In the past 2019, the number of Russian nominees who have passed the selection in the category of the WAF award was a record one. Three presented projects: Park of Future Generations in Yakutsk from the Russian bureau ATRIUM, RC "Comfort Town" of Kiev "Archimatika", which designs in Ukraine, Russia, the USA and other countries, and the concept of building the Badayevsky brewery in Moscow from the Swiss Herzog & de Meuron, received WAF awards, with two of the three projects being awarded multiple times, which is quite remarkable.
We asked all three winners similar, but slightly different questions, and we got a series of small interviews about the winning projects and the festival, which we present to your attention. So here are three conversations about three projects:
- Badaevsky / Herzog & de Meuron
- RC "Comfort Town" / Archimatika
- Park of future generations / ATRIUM
Comfort Town received a special color award.
Badayevsky Zavod became the winner in the Project / Housing category and received a highly commended for the masterplan.
The Future Generations Park received a highly commended in the Education category and won the Visualization Contest for the video below.
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Anton Nadtochy, ATRIUM
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You presented the project of the Park of Future Generations in Yakutsk in the Education / Project category. How did you justify this?
Yes, it was not an easy task. The fact is that WAF does not have the "Landscape" category for projects in the Future projects category. Therefore, we have chosen educational spaces: firstly, according to the concept, there are many indoor heated rooms in our park, in which the educational function is located. We are sure that a significant proportion of closed spaces is necessary for public spaces in a harsh climate - people need to periodically be able to quickly get into the room, warm up, or, conversely, cool down, so that they can go out again later. In this case, a unified system of public spaces, open and closed, is created, which organically interact with each other. All this is characteristic of an urbanized park - a new typology that develops in cities with a high building density or in places of increased concentration of people.
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zooming 1/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 2/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 3/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 4/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
Secondly, our territory is adjacent to the University, where 17,000 people study, and the park is focused on youth and education - hence the name "Park of Future Generations SAHA Z" (we invented the SAHA Z naming). At the stage of the competition, we conducted an analysis and found out that there are few functions of additional education in Yakutsk. Traditional education - schools, colleges, institutes and universities - is enough. But in the modern world, self-education and additional education are developing more and more actively: circles, sections, lectures, master classes, etc. - there are not enough such proposals in the city, and we decided to fix it.
Therefore, in a functional sense, we interpreted the park through the prism of educational spaces: there are amphitheaters outside and inside, various classrooms and themed outdoor areas. In particular, our project includes a multifunctional exhibition hall with an open amphitheater for local events; a multifunctional auditorium with convertible chairs and the ability to shield individual rooms - in the case when you need a closed or dark space, for example, for movie viewing; coworking spaces, workshop and children's studio areas and other public spaces. There is also a bookstore-library in a modern mixed format with media and music (like "Republic"), a cafe and a sports equipment rental room with changing rooms, etc. The system of autonomous entrances and exits from different levels - the upper level of the hills and the lower level of the ground - makes it possible to implement various functional scenarios.
In the other block there is a sports and artistic bias, there are concentrated spaces for various activities: art studios, any circles, sports, presentations, etc. The teacher can rent space here and lead his own sections - this works like a kind of House of Pioneers. The third pavilion is smaller, with a tourist focus: city info point, souvenirs, travel agency, identity, etc.
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zooming 1/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 2/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 3/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
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zooming 4/4 Concept of the territory of the "Park of Future Generations" in Yakutsk © ATRIUM, Vostok +
At what stage is the project now?
We have developed the "Project" stage and handed over the documentation - we are now waiting for the customer to submit it for examination.
What are your impressions of protection at WAF?
Defense is definitely a challenge. The event is very exciting: defense in a foreign language, the report should be very short and concentrated. Ten minutes is very little: in Yakutsk, in order to expand all aspects of the project, I gave a report for 45 minutes. So we seriously prepared and made a detailed video presentation.
