Recall that the New Look school at MGIMO is placed on a par with Letovo, Khoroshkola, Primakovskaya gymnasium - this emphasizing that there will be nothing typical in its structure, appearance, character. As the head of the UNK project, Yuliy Borisov, figuratively said, “in this school, students should not, as before, go to the 'factory', which churns out nuts from girls, but bolts from boys. We need to educate creators."
Thus, the design of the school began with philosophy. The idea of "Strong knowledge - soft power", that is, "Hard knowledge - soft power" in the consortium was proposed by the "Smart School". The team developed the concept of an educational environment in which most educational processes take place not in traditional classrooms, but in group work, in the space between classes. In architecture, this idea crystallized into a central transparent volume-console connecting blocks of elementary, middle and high school - architects call it a hub. The "hub" can be programmed in different ways, there are open and semi-closed spaces with limited access for visitors, and up to thirty scenarios and possibilities for its restructuring have been developed.
Transparency is an important factor in both the educational process itself and the concept of architecture. According to Yuliy Borisov, there is nothing more motivating than to see what is happening inside a store or restaurant - everything is the same at school: it is important to feel the connection between spaces and processes.
It was also necessary to make a full-fledged community center inside the console due to the lack of a schoolyard - there is no free territory for this on the site. Part of this role was taken over by an artificial green hill between the two buildings, which descends to the slope of the pond. In fact, this is the very staircase on which young people always like to gather and which turns into a mega popular place for informal communication, be it the Strelka amphitheater, the city's Khokhlovskaya Square or a school campus.
The green staircase became an important element of the school's ecosystem - the project had to be not only lively and flexible in terms of education, but also to instill a keen interest in nature and increase the area of greenery. Thus, the school provides experience in growing plants on the roof, and the "drapery" of a part of the facades with a southern orientation with tubs with seduns reduces the insolation load. Thanks to the landscaping included in the project, the school could add about 1000 additional square meters to the area of green spaces in the Garden Quarters. “Someone compares our school with the Apple headquarters - we perceive it rather as a compliment” Architecturally and compositionally, the school in the UNK project inherits the principles of the design code written by Sergey Skuratov. Its main ideas - "transparency" as the main argument of the new school, the sharpness of the contrast that emphasizes the central role of the object in the town-planning ensemble, and the cantilever protrusion as a characteristic device revealing a relationship with the figurative language of the quarters - are easy to read.
“The Garden Quarters are famous not only for their architecture, but also for their beautifully designed plastics - this is a multi-level space, and we are developing this idea with a vertical layout. The slope that goes from the pond rises and "flows" into the green hill, as if dissolving the school in the public space. In the upper block, we have a slight U-turn, hinting at the breaking of the rigid rhythm that many buildings around have. We also use rounding, which we also see in residential buildings."
As for the decoration of the facades, as befits the "pearl" of the quarter, the school cannot be made of the same materials as the "frame". Therefore, surrounded by “heavy” textures of natural stone, patinated copper, the school is the most transparent volume, where almost everything is glass framed by dynamic horizontals. Glazed ceramics with a mirror effect are also used in the hemming of the consoles and spans. The technogenic "hub" is softened by geo-plastic growing into the surrounding landscape.
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zooming 1/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 2/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 3/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 4/12 School in "Garden Quarters". Three main blocks of the school © UNK project
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zooming 5/12 School in Sadovye Kvartaly © UNK project
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zooming 6/12 School in Sadovye Kvartaly © UNK project
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zooming 7/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 8/12 School in Sadovye Kvartaly © UNK project
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zooming 9/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 10/12 School in Sadovye Kvartaly © UNK project
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zooming 11/12 School in Garden Quarters © UNK project
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zooming 12/12 School in "Garden Quarters". General layout scheme © UNK project
Yuliy Borisov, head of the UNK project bureau - about the competition:
Why did you decide to participate in this competition and are you satisfied with how it went?
