Open City is a project of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture aimed at supporting architectural education. Within the framework of the project, a competition was held for the committee's stand on Arch Moscow, dedicated to the Moscow metro. The authors of the new metro stations: Nefa Architects, Ai Architects, Blank Architects, ZaBor and BuroMoscow were invited to design the stand together with the students.
There were five teams in total. From about a hundred students-architects of the second, third, fourth years of different universities, the curators from the bureau, based on portfolio and motivation letters, chose three people in tune with them with the necessary skills.
The stand of the winners, the BuroMoscow team, was built at ArchMoscow at the entrance to the main level of the Manezh. The stand is named "Meeting Place" and consists of nine installations dedicated to the stations Stromynka, Novoperedelkino, Klenovy Boulevard, Mnevniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and others. Moreover, the installations capture the main plastic motif of each station (cheese holes in Solntsevo, stem pipes in Stromynka). The viewers of the exhibition instantly fell in love with this space, hung out there either in twos or singly, sat with laptops, talked, took pictures.
At a presentation in the lecture hall of the Moscow City Architecture Committee, the curator of the Open City Irina Kuznetsova explained in a short introductory speech that all projects are so good that they decided to devote a separate event to their defense (it took place on May 16 at Arch Moscow). And for the students, it was a chance to prove themselves and get an internship opportunity.
I asked all the participants of the competition the same question: what was the usefulness of the new experience, and how it differs from the design at the university. And the curators from the bureau, respectively, asked if they would hire the guys after the competition.
Kinetic sculpture
The main idea of the team Nefa Architects (curated by Daria Turkina, Aizaada Bakytbay, MITU-MASI, Olga Vikhlyaeva, GUZ, Natalya Novikova, Kosygin Russian State University) - in the interweaving of transparent pipes, along which multicolored "trains" run, but in fact the balls - their colors correspond to the metro lines. The balls are moved in the tubes by the pneumatic tube technology. The tubes are practically self-supporting; their vertical supports are kept to a minimum. Finding a company to manufacture this installation was not so easy. But it is possible that the idea will be implemented elsewhere.
Olga Vikhlyaeva, GUZ: "The work in the bureau was useful because our ideas were heard, it was a completely new and amazing experience."
Curator Daria Turkina: “The selection criterion for the children was knowledge of the required programs. Although we are not in favor of staff bloating, we decided to attract students for internships. As soon as there is a vacant place, they are the first in line."
Copper pipes
The main idea of the project Ai Architects (curated by Anastasia Nudina, Sofia Gushchina, Institute of Business and Design; Anna Shpuntova, Moscow Architectural Institute; Maria Simoshenko, MGSU) - to play with the themes of the portal and the tunnel. The portal is the entrance to a bifurcated tunnel that diverts the streams of visitors at the entrance to the Manege. Copper foil, neon lighting plus a vault created a memorable image. Jury member Daniil Nikishin said that this beautiful project, although not easy to implement, is worthy of entry to the Venice Biennale.
Curator Anastasia Nudina: “It was a pleasure to work with the guys, they brought an element of madness into the life of the bureau.”
Maria Simoshenko: “We were sent to the competition by a teacher, architects chose us by portfolio plus we wrote a motivation letter. Working in a bureau is a deliberate experience. If the institute in some sense imposes on you the theme of the project, then at the competition there was an opportunity to propose ideas themselves."
"Too many feet" as a metaphor for the subway
The team Blank Architects (Curated by Alexandra Razin; Alena Langolf, Moscow Architectural Institute; Maria Ozhiganova, Moscow Architectural Institute; Tatiana Chumachenko, MARSH) there was a whole program. The project was called “In the Center of the Hall” and was a complex space with a narrow entrance and a spacious central part. Moreover, there is also an acoustic accompaniment: outside you can hear the sound of a train and a heartbeat, but inside it dies down. Outside you can see a cylinder and many legs, but inside there is a meeting with childhood, and children tell their stories. That is, it is also time travel. “The jury liked the subject of feet very much, because it is a metaphor for the metro and movement, and the children in general touched everyone,” said jury member Ilya Mukosey.
Alena Langolf and Maria Ozhiganova said that “I liked the work in the bureau because, due to their similar age, they spoke the same language with the architects and gained more independence, while at the institute they have to adapt to the teacher, and the difference in age and views is much greater. It was possible to break the brain, there were so many ideas, they were inspired, among other things, not by architecture. Curator Alexandra Razina said that the girls had already been accepted for internships at the bureau.
Underground teleportation
Team idea Za bor (curated by Arseniy Borisenko; Marina Cheburkina, GUZ; Polina Prokopenkova, MGSU; Ulyana Goryacheva, Moscow Architectural Institute) - to create an art object, not a literal and not obtrusive image. They were inspired by historical motives: tunnels, columns, portals. The installation consists of acrylic mirrors rotated at an angle of 3 degrees, due to which all reflections are displaced and there is a feeling of teleportation. Which corresponds to the idea of the metro. A barely visible film enhances the color when reflected.
Museum of new stations of the Moscow metro
Winners BuroMoscow (curated by Inna Safiulina; Anastasia Shabalova, Moscow Architectural Institute; Polina Vlasova, Moscow Architectural Institute; Dmitry Garin, GUZ) offered the "Meeting Place" stand. This is a "meeting with the inner child" at Solntsevo station and "meeting a new one in Novoperedelkino", "meeting with a fish" at the "Nagatinsky Zaton" station and "blind date" at Stromynka station, and "meeting with oneself" and " meeting old friends”, and so on. This stand reflected the numerous competitions for the design of Moscow metro stations held by the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction. Moreover, in the interpretation of the team, they turned out to be very recognizable. I recall the models of architectural masterpieces exhibited in the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale as a bank of ideas. Only in the Manege not layouts, but installations. There was a visual museification of the built. This, as well as the clarity of the idea and the ease of making the installations, allowed the team to win. There was only one male representative of 15 students on this team. This is about the gender bias that has occurred in architecture in recent years.
Dmitry Garin: “Working in a bureau is much closer to a real workflow. There is a technical assignment, maximum price, design time. The only thing was that we did not know how it would look in space, since we had only a map, and we could not predict the height of the neighboring pavilions. We made a layout that clearly showed the future lounge area for selfies."
It should be noted that all presentations were bright, and in all projects the main idea was read, so that the presentation of projects is no longer a weak link in education. The initiative of the competition can only be welcomed. Uniting students and young successful bureaus and introducing them to more venerable colleagues on the jury is quite a social lift and a step in a professional career. ***
Jury of the competition:
Sergey Kuznetsov, chief architect of Moscow;
Mikhail Beilin and Daniil Nikishin, founders of Citizenstudio;
Nikita Asadov, head of the Asadov Architectural Bureau;
Ilya Mukosey, teacher at the School of Design, Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA, founder of the mukosey architectural bureau;
Irina Kuznetsova, curator of exhibition and educational programs of the Moscow City Architecture Committee;
Victoria Raubo, Head of Strategic Projects Department of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction;
Sergey Glubokin, Deputy Head of the Office of the Architectural Council;
Andrey Popov, Head of the Public Relations Department of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction.
