The Archcouncil considered the project of the New Look school at MGIMO, intended for placement in the Garden Quarters residential complex. The AB Vostok & Martela team won the competition in the summer of 2020, but the winning project drew a lot of criticism (see, in particular, the interview with Sergey Skuratov). Now another version of the school project has been submitted for consideration by the arch council, which is significantly different from the one that won the competition, but created by the same team. The project was developed based on the remarks and comments of Sergei Skuratov as the author of the design code for Garden Quarters.
Previous project AB Vostok and Martela, winner in the competition in July 2020:
At the beginning of the meeting, Sergei Kuznetsov suggested that Sergei Skuratov refrain from comments, listen to all colleagues, and he himself also promised not to enter into a discussion before summing up the results, although he prefaced the conversation with a remark that, among other things, the question should be considered: is it not better to return to the first draft AB Vostok who won the competition?
Most of the experts of the Arch Council spoke in favor of revision, or, rather, revision of the shown project in order to once again consider another option at the council.
It was decided not to discuss the technological program of the school, developed by the authoritative company Martela, but among the statements it sounded that, perhaps, the first project that won the July competition was better solved in terms of the program for organizing the school space.
One of the most painful issues was the fact that the new project interrupts the Road to School, proposed by the author of the master plan, Sergei Skuratov, as a key element of the urban planning solution of the complex. The authors, AB Vostok, explained the absence of the Road to School, part of the bypass connecting all quarters of the complex in the second tier, by fire regulations. It should be noted that the road was not canceled in the AB Vostok competition project. In addition, the council said that fire standards can be adjusted by special technical conditions (STU), and in this case, the contradictions with the Road to school can be removed.
Peter Kudryavtsev described the entire Garden Quarters project as crème de la crème, a pearl in the center of Moscow: “The most important thing in this project is the master plan, the environment that turned out there, the genome that Sergey Skuratov put there. Space, pedestrian connections. It is important that this genetics is preserved until the end of the development of the project. It is important that the new building does not change it, and if it does, then it has very strong arguments, in particular, related to the logistics of the movement of children. According to Pyotr Kudryavtsev, there are clearly not enough materials in the presented project covering how people, especially children, will move around the territory. In addition, Kudryavtsev emphasized the importance of Sergei Skuratov's idea of combining different architectural languages, works of different authors - it requires a more vivid independent statement.
Complaints were caused by: the lack of development of the transport scheme and the scheme of movement around the school, the intersection of streams of junior and high school students with each other, as well as with the "dirty zones", and, in general, insufficiently detailed presentation of the project. Experts also found it questionable to place a block of toilets in the central part of the school, and the absence of vestibules in front of them.
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zooming 1/10 Situational plan. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 2/10 General layout scheme combined with transport scheme. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 3/10 Improvement scheme. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 4/10 Plan of the 1st floor. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 5/10 Plan of the 2nd floor. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 6/10 Plan of the 3rd floor. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 7/10 Plan of the 4th floor. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 8/10 Roof plan. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 9/10 Section 1-1. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
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zooming 10/10 Section 2-2. School-laboratory "New Look". Draft concept considered at the architectural council, 11.2020 © "Vostok", Martela / provided by the press service of the Moscow Architecture Committee
The comments were caused by the lattice of windows located on part of the side facades in a checkerboard pattern - the criticism touched both the lighting of the classrooms and safety (in the lower tier, armored glass will be required so that the children do not break them while playing, Sergei Tchoban noted), and excessive decorativeness, lack of motivation reception of the "chessboard" on the facade (Vadim Grekov). On the other hand, Yuliy Borisov supported this decision of the wall - for its difference from residential buildings.
Vladimir Plotkin noted that the fractional rhythm of the school windows visually increases its volume, which does not correspond to the principle of the design code of the Garden Quarters - the code, on the contrary, implies a visual decrease in the building height by enlarging the elements, combining the windows into groups. On the other hand, the tectonic technique with the soaring of a white volume above the glass does not correspond to the internal space behind the glass: there are finely cut rooms inside, there is no large spectacular space that could be assumed behind a large stained-glass window, '' Plotkin emphasized, in addition noting that the declared green terraces have no exit and the level of the windows is higher than the person sitting in the room.
