"Brateevskie Teleporters" received a special prize from the jury of the ARCHIWOOD award last Thursday. Previously, the project was included in the top thirty awards of the Project Russia magazine, and in general it is already quite well known. Functionally, "teleporters" are a canopy under a very powerful power line that runs over the park, including over its northern entrance near residential buildings 3 and 4 of Brateev microdistricts. According to the regulations, it is impossible to walk under power lines, so awnings were needed, which the architects turned into an openwork pergola, in combination - a portal to a park and an object gravitating to a land park, although its practical purpose makes it more of a park pavilion.
Park Brateevskaya Poima, the widest part of Brateevo Park, which stretches along the banks of the Moskva River, picking up the case of Kolomensky and Dyakov, from Borisovskie Ponds to the Moscow Ring Road, was landscaped two years ago according to a project developed by Praktika bureau together with the general designer - "SAP Project" - in fact, the canopy portal has become the most famous part of this project because of its forced and unexpected typology. Although the theme of the canopy over the path, and even more capital than the "teleporters", is not alien to the park in principle.
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zooming 1/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 2/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 3/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 4/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 5/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 6/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
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zooming 7/7 Park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © Practice
The canopy entrance really looks most like a portal of passage from one space, in this case a residential area, to another, green riverside space. The door to an open field, leading to some other world, was visually mastered and consolidated in culture by the surrealists and Rene Magritte - but our time, of course, it is intuitive, being well mastered by computer games and literature. In this case, we see not a door between the worlds, but, let's say, a corridor of a kind of decoration: to get from one space to another, you need to walk some distance. It would be nice if the "corridor between the worlds" also acted like Max Fry's or Lewis Carroll's, that is, one could get anywhere of his choice. But admit and eat, that no matter how much you really want to be transported to another world of your choice, the park is also a good option.
Meanwhile, we clarified what was the essence of the disagreements in the refereeing of ARCHIWOOD, which led to the appearance of an extra prize, which went to the object: part of the jury was categorically against the object, the other part was categorically “for”. Why against?
“There are no complaints about the architectural design,” says Igor Shvartsman, member of the jury, head of Sergey Kiselev & Partners. - Architects get out in the proposed circumstances with due creativity and professional ingenuity. A question to the circumstances themselves. It is forbidden to place the designed functions under the power transmission line. But as soon as they are needed and appropriate in this particular place, then it is more correct to remove the cable lines underground with the necessary protective measures, and not to be contrived with devices. I just don’t want to promote such solutions and give the responsible structures ideas that allow them to calmly and cost-effectively look at what is happening with a broad gesture.”
An ardent supporter of the project in the jury was the architectural critic, chief editor of the ArchSpeech website, Alexander Zmeul, here is how he comments on his position: “It is easy and pleasant to give an award to projects that emphasize the beauty of the natural landscape or historical architecture. But it is much more important to note a project that works with the environment in which almost the majority live. A dormitory area consisting of typical houses, a power line stretching over the horizon, wastelands and voids. Brateevsky portals not only solve a functional problem, but also carry out a real aesthetic intervention."
So, there is a sense in technical arguments, which, however, does not negate the aesthetic value of the object. On the border of microdistricts, it looks appropriate and good, it allows people to “cut off” the entrance to the park. A thick two-layer lattice of thin wooden slats gives an intertwining openwork shadow, and the warm color of the wood (I wonder when it will turn gray and whether it will) slightly dispels the melancholy of panel building.
Let's give the floor to the architects, we publish their comments on the project in full, including a "lyrical digression":
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zooming 1/5 Sheds under the power lines in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 2/5 Sheds under the power lines in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 3/5 Sheds under the power line in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 4/5 Sheds under the power line in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 5/5 Sheds under the power line in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
“Brateevskaya floodplain is a place in the southeast of Moscow, where the river leaves the city, crossing the Moscow Ring Road. Previously, it was a huge, in places swampy wasteland, strewn with engineering communications. The main visual marker of the territory is the power line. High-rise lattice masts loom in the field of view long before approaching, cascading towards the horizon. There are dozens of them here. High-voltage lines cross the territory in wide strips in different directions. Some go to the other side of the river. Now the Brateevskaya Poima park has appeared here.
The first thing that meets at the entrance to the park is protective sheds under high-voltage (500 kV!) Wires. There is simply no other way to get to the river. According to the safety standards of FGC UES, pedestrian paths must be protected from possible breakage and falling of wires. This requirement is specifically for 500-kilovolt lines (apparently, dropping a 150-kV wire is no longer dangerous for a person). Protection must be provided in an area of 25 meters from the projection of the wire to the ground, and, of course, from a non-conductive material. The answer to the problem was a spatial wooden structure-tunnel with lattice walls and a ceiling.
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zooming 1/5 Sheds for power lines in the Brateevskaya Poima park. Project. Fragment of the general plan © AB Praktika
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zooming 2/5 Sheds for power lines in the Brateevskaya Poima park. Project. Master plan © AB Practice
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zooming 3/5 Sheds for power lines in the Brateevskaya Poima park. Project. Facade © AB Praktika
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zooming 4/5 Sheds for power lines in the Brateevskaya Poima park. Project. Working layout © AB Praktika
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zooming 5/5 Sheds under the power line in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
Distances are the main difficulty of the territory. It takes more than a kilometer to go from the outermost residential high-rise buildings to the coastal landscaped zone. Sheds help to overcome the first section of the path. Once inside, you move as if in another dimension of time and space. The teleporter tunnel, 215 meters long, takes you directly into the depths of the park area.
The visual code of the place: the surreal beauty of the natural territory, which has undergone the irreversible introduction of man-made infrastructure. Lattice structures of high voltage masts live in our canopy and park pavilion designs. As a result, this totally forced construction has become our favorite part of the project. Friendly, full of light, amazingly, it creates the atmosphere of the place and its identity.
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zooming 1/4 Sheds under the power lines in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 2/4 Sheds under the power lines in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 3/4 Sheds under the power lines in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
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zooming 4/4 Sheds under the power line in the park "Brateevskaya Poima" Photo © AB Praktika
Lyrical digression
Power lines fascinate, inspire and provoke artistic comprehension. The point is in the surreal combination of a huge scale, irrationality (they seem to go from nowhere to nowhere, over the landscape, never coinciding with the direction of the roads) with the obvious anthropomorphism of bizarre silhouettes. Power transmission lines are part of the genetic code of the Russian landscape.
Field, forest in the distance, sky, clouds, houses with pitched roofs (optional - a white church), and power lines. Until recently, the temple on the Nerl and the power line masts complemented each other. Now the wires have been removed underground: has this iconic landscape lost a part of its poignant identity?"