ATRIUM video for the WAF jury:
She showed the main thing: she described the specifics of the territory and the project task, the main principles of the project, showed the visual part. While we were preparing the presentation, it became clear that the accumulated material was enough to show up in one more nomination. We spent another month and a half and made a computer film with an interesting script and imaginative solutions, which we submitted to the WAF Visualization Prize and won first place.
I understand why we did not make it to the first place in the Education category - in fact, because of the mixed typology of the project. But the project received Highly commended - and they are not given in all categories, this is a kind of exception when the jury disagrees on the first place.
What are your impressions of this year's festival? Was it somehow different from the previous ones?
Oddly enough, in my opinion, it practically did not differ from what it was a year or two ago. The WAF has developed a coherent and clear format, I have not seen any changes. As before, they give prizes not only and not so much for architecture.
For what?
I would say that aspects that can be called humanistic are more important there: energy conservation, social significance, responsibility, and the like. Suffice it to recall the "Building of the Year" -2017 - the project for the reconstruction of a house in a Chinese village after the earthquake - and other winners of the festival. From my point of view, they are far from the best. Much more impressive projects were considered - for example, the religious complex in Abu Dhabi from Cebra or the objects of Thomas Heatherwick in London and New York, or StudioGang, and many others. Strong, experimental, unusual projects - and, I would say, simpler projects win. Everyone knows about it, but the event is still very interesting. The format is very dense, you can only get into one presentation out of fifteen at the same time, and the level of the presentation itself is very high.
Any advice to colleagues who would also like to participate and win?
This was not the first time we went, but it was the first time we were exhibiting, so I would be careful not to give advice. I think you shouldn't worry too much about the victory. Evaluation criteria differ. You need to present your project with the highest quality, but worry - you will win, you will not win - you should not.
That year the project itself helped us: it is beautiful, exhibition, with unique specifics. Not every year comes across such a topic. I liked to participate - as I said, it is very energizing! So we just got excited and think about how and with what we can participate this year. I hope that the current situation in the world will not ruin our plans.
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Alexander Popov, Archimatika / | \
Why do you think it was you who managed to get the prize "for color", the project is definitely very colorful, but did the presentation play any role?
I think if an idea is worthy, clear and clear, it builds a presentation of itself, it only remains to not interfere with it. However, to be honest, I'm not sure that I can objectively and balancedly assess our own performance.
The presence of Peter Cook in the jury was a surprise for me and Alexander Simonov (our architect and resident of Comfort Town, with whom we presented the project). He is a world-class star, on my previous trips to WAF, every time I listened with interest to his lectures, and then I saw him and realized that this time Peter Cook would listen to me. And he, like the other members of the jury, asked many very demanding questions. For example: "Why didn't you build smooth color transitions, but chose such a color chaos?" We answered that we did not have a palette for creating smooth transitions, gradients, so we decided to play on color contrasts. And since, in addition to color, we also operated with different volumes, we were able to make the streets diverse. And Peter Cook asks more and more questions. To be honest, I thought he was "flipping" us. Shows us how far we are with our county mentality from the world level. And I left the defense confident that Peter would vote against, especially since the work of our competitors was more than worthy. And when we were suddenly called to the stage, and Cook presented the award, it was unexpected. Later, over a glass of champagne, we talked with Axel Demberger, a representative of the EASTMAN company, which is a partner in the Best Use of Color nomination. And he said that it was Peter Cook who was our main supporter. Although the controversy was so hot that the walls of the inflatable pavilion were shaking. And this moment of recognition became the culmination in the history of the project. Yes, we have made a high-quality project, and this is now confirmed at the world level. It is important! After all, for ten years we have fought off the criticism of those who believed that architecture should not be made so colorful. We jokingly explained to the critics that their paints were simply taken away from them in childhood.
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zooming 1/5 Residential area "Comfort town". Construction, 2015 © Archimatika
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zooming 2/5 Residential area "Comfort town". Construction, 2015 © Archimatika
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zooming 3/5 Residential area "Comfort town". Construction, 2015 © Archimatika
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zooming 4/5 Residential area "Comfort town". General plan © Archimatika
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zooming 5/5 Residential area "Comfort town". Construction, 2015 © Archimatika
How was your project presentation organized?
