
The school building is an extended volume under a gable roof. In plan, it has the form of an unfinished infinity sign. In one of the "tails" of the sign is an elementary school, on the side of 8th March street. In the other, there is a high school with a separate entrance from the courtyard. The wings of the school are united by a common courtyard.
There are no stairs inside. You can get from the first floor to the second by continuously moving along the ramp-corridor. The two-storey building, twisted into a loop, due to the smooth rise of the floor level, reaches a height of four floors at its highest point.
The zig-zag path of the walls in the high school wing makes navigation easier for children with visual impairments. In contrast, for elementary school students, the walls are rounded and there are no corners.
In addition to the school itself, there are buildings on the territory where, after school hours, children can practice painting, sculpture, robotics, dancing, and zoology. You can also study braille or sign language here.
Denis Omelchenko
Performance School for Difficult Teens
The school for difficult teenagers is located next to the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station. It is assumed that 272 children aged from 11 to 14 years old will live and study in the building.
The six-story school building resembles a fragment of a giant bridge, under the canvas of which ten glass cubes are suspended. Cubes are floating above the ground. As conceived by the author, this creates a feeling of isolation of adolescents from problems and bad thoughts. In glass classrooms, children practice meditation, master techniques of self-control, and work on the physical improvement of their bodies. For young offenders, this is the main way to comprehend and overcome their difficulties.
The "bridge pillar" accommodates student living rooms. The entire sixth floor is occupied by classrooms for general education subjects. An entrance area and an amphitheater are organized on the ground floor, where presentations and performances are regularly held. For students, this is an opportunity to express themselves, to show their individuality.
Alena Sorokina
School for orphans
The vertical school was designed for orphans on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. Its main volume is divided into three large blocks, towering one above the other. The lower block houses an elementary school. The next one is classes for middle-level students. At the top of the building are specialized classrooms for physics, chemistry, biology and computer science. There is also a teaching and administrative premises. There are two classrooms on one floor of each block.
The space of the floors between the glass blocks is given over to the construction of winter gardens. There, children can spend their free time after school and during recess. The horizontal of the first floor, from which the multi-storey trunk of the school grows, accommodates an entrance group, a dining room, a sports hall and an assembly hall.
The building itself pushes its students towards continuous growth. Each year, moving to the next level of knowledge, children rise one floor higher above the ground, opening new horizons for themselves.
Sasha Terekhova
Boarding school "Drevo"
The boarding school is located near the city of Istra near Moscow. The author of the project depicted the plan of the school in the form of a tree, where a complex root system is a school building, and large oval fruits on the branches are living houses-capsules.
The shape of the four-storey school is complex, curved, reminiscent of a mountainous relief. Each next floor is offset from the previous one. In the places of displacement, wide open terraces with areas for recreation and communication are formed.
Junior, middle and high schools each occupy their own tier. Everywhere classrooms and classrooms go into a single recreational space. The recreation provides a variety of forms of leisure - both entertaining and educational in nature. There are also creative and craft workshops.
School interiors are spacious and light. Panoramic glazing with vertical automatic blinds in classrooms saturate the space with natural light.
Residential buildings for children are designed in the form of oval capsules of different sizes and capacities. For younger students - larger capsules, for 18-20 children with separate rooms for educators. For high school students - capsules for 6-12 people. The most compact houses are for high school students. They accommodate 2-4 people. In this way, the author of the project solves the problem of socialization of children brought up without parents.
The school and the residential block are united by a large courtyard with sports and playgrounds.
Masha Cheltsova-Bebutova
School for orphans in North Tushino
The school for orphans is located in Moscow, in the Northern Tushino region. The site lies on the border between urban development and a large forest park. The location determined the main idea of the project - to combine urban and rural space on one site.
The school, which forms the front of the street, faces the city. Its main facade has a length of almost 300 m. It reproduces a fragment of a building of low, adjoining houses with glass stained-glass windows. The silhouette is formed by roofs: acute-angled gable, beveled, flat and even semicircular. Small two-three-storey residential buildings are deployed to the park. They create an atmosphere of calm country life.