We do not participate in free contests at all, but we made an exception here for several reasons. First, the UNK project has quite serious competencies in the field of educational institutions, we have designed and built a lot. The second one is connected with the fact that historically I myself live next to the Garden Quarters and I think that this is indeed one of the best integrated solutions in modern Russian architecture; it was a great honor and a fascinating case to work here. The third is personal motivation, because I am a parent with many children and am not satisfied with the schools in the area, my children do not study in them.
We love contests and believe that this is a great concept, not perfect, but it could not be better. It doesn't matter that we lose, I am very happy and got a real thrill from this process. For us, it was also a big remote project, because we just got caught in the virus. But most importantly, the design process itself in our team was deeply educational.
How did you understand the main idea of the competitive TK?
The TK did not describe in detail what should be the result, but the competition is usually held when there is no understanding or you want to decide on something, to see different views. In my practice, there have been cases with a more detailed program, but, on the other hand, this narrows the architect's capabilities, and probably the winner will have such a study at the next stage. When everything is clear - the budget is clear, the goals of the project - the competition can be omitted. You can just find people who have done something similar many times, and this is the normal American way, where, as far as I know, many architects are invited without competitions. “We have not seen at any competition to be told what is the trend, what needs to be done to win. The same thing happens at any film festival - no one will tell you in advance that this year's trend is this and that. This can only be seen each time from the results of watching a large number of movies. This is how competitions are arranged …"
What do you think of the winning project?
I can say that I am absolutely not inspired by the architecture of the winner, I do not find it suitable for this place. According to all design canons, the outer shell of a building should reflect its essence, if it is a new school, a school about the future, then it should show this with its external appearance. But this does not mean that it will be a bad school. I have seen chic schools that are made in Russia in country houses. And there are amazing educational technologies, and then children enter the best foreign institutions. That is, cool, expensive architecture is not a must-have for the quality of education. Moreover, I believe that architecture should not dominate users, set rigid frameworks, it should help.
I know that a heated discussion has developed around the results of the competition, but I do not like the fact that the evaluation of the project sometimes comes from the external picture. When I taught at the Moscow Architectural Institute, they did it in the third year. Later, older students began to understand that there are planning decisions, economic aspects, and the architect is also responsible for them. And if there are budgetary constraints - and now the situation is not the same as in those fat years when the Garden Quarters were being built and everything was in abundance, the architect must be able to juggle the functions of the building and labor resources. It is impossible to see these aspects from the picture, and I, for example, cannot evaluate the solution without deeply immersing myself in them.
Yuliy Borisov also published his position on the results of the competition on his Facebook page:
Mark Sartan, "Smart School" - about the philosophy of the project:
What was your company's role in the consortium?
As a result of work on the Irkutsk Smart School project and due to the experience of consulting architects and developers, we have learned to translate educational content into architectural requirements and vice versa, to understand what educational results are entailed by certain architectural solutions. Therefore, we played the role of a functional customer in the consortium. That is, we offered educational scenarios and tried them on for architectural and spatial solutions. As you can imagine, for this it was necessary to formulate an educational idea at least in general terms.
How did you understand the competitive TK?
We proposed the idea of "Strong knowledge - soft power", that is, "Hard knowledge - soft power". Here there is an emphasis on the quality and even the traditions of schooling (solid knowledge), as well as a reference to the context of modern diplomacy associated with MGIMO (soft power) and a reminder of modern educational models that are based on the so-called soft skills, or soft skills. We saw the laboratory school as “Living school”, that is, “living school”, a school where learning takes place in activities.
The architectural solution of the consortium colleagues expanded these ideas in space, referring some premises to activity-laboratory, others to public-communication, and still others to traditional educational, but with absolutely modern possibility of flexible mixing and switching of functions. From the lively school and the context of the Garden (!) Quarters, landscaping of the facade and roof appeared as a possible option.