We tried to tell the ten-year history of the object in ten minutes. We started with a shot of the presentation of the new Apple tablet in September 2019, when Tim Cook showed a photo of "Comfort Town" to demonstrate the capabilities of the new I-pad. And then they returned ten years ago to the crisis of 2009, when they received 50 hectares of an abandoned factory on the sleeping left bank of Kiev and the task: to create a new quality housing, affordable at an anti-crisis price.
We have proposed for the first time in Ukraine, instead of the traditional 25-storey microdistricts, to build a block building with an average number of eight storeys, through entrances. And they also created an unprecedented variety of apartment layouts: out of 1200 apartments of the first stage, 600 differed from each other! We convinced the developer to continue not to tie the previously developed sections, but to design each next stage individually, responding to the changing demand and peculiarities of the placement of sections and the composition of the complex.
When the rational program was assembled, we thought about the architectural image of the project. And, frankly, they could not find a solution for a long time: the territory of the complex is surrounded by hopelessly dull gray Soviet and post-Soviet sleeping bags, against which any of our architectural hope faded.
And then one day Dmitry Vasiliev and I drove to the site by a new road and came across a Soviet mosaic on the facade of the Institute of Chemistry. The mosaic depicted people with flasks and other chemical attributes, but it was all just an entourage. The main plot, laid down by the author: "a dream of a bright colorful life." Against the background of all this surrounding grayness, the colors of the mosaic literally burned with a manifesto of hope. And after all, in the 70s, when the mosaic was created, the sleeping areas were just as dull as they were 40 years later! And we wanted to make this dream of a Soviet artist come true, which the colored smalt brought to us through all the socio-economic transformations and perturbations that, alas, brought the dream a little closer to realization. The next day, we presented the customer with a sketch of the development of colored houses of different heights with pitched roofs. We must pay tribute to Igor Nikonov, the head of KAN Development, who immediately believed in our idea, and then courageously helped to find technological, economic and even political solutions for the project.
When, eight years later, almost all 50 hectares were built up with "colored houses", we got to the middle and high school envisaged by our master plan
Grammar schools A +. We wanted to make the school an accent against the background of residential buildings, and we wondered what the architectural accent of a relatively small object should be against the background of a bright colored environment that we ourselves created? Use even brighter colors? Not! Olga Chernova (the chief architect of the school's project) and I decided to use a diametrically opposite method - to make the volume of the school gray!
Against the background of bright colors, the austere achromatic volume looked like an interventionist, a revolutionary who, contrasting with the palette set by us, created an architectural accent. This is the only “non-colored” building on 50 hectares. On the other hand, it seems to us that our achromatic gymnasium returns to the architecture of residential areas the nobility of gray, which reveals the advantages of high-quality facade materials. We managed to use special Baumit plaster on the facade, as well as Armenian basalt, and made a seam roof made of metal with a special coating, which was chosen from a huge number of samples to create the coolest combination with the facade material.
This is how the ten-year history of two architectural and coloristic revolutions turned out: chromatic and achromatic.
Are you continuing to work on a project, how do you think the color is hindering or helping? On the one hand, it is warm and cheerful, on the other hand, it is known that a bright color can get bored … Was there a program in the coloring of the project, which can be further described?
It must be admitted that the color chaos of Comfort Town is actually carefully orchestrated. For several months we simulated architectural and spatial coloristic compositions in order to collect a range, in which there were both accent and background colors, we were looking for such compositions so that they would not get bored, not repeated, there were not too many cold and not too many warm colors nearby. This work only in the base was based on the coloristic theory that we passed at the institute - this theory is 2D. In 3D, in space, color does not work exactly like that, and it was a really great intuitive search, which we probably would not have coped with if our team did not have a wonderful architect and artist Marina Bosenko (Nesteruk), who acted as a real coloristic tuning fork … We all shared our vague feelings, evaluating the next option for placing flowers and painting samples, and only Marina could meaningfully say what was wrong here and what needed to be done.