At school, children study in two shifts, do research work in laboratories, attend additional classes in art workshops, find like-minded people among their peers and thereby try to compensate for the lack of communication with their families.
Residential and educational parts are united by a common yard. The yard is crossed by an artificial stream. Several pedestrian bridges are thrown across it. The stream is a conditional border between town and country. The city shore of the reservoir is filled with sports and playgrounds, and the green village shore is created for outdoor recreation.
Dima Chudaev
Boarding school for juvenile delinquents
The boarding school for 288 people is located on the western outskirts of South Butovo, on the site of an existing ravine. The author of the project suggests filling it with water. Like a moat, it will surround the five-story school building. Communication with the city is proposed to be maintained at the expense of four passages converging in the center of the site.
According to the author of the project, the architectural image was born "from the association with the prickly and conflicted nature of a difficult child." Therefore, the elongated rectangular volume is literally indented with vertical, bristling plates of rusty metal. Along with this, there is panoramic glazing in classrooms and living rooms for teenagers. And this is an attempt to overcome the conflict with the outside world.
Boys and girls study and live separately. Their living and study areas are divided into floors. The third floor is occupied by 18 dwelling blocks for boys. Each block has two cockpits. Accommodation - four people. Training classes for boys are organized on the floor below. Similarly, only for girls, the fourth residential level has been resolved. Classes for girls are held on the last, fifth floor.
Only the first tier remains in common, where the hall, dining room, assembly and sports halls, rooms for meeting with parents are located. The walking area is organized on an exploited roof. The shortage of space around the building is compensated by cold promenade galleries on each of the residential levels.
An important part of the project is classes for creative activities for teenagers. The unheated galleries have organized graffiti spaces. Separately, on the territory of the school, a small expo center has been designed, where works created by children will be constantly displayed. According to the author's idea, it is art that can break down the barrier between children and society.
Zhenya Chumachenko
School for children with cerebral palsy
It is proposed to build a school for children with cerebral palsy in Moscow, on March 8th Street. The building serves not only as a school, but also as a rehabilitation center, where children constantly live during the school year and receive the treatment they need.
The three-storey volume with inclined stained-glass windows of the facades is divided into three main sectors: educational, residential and recreational. Smoothly outlined buildings are connected by a glazed heated gallery.
In the educational block on the first floor, primary school students are engaged. For them, an autonomous exit to the courtyard and playgrounds is provided. Also on the ground floor there are specialized classrooms for high school students. The children's universal hall is located in a separate street volume, but the entrance to it is also provided from the building, at the level of the second floor. Middle-level classrooms and the assembly hall occupy almost the entire second floor. The third floor houses a library and a sports hall. The central core of the school is a large atrium with seating areas.
In the residential sector, there are 8 rooms per floor. Children live for 4 people (2 children with accompanying persons). In addition, there is a small cinema and a dining room. The residential block is connected with a wellness warm transition.
For constant and timely medical care, so-called "relaxation capsules" have been created in all parts of the school - a place where a child not only receives help from specialists, but also just spends time alone with himself. And for communication with peers in the building, there are many recreations and play areas.
Anya Shikova
Boarding school for orphans
The boarding school is located in the Metrogorodok area, next to the huge Losiny Ostrov park. The complex consists of three parts: an educational block and living rooms for younger children, a school and housing for older children, and a youth center. A common courtyard and a walking area connect all buildings with the territory of Losiny Island.
In her project, Anna Shikova tries to solve the problem of the “guest complex” among orphans deprived of their own home. The new boarding school not only becomes a real home for its students, but also attracts children from other schools and residential areas. The main centers of attraction are sports grounds on the territory of the boarding house, a rope park and a youth center.
The living space is organized in such a way that children can freely invite guests to their place. To do this, their rooms, designed for 4 people, have cozy living rooms.
The school provides classes with the possibility of transformation and multifunctional classrooms. A heated underground corridor connects the high school to the youth center. Also in this corridor there are classrooms for singles and joint music lessons.