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zooming 1/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Ground floor plan scheme © UNK project
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zooming 2/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Second floor plan scheme © UNK project
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zooming 3/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Third floor plan scheme © UNK project
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zooming 4/8 School in "Garden Quarters". 3.5 floor plan scheme © UNK project
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zooming 5/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Fourth floor plan scheme © UNK project
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zooming 6/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Section diagram 1-1 © UNK project
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zooming 7/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Section diagram 2-2 © UNK project
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zooming 8/8 School in "Garden Quarters". Facade development schemes © UNK project
What do you think about the results of the competition? Doesn't the school of the future look too modest in the winner's project?
The customer's decision is justified by the fact that it is his decision. He has the right to choose the project that suits him best. But I was taught at the institute that the customer needs to be given not what he asks for, but what he needs. We consider the building itself to be a strong educational tool, it also teaches, conveys meanings, conveys an idea, forms self and world perception. In this regard, I do not really like the very opposition of the exterior and the interior, just as from an educational point of view, the richness of the environment as an end in itself is not enough for me.
What is the wealth of the environment? Expensive materials? Complex equipment? Various furniture? Good, but not enough for me. Why is this all? For what purpose? What educational outcome does it work for? Why can't you do without it? These questions need an answer, and the answer is general. All decisions for a new school, and even not only architectural ones, must proceed from one general educational idea, otherwise there will be dissonance, and it will certainly manifest itself later. We prepared our competition project just like that.
Marianna Sargsyan, Storaket architectural studio - about the laboratory school:
What part of the project in the consortium was your studio responsible for?
At the invitation of our colleagues from the UNK project, we agreed to take part in the competition for the preliminary concept of the MGIMO school as developers of space-planning solutions. In our portfolio there are many completed educational projects, many of them received architectural awards, including in Russia, and the Ayb C school was included in the WAF shortlist in 2019.
What is a modern "laboratory school"?
In all our projects, we try to break the stereotypes that school is the place where the student should enter one day and graduate on the next, and the layout should correspond to the clear structure of classrooms connected by a corridor. School is, first of all, a living organism capable of changing for different needs of the user and new circumstances. We decided that it is necessary to create a modern educational environment that reflects a person's ability to learn and communicate throughout his life.
In addition to the standard location of educational zones, we wanted to create a single multifunctional public space “hub” that would unite all the main functions of the school around it. Also, in a rather cramped area, it was necessary to arrange outdoor areas. The decision was to place these zones at different levels, using the volume of the school, and as a "feature" of the project, we designed an open amphitheater, which was visually perceived as a continuation of the general improvement of the pond.
Pavel Kultyshev, architect, UNK project - about the features of the project:
How important did you attach to the "shell" architecture?
The shell is just as important as the functional content. Any building should have its own face, it forms the appearance of the complex, the environment around it and creates a cultural cast of the era. In our case, the main educational blocks are "wrapped" in a characteristic horizontal facade system, which creates a working atmosphere for students, concentrates all attention on an interesting and new educational process. The south-facing contours serve as sun protection and reduce maintenance and air conditioning costs.
We "sewn" all social and visual communications between students into the floating volume of the complex and, in contrast to the main blocks, created a completely permeable block - the theater of knowledge. All the main public spaces of the school are collected here, this atrium provides a large number of opportunities for all students, for children with different interests: there are private areas for communication between parents and teachers, coworking and brainstorming areas, a library, a media studio and a large forum for joint events, lectures and performances.
What do you think about the urban planning role of the school in the context of the Garden Quarters?
We initially understood that, according to the design code, the school should be the semantic and emotional core of the quarters, a kind of educational temple on the square. We came up with such a gentle transition from architecture to nature, our complex turned out to be the greenest of the proposed concepts: it draws its components from the existing context and becomes a connecting element, a place where children realize their potential, a center of attraction for local residents.
We have active not only roofs, but also a large green multifunctional agora staircase for students to relax. Moreover, we used the facade of the building itself, on top of the glass we created a horizontal system of reflective elements, which are located at 45 degrees to the facade and reflect the landscaping in front of the school with their mirror effect. Plus, as a bonus, we have laid down the possibility of using vertical gardening from a mixture of sedums, thus, our version of the school from season to season would have an absolutely unique look, every time a new one.