In Comfort Town, the active architectural color worked as a filter: critics, “whose paints were taken away from in their childhood,” simply did not buy apartments in the complex. Bought only by those who like bright colors in architecture. Color has shaped the community - bringing together people who love bright colors and colorful architecture, with common values and similar tastes. Unexpectedly, even for us, color turned out to be a powerful platform for forming a community of like-minded people.
The uniqueness of the project prompted us to actively study BIM design, work with 3D models in order to digitalize processes. Usually, when it comes to large volumes, they try to unify and type everything. And new technologies 3D, BIM and the next step - parametrization, allow you to work quickly, and at the same time not sacrifice individuality. We strived to make a good architecture, so we accelerated the transition to new design technologies.
The project is already 10 years old, but it still remains relevant and continues to win prestigious international awards. In the spring, the Los Angeles Times published a whole
article about the project.
What is your overall impression of the WAF? Is something changing or is everything settled?
I like WAF with its unchanged format and procedure from year to year and constantly changing content. For example, in one year you suddenly find just a dozen projects with one architectural technique, and next year completely different techniques, and you feel how endlessly creative space of architecture is in the global dimension.
Getting an award at the World Architecture Festival is like taking an Oscar, but architectural. Since 2008, WAF has been considered the largest international platform, which hosts dozens of presentations, seminars, lectures and meetings with the participation of the world's top architects. And of course, the WAF competition is a benchmark in terms of professionalism. It is a competition where the best architects judges choose the best designs.
Now Ukrainian developers are trying to copy European projects. But for Europe, all this has long been perceived as a basic, generally accepted level. For them, it is interesting first of all that which stands out from the row.
At the first Comfort Town defense at the WAF, where we also reached the final in the Housing - Completed Buildings nomination, one of the judges asked us a question: district? I think our situation in Kiev, when we are not bound by such restrictions, causes some bewilderment among the Europeans. Because it would be very difficult for them to implement such a project because of the lengthy approval procedure, urban planning restrictions that also apply to color codes. Our own international design experience shows that every location, every city, its mentality, culture and order creates a unique window of opportunity for creative realization. And the architect must find and reveal it with his project!
What are your impressions of the winners, did the projects that you like won, and how do you assess the total of the winners?
Choosing a winner from the top ten projects of the shortlist is almost always a lottery, depending not only on the expressiveness of the presentation, but also on the meeting of judges in a particular nomination, their mood, even the weather. And I have long ceased to be surprised that my favorites do not always coincide with the choice of the jury. Therefore, I will note only a couple of pleasant coincidences. We are very happy for the Atrium and the recognition of their wonderful project for a park for future generations in Yakutsk. And also I would single out a project from the Small Project of the Year nomination, Studio Link-Arc bureau. It seems to me that these projects illustrate an attempt to find an answer to a new challenge, which is still looking for its definition in order to align with such "canonized" goals of modern architecture as sustainability and social responsibility, and which I would formulate as follows: "the search for a new harmony ".
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Herzog & de Meuron / | \
You have become a finalist for WAF 2019 in the category residential building project and were highly commended for the master plan. Please comment on the second award, for what, in your opinion or according to your information, it was given - is it about rethinking the typology of "house on legs" in the urban space, as stated in the jury's comments, or something else?
The project for the development of the territory of the Badaevsky brewery answers three pressing issues of the development of modern megacities:
- How to preserve heritage and integrate it into the modern urban environment?
- How to create a quality public space open to everyone?
- How to integrate new construction into the existing urban development?
Our project is a real Mixed-Use: a fragment of the city in all the variety of functions of the modern urban environment. A place where you can live, work, go shopping, take your kids to classes, sports clubs, or just relax in a public park that combines all these functions. This site was once a closed manufacturing facility. Thanks to the project for the development of the territory and the creation of a public park, it will become a connecting link connecting Kutuzovsky Prospekt and a new promenade along the Moskva River embankment. Thus, it will become an open city block and public space, rather than a private closed area.
