In May, Moscow Architectural Institute hosted a four-day International building challenge project workshop. Students of the third and fourth years of the Moscow Architectural Institute proper, as well as MGSU and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences (the Netherlands) took part. The workshop came to Russia in 2016 from the Netherlands. Now the workshop is held annually in parallel in several countries, and its topics are most often related to the renovation of abandoned buildings and their adaptation to modern use.
The topic of the workshop in Moscow was the redevelopment of water towers. According to the assignment, the participants were required to turn the towers into socio-cultural beacons that enliven the surrounding urban environment and saturate it with new functions and meanings. The students were divided into five teams, each of which included representatives of the three universities listed above. Students of Moscow Architectural Institute and MGSU were responsible for the architectural concept, while Saxion students were responsible for constructive solutions and "sustainability" of projects. You could choose one of five towers for work: on the territory of the former State Aviation Plant No. 23, at VDNKh, in Lyublino, in Shcherbinka or in Vyshny Volochyok. The participants were given freedom in the interpretation of the building, so the proposed solutions turned out to be very diverse.
“In a short time - four days - the participants covered the path from a conceptual idea to a completed project, taking into account the town-planning conditions and including constructive and engineering solutions. It should be noted the high level of projects and a very extraordinary and thoughtful ideological and scenario component of each of the works. Each object has become a kind of history that has a continuation and development in the future. The work was not easy - tight deadlines, a rich program, a large amount of required exposition material, discussion and collective decision-making, basic communication in English and decisive responsibility for making decisions directly by students. However, the experience gained from working in a tough intensive and atypical conditions for the educational process will certainly be useful for students in their future practice,”comments Vera Kolgashkina, coordinator of the International building challenge from MARCHI.
The winner, according to the jury, was the team led by curator Maria Finagina. Students suggested placing baths in the towers. This will give the abandoned facilities a new life and contribute to the preservation of the authentic Russian tradition.
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zooming 1/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Maria Finagina's team
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zooming 2/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Maria Finagina's team
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zooming 3/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Maria Finagina's team
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zooming 4/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Maria Finagina's team
Maria Finagina: “The project is based on the idea of total merciless urbanization, which is gradually taking over all peripheral territories. In such a utopian scenario (which seemed quite realistic), an old abandoned water tower with unsightly extensions turned out to be the last piece of urban fabric with identity and authenticity.
Philosophical reflections on the lost values of a city dweller have resulted in a whole story about how a person endlessly moves from home to work and back, all remembering something, he tries to find something. And so his search in the city of oblivion finally ends - he found that very tower.
The desire to emphasize the authenticity of the object, its old brickwork and the naturalness of the abandoned nature prompted the creation of a bathhouse inside the tower. Which also became a kind of symbolic image of cleansing."
Team members: Anna Bunina, Olga Lipatova, Daniil Kolodiy, Lili Berdichevskaya, Nijmeyer Daan, Modders Elke, Aude Sogtoen Maria.
Maria Troyan's team came up with two ideas for reincarnation: bird houses and a library tower.
Maria Troyan: “The main manifesto of our team was in the search for prototypes, in line with which the reconstruction of water towers can develop. Their figurative solution and function corresponds to the town-planning specifics of the site. For example, the proximity of the park and the prospective compaction of residential buildings prompted the idea of a tower as a refuge for forest birds."
Team members: Zarina Abdykarova, Sofia Gerich, Margarita Demkova, Mikhail Sonin, Mirta Koolvay, Lotte Stol, Robin van der Meulen.
*** Under the leadership of Pavel Kodlubinsky, students developed a project to create a rich urban pedestrian and recreational zone in the area around the water tower in Vyshny Volochyok.
Pavel Kodlubinsky: “We chose an object in the city of Vyshny Volochek, because we saw an opportunity to create an event at the city level. Moreover, given the location of the tower in close proximity to the high-speed train tracks between Moscow and St. Petersburg, its reconstruction can become a driver of development not only for the city, but also for the entire "transit" territory.
In the shadow of two capitals - financial and cultural - the city is slowly declining. Apparently, this can only be changed by a random but extraordinary event, for example, the fall of a meteorite, the image of which is our object."
Team members: Ella Meliksetyan, Andrey Kuznetsov, Daria Huseynova, Amir Nurtazin, Rosalie Baan, Eric van den Hovel, Barbe Gankema.
The team of Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos proposed to place a restaurant on the upper level of the tower, and to "cut" it into two parts to increase the space. It is also possible to move the tower from the closed factory area of the former State Aviation Plant No. 23 to the park area and further along the Moskva River embankment.
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zooming 1/5 Concept for the renovation of water towers. Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos team
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zooming 2/5 Concept for the renovation of water towers. Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos team
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zooming 3/5 Concept for the renovation of water towers. Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos team
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zooming 4/5 Concept for the renovation of water towers. Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos team
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zooming 5/5 Concept for the renovation of water towers. Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos team
Ksenia Kalugina-Pablos: “Our group considered the possibility of moving one of the water towers from the closed territory of the inactive aircraft plant to more social and developmental zones of the city. To do this, we sawed the reinforced concrete structure of the tower into several parts, delivered them to the river and loaded them onto a barge. Therefore, all the sites on which the tower can be reassembled are located again along the Moskva River.
The division into fragments gave us the opportunity not only to move the tower to another place, but also turned it into a kind of architectural constructor from which we can reassemble the whole tower or, by varying the details among themselves, obtain various architectural objects without losing its original image.
Each member of our group came up with and developed his own project, assembled from the resulting details. As a result, we received architectural objects of various functions and images: an observation deck, a cafe, a lighthouse and even a greenhouse. In addition, our Dutch friends figured out how to make the resulting objects more environmentally friendly and added elements of "sustainable architecture" to each project: solar panels, wind generators, etc."
Team members: Elizaveta Anurova, Antonina Popovich, Petre Ebrialitze, Anna Lyutkevich, Lotte Meyer, Issa Lana, Aisa van der Berg Zhelte.
Students from Andrey Kiselev's team have come up with a mobile game application where abandoned towers can be turned into symbolic installations.
Team members: Ilya Kuzmin, Ulyana Osipova, Maria Ozhiganova, Eva Tsitsvarich, Nils Meyerink, Ries Minnegal, Tom Davenshot.
Several more students from the Moscow Architectural Institute were invited to the University of Saxion, where they worked on the theme of the reconstruction of a residential area in Enscheide. In teams, the students of the Moscow Architectural Institute were responsible for the architectural concept. The tasks were to develop proposals for a qualitative improvement in the appearance of the quarter, the development of public functions at the levels of pedestrian paths, as well as modifications of residential units, taking into account the residence of elderly people in them. The main challenge was the clearly limited construction budget against which the design concepts had to be correlated. The result of the work was an electronic presentation and report, revealing all aspects of the project proposal - from the concept, design and engineering characteristics to economic calculations.
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zooming 1/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Anna Shpuntova's team
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zooming 2/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Anna Shpuntova's team
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zooming 3/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Anna Shpuntova's team
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zooming 4/4 Renovation concept for water towers. Anna Shpuntova's team
Winning project. Authors: Anna Shpuntova, Kees Knippers, Alexander Hirks, Ahmed Abdelsami, Flore Vikstandt.