Tatyana Guk agreed with him in this: “Why are you taking the children upstairs to these terraces, if you are not forming a program for using these spaces?”. Also, according to Hooke, the authors did not hit the scale of "Garden Quarters": "The scale of the school is lost, it is more of a public building, the one and a half meter pattern absolutely knocks the scale inside the building."
In addition, Tatyana Guk raised the problem of the fence: according to the standards, the school should be surrounded by a fence, but it is not on the visualizations, and it turns out that in the project the territory of the entrance to the school becomes an intra-quarter public space.
But Sergei Tchoban was the brightest of all. Citing foreign practice as an example, he emphasized that “competitions are held not to choose an architect, but to choose architecture. The project selected in this competition generated both positive and negative opinions, but in any case it was not like anything else that stands nearby. Whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage, I don't know.
But I believe that competitions are held precisely in order to execute a competitive project, and not invite an architect selected through a competition to do some other project. I have a feeling that this is exactly what happened here: an architect was chosen through a competition, then the architect got scared of his own work, selected at the competition, and under the influence of criticism, he decided to copy Skuratov's project poorly. A protruding console with large glass was present in the project even at the time when Sergei Kuznetsov and I had just started working for Sadovye Kvartalov and made a project for a neighboring site. For this, Sergey Skuratov made a master plan so that when different architects are invited, they do not make a copy of Skuratov - in fact, such architects were not invited - we, for example, even argued with Sergey Skuratov about our architecture. It seems to me that the variety of individual elements introduced by different architects greatly complemented the whole complex.
And if you hold a competition for the school building - which was generally a controversial step, because Sergey made a wonderful
project - then it was necessary to choose an architecture not imitating Sergei, which was done at the competition, but some other architecture. And then this architecture needs to be implemented. If there is no desire, courage, or there are other reasons to refuse to implement the winning project - maybe it turned out to be untenable - a new competition should be held.
This is a tough requirement that we, as colleagues, as the architectural council of Moscow, must put forward here. We cannot accept that a certain project is selected, then it is not implemented by competition, a bad copy is submitted for consideration, a fake for Skuratov's work, and now this fake must be corrected and ironed out until it is accepted. It can be seen that young colleagues take some funds, but they do not know how to handle them. Large volumes of glass, stained-glass windows facing classrooms and workshops lead to the south-west (sic!) - direct sunlight and no sun protection - this solution cannot be justified by anything, even if sun protection is then created. Skuratov's proportions were stretched, tense, but here they turned into cubes, squares … This picture [the main view from the pond, - approx. Ed.], - she also shows quite clearly that Skuratov's idea was simply taken and a helpless piece of work was made from it.
It is necessary to think very seriously that either an absolutely original project should appear here - I believe that Garden Quarters is a very important complex in Moscow - and another competition should be held. Or, if you want a guaranteed solution “for Skuratov,” then take Skuratov. Why do we need projects that are made "for" a master, a talented architect? You have to either do your own thing, deciding what to do, with the help of a competition - or, if the customers think that a school "in the style" of Skuratov's project should appear here, then it is better to make the original, and not, let's say, a helpless copy."
Sergei Skuratov, who acted as both a member of the architectural council and the author of the master plan, called the reference to fire regulations for abandoning the Road to School an unprofessional position: “There is a road to school, it must close all four quarters, this is an artery that connects all four quarters and school is the most important thing. The architecture had to be built on interaction with the Road to School, as it was done in my projects, the first and second versions. This was also done in the variant that won the competition. Why it has disappeared now, I do not know. We are designing the road to the school, it will be built, from the first to the third quarter, according to the same principles that were laid down."
Sergey Skuratov also expressed surprise at the "fake" for his project, without stopping to mention in detail that there are many mistakes in the project, and stated that, despite the hundreds of comments that the author of the master plan wrote to the previous project, hoping that "charisma will appear" - "Unfortunately, nothing happened." “I don't even know how they will work further on this project, without having any position of their own. It can be seen that they can move in any direction: white, black, gray … What the customer says, what the developer says, what Martela says, they will do. We are dealing with the most serious place, with the castle stone of the Garden Quarters, here it is very important to make a beautiful, elegant, functional and constructively technically complex thing. Masters are invited to such things."
Summing up, Sergey Kuznetsov admitted that there is more criticism than support, therefore the council rejected the proposed decision of the school. The further fate of this story, according to the chief architect of the city, will be determined in negotiations with the customer - the arch council cannot make a compulsory decision to hold a competition.