It seems to us that the jury was interested in the concept of the project, and the experts appreciated the contribution of the project to the urban environment, as well as its relevance in solving modern urban planning issues.
How was your presentation organized and what questions were you asked? What was the jury's reaction to your project? How long have you performed?
For each nomination in which the project was presented, a presentation and expert discussion were assumed. The defense in each nomination was given 20 minutes. In total, we made three presentations, each of which highlighted certain aspects of the project in accordance with the requirements of the category.
In the Masterplan nomination, our presentation focused on the development of the urban environment, the quality of public spaces and the versatility of the project. In the Residential nomination - on the architectural solution of the project, the peculiarities of the apartment design, the quality and variety of housing typologies. The preservation, restoration and adaptation of cultural heritage sites to accommodate new functions, taking into account the original building structures and their character, were highlighted in the presentation for the WAF X-Reuse Award category.
The professional jury highly appreciated the project in each of the nominations presented. In the Residential category, the project became the absolute winner thanks to its non-standard architectural solution - the use of columns in the urban space to emphasize the role of historical heritage and increase the permeability of the territory. The experts especially noted the elaboration of the design solution, the laconic combination of heritage and new construction. They were pleasantly surprised by the level of dialogue that was achieved in joint work with colleagues from the Capital Group and the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage. In the special WAFX nomination, the experts especially emphasized the detailed study of the issue of restoration and adaptation of cultural heritage objects within the framework of the development of the territory. This was confirmed by the award of the special WAFX nomination in the Re-USE category.
The meaning of the jury's remark about “critical conservation,” a bold juxtaposition of old and new, is generally clear. Such an opposition in your project is rather delightful - it turned out beautifully. But you demolish most of the buildings of the brewery, and, building an image on the "overhanging" or even "hovering" of new volumes over the old ones, in fact, you are building buildings not over, but along the preserved parts and in place of the demolished ones. Was there really no way to save everything or save more? Do, like Jonah Friedman did, so that the new city really hangs over the old one? Because now you are rather imitating the idea than actually realizing it: the supports beautifully penetrate only a small volume, which will be demolished and restored in order to be "pierced" … Isn't a beautiful futuristic idea profaning in this way?
And don't you feel sorry for the factory buildings, which will be cut "alive" and will receive new, never existed facades from the side of the river? And why build a remake with a facade that goes back to the drawings of the architect Weber, on the site of the Soviet building 2?
Isn't this kind of "critical conservation" an internal contradiction deeper than just the problem of demolition protests? You build the plot on the opposition of the old and the new, but imitations-remakes appear in the composition of the "old" …
Time goes forward, cities develop, change and adapt to the new modern reality. Moscow as a city combines history and modernity. As in any large metropolis, the urban landscape of Moscow is continuously and dynamically evolving. The responsibility of the architect is to accompany these processes in his work. Working on a project within the city, especially in its historical part, the architect, first of all, must carefully assess and analyze the existing landscape, take care of preserving the heritage as an important part of the city's history, and at the same time create an opportunity for future development: integrate the modern architecture, as well as high-quality public spaces, into an already established urban environment.
The architectural ensemble of the Badaevsky brewery developed in a manner typical of a 19th century industrial complex. It is characterized, on the one hand, by a brick industrial architecture with a monumental laconic facade, on the other hand, by various chaotic auxiliary annexes on the side of the river. Throughout the history of the plant's existence, the buildings were repeatedly destroyed, rebuilt and modified. As a result, the architectural ensemble has lost its original appearance. All existing buildings on the 6 hectare Capital Group (project investor) site have been repeatedly analyzed and assessed by professional qualified experts, their status as objects of architectural heritage has been determined and confirmed, and this guarantees the complete inviolability of these buildings. According to the law, cultural heritage objects can only be restored.
