Vasily Kuleshov is a young architect at ABD Architects with extensive experience in the educational process. He graduated from Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography, trained at OMA, and now oversees educational programs at Soft Culture. In the magistracy, interest in the topic resulted in the study of a new typology of the educational center, which Vasily called "Communicampus". The work took place at the Department of Public Buildings of the Moscow Architectural Institute under the guidance of Professor Dmitry Podyapolsky.
A communication center is a place where students, as well as other interested people of any age and occupation, can study, work, improve their skills and deepen their knowledge, and most importantly - communicate: find like-minded people, expand connections, unite into communities. Vasily notes that similar centers already exist in many cities around the world. For instance,
Think Corner at the University of Helsinki is “an open platform for discussion and work, a space for science and research,” as its creators define it.
In a large city there may be several communication centers, each with its own direction, corresponding to the profile of a nearby educational institution. The program of educational events in communication centers is formed by curators.
The target audience is primarily students who come to work in a coworking space or workshop on individual and group projects, listen to a lecture or course, or attend an event in the educational area. For the residents of the district, the communication center plays the role of a cultural center and a place where you can improve your skills. Experts working in the field of specialized direction use coworking spaces, workshops and the entire infrastructure of the center for production, experiments and research.
The communicator consists of several functional blocks. The auditoriums are designed for groups from 5 to 30 people, sliding partitions allow expanding them for larger events. Coworking areas involve teamwork and communication as well as quiet, focused work.
Multifunctional workshops are spacious rooms where you can equip shooting pavilions, laboratories and other "non-format" modules. It is assumed that the workshops will be rented by experts. Another block is apartments for teachers and curators.
Architectural solutions of communication centers allow adapting spaces to changing demands: without much labor and time expenditures, it is possible to reduce or increase areas, redistribute the proportions of functional areas.
Big data will help to calculate the space for a communication center. For this study, we used the interpretations of such data presented on the resource
"Mechanics of Moscow", namely a map that shows the gradation of interest of citizens in educational practices by district - the darker the color, the more people are interested in the topic of education. The second step to clarify the coordinates is to search for clusters of universities and student dormitories.
It is worth noting that a similar study is now being carried out by KB Strelka: it is planned to organize campuses in seven university centers in Russia, where students from different universities will live, study and spend their free time.