It is important to note that the status of an architectural monument determines many complex parameters, in particular, the year of construction, the architectural features of the building, its significance in the ensemble, the number of changes in the object during its existence, the actual physical state of the construct, and much more. That is, not all buildings built in the century before last have the same historical value today. This approach is practiced in the assessment of other ensembles of European industrial architecture.
Today, there are three buildings on the Capital Group site: 1 and 3 buildings have the status of cultural heritage objects and will be restored, 2, a building that does not have the status of a monument, has been restored according to historical documents at the initiative of the investor. The area of restoration and restoration of the architectural ensemble of the Badaevsky plant will be 40,000 m2.
We have been working on a project for the development of the territory of the Badayevsky plant for more than two years. For us, this is an amazing opportunity, as well as a great responsibility: the buildings in the entire history of the plant's existence have never been comprehensively restored and today they are in disrepair. Huge efforts and large investments are needed to restore the historical ensemble, breathe new life and functions into it, make it accessible to the public and become part of modern Moscow.
It is important to emphasize that our goal has never been to locate new buildings directly above the architectural monuments. The new building was just raised up to ensure the preservation and visibility of the silhouette of the cultural heritage from the river side, to ensure the permeability and openness of the site.
The present location of the "horizontal skyscraper" is very precisely calculated. It will be located along the river embankment, reflecting the contours of cultural heritage sites, while at a certain distance from the historical buildings, thereby creating the necessary space around them and emphasizing their importance. In addition, it is simply impossible to place the new volume above cultural heritage sites due to legal restrictions. It was decided to place the new construction closer to the river.
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zooming 1/3 Project for the development of the territory of the Badaevsky brewery. Facades © Herzog & de Meuron
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zooming 2/3 Project for the development of the territory of the Badaevsky brewery. Master plan © Herzog & de Meuron
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zooming 3/3 Project for the development of the territory of the Badaevsky brewery. Section © Herzog & de Meuron
When we carefully examined buildings 1 and 3 and analyzed all the historical documents handed over to us, we realized that the ensemble would be incomplete without the historical appearance of building 2, the heart of the brewery. Building 2 appears in almost all historical drawings and has always been a central part of the architectural ensemble. However, in the 70s, when the plant was increasing its capacity, a standard multi-storey office building was erected right on the site of this building. In the course of site analysis by experts and historians, a historical fragment of building 2 was discovered, hidden under a multi-storey annex of the Soviet period. On the basis of this fragment, it was decided to recreate the historical appearance of Building 2 in order to revive the lost "heart" of the plant. We are confident that this will help restore the historical appearance, emphasize the character and composition of the originally conceived architectural ensemble.
Within the framework of the project, building 2 will be rebuilt, and even if its facades correspond to the historical ones, it will not acquire the status of a heritage site. That is why, this is the only place in the project where two worlds, the world of modern architecture of a floating building above, and the world of brick industrial architecture below, intersecting, enter a physical dialogue.
We believe that it is just a series of careful observations and the selection of accurate design solutions that are the task of an architect when working in an existing urban environment. When all the details are carefully thought out, a dialogue is created between heritage, contemporary architecture and public space, where all three complement each other.
Do you regard the victory in WAF as significant support in promoting the project?
Our project is unique in its kind and speaks for itself. However, it is always pleasant to receive recognition from professional experts who assess its quality and value.
What is your overall impression of the WAF? Is something changing or is everything settled?
What are your impressions of the winners, did the projects that you like won, and how do you assess the total of the winners? What do you think of the grand prix?
This is not the first time we have visited the World Architecture Festival, but this is the first time we participated in the competition. We are impressed by the scale of this event and how professional, rich and varied its program was. It was interesting to visit there, to see many innovative, modern projects presented by professionals.
The jury of the World Architecture Festival is an expert community that selects the best projects from around the world based on professional expertise. The selection of the winners, as a rule, reflects the trends and main directions of development of modern society, namely the preservation of heritage, social responsibility and sustainable development.
