Coup de cœur pour le studio Salto Design qui a imaginé, à l’occasion du Archstoyanie Festival à Nikola-Lenivets en Russie, cette incroyable installation de trampoline. D’une longueur de plus de 50 mètres, cette infrastructure appelée « Fast Track » est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article en images.
News: Moscow skyscraper Mercury City topped out today and has overtaken Renzo Piano’s The Shard as the tallest building in Europe.
According to buildings analyst Emporis, the tower surpassed the 310-metre-height of Piano’s London tower in September and it now stands at 339 metres tall.
The tower is one of five Russian skyscrapers in the list of ten tallest buildings in Europe, while Moscow is also the city with the most high-rise buildings on the continent. As an expert in large-scale construction projects, Emporis reports that the property boom there can be credited to a number of factors. “Many Russian and foreign investors focus on prestigious building projects,” said analyst Matthew Keutenius. “Furthermore, there are less building regulations in Moscow than in other European metropolises.”
Featuring a shimmering facade of golden glass, Mercury City was designed by Russian architect Mikhail Posokhin and the late American architect Frank Williams, and is due to be inaugurated in early 2013.
However, its reign as tallest building will likely be short-lived, as under construction nearby is the planned 506-metre Federation Tower, which is set to complete next year.
Compared with skyscrapers globally, Europe’s buildings are still relatively small. The tallest building in the world currently is the SOM-designed Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which at 828 metres is almost 500 metres higher than Mercury City. Construction has also started on the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, which will be over 1000 metres high once complete.
See more stories about skyscrapers »
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While OMA is busy finalising designs for a new home for the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the arts organisation has temporarily moved into a pavilion with cardboard columns by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban (+ slideshow).
Garage will occupy the pavilion during the entire construction period, which will see a 1960s building in Stalinist-era Gorky Park renovated into an exhibition centre with moving walls and floors.
Ban’s oval-shaped pavilion is located in the same park and has chunky cardboard columns surrounding its entire perimeter.
A single rectangular exhibition space is contained inside, alongside a bookshop and cafe.
In late 2013 Garage will relocate to their new building and the pavilion will then be used for experimental projects.
The inaugural exhibition, entitled Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban, focusses on the history of temporary pavilions in the park, which was planned in the 1920′s by Konstantin Melnikov.
Find out more about OMA’s design for the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in our earlier story, or hear about it in our interview with Rem Koolhaas.
Shigeru Ban has created a few structures using cardboard, including a temporary tower and a tea house.
See all our stories about Shigeru Ban »
Here’s some more information about the exhibition:
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture will present a new exhibition entitled Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban from 20 October to 9 December 2012 in a newly created temporary pavilion in Moscow’s Gorky Park, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Showing rare archival drawings –many of which have never been seen before – the exhibition will begin by revealing the profound history of structures created in the park since the site was first developed in 1923, before moving through the Russian avant-garde period to finish with some of the most interesting contemporary unrealized designs created by Russian architects today.
By their nature, temporary structures erected for a specific event or happening have always encouraged indulgent experimentation, and sometimes this has resulted in ground-breaking progressive design. This exhibition recognizes such experimentation and positions the pavilion or temporary structure as an architectural typology that oscillates between art object and architectural prototype. In Russia, these structures or pavilions – often constructed of insubstantial materials – allowed Soviet architects the ability to express the aspirations of the revolution. They frequently became vehicles for new architectural and political ideas, and they were extremely influential within Russian architectural history.
This exhibition reveals the rich history of realized and unrealized temporary structures within Moscow’s Gorky Park and demonstrates important stylistic advancements within Russian architecture. Temporary Structures also reveals the evolution of a uniquely Russian ‘identity’ within architecture and the international context, which has developed since the 1920s and continues today.
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by Shigeru Ban appeared first on Dezeen.
An oak capsule houses a raised living room and workspace inside this renovated apartment in Moscow by Russian architect Peter Kostelov (+ slideshow).
The fifth floor apartment’s narrow proportions and lack of natural light led the architect to remove the existing interior walls and insert an elevated platform that would allow more light into the new living room and workspace.
Accessed on each side by two steps, the tube has chamfered edges and a frame of black composite stone.
Inside, oak planks cover the ceiling, floor and walls, and also extend to form shelves and a desk.
A guest room is located at one end of the tube, sealed off by a glass wall and door, while a dining room leads to a balcony at the other end.
From the kitchen, a corridor leads into the main bedroom, where every surface is also finished in oak.
We recently featured a bright white summer house with a see-saw but no doors or windows by the same architect.
See all our stories about Peter Kostelov »
See all our stories about Moscow »
See all our stories about apartments »
Photographs are by Zinon Razutdinov.
Here’s some more information from the architect:
Smolenka ‘Oak Tube’ Apartment
The apartment is on the 5th floor of a tall multi-storey building with inner yard. The large balcony next to the dining room, the low location of the apartment and the part of the house that strongly shadowed the inner yard all meant that the sun didn’t get into this very part of the house.
The greater part of apartment has oblong proportions. The space between windows used to be large, 14 metres. The walls and balcony made it 2.5 metres larger so that now it’s 16.5 metres. The width between structural solid-cast walls was only 3.3 metres, while the places where ventilating shafts were embedded made it even less, just 2.8 metres. Having these proportions and spaces meant that the middle of the apartment was not well lit.
The solution: there shouldn’t be dead walls in this part – instead they are to be replaced with glass walls, which if necessary can be blinded with curtains. In the end, the part of the apartment with the dining room, guest space, living space and working space was lightened from both sides.
Thus the apartment’s proportions and poor lighting produced its design. The middle part was lifted on a podium to catch the light coming through the window. Smooth and rounded passages between walls, ceiling and floor visually join and expand the small space between the walls in the living room. This part of the living room is finished with light oak from ceiling to floor and walls with built-in closets, shelves and desk.
The styling design concept was determined by an ‘oak tube’ which runs in the middle of the apartment through the working and leisure space, to which the dining room adjoins it from one side and the guest room from another. External parts of the tube are finished with composite stone. The butts of the tube imitate the cuts of its form, while loose airy joining to the walls underlines its ease, giving the illusion of something brought from outside.
A similar idea was implemented for the bedroom. The room is divided into sections which also have smooth, closed passages between ceiling, floor and walls making up shelves, closets and a bed. The butts of the tube are also finished with stone, imitating the cut shape.
The darker part of the apartment is given over to guest bathroom, dressing room and a bathroom adjoining the bedroom. The kitchen is sited as a separated block contra-lateral to a window.
The floor in the common places like hallway, kitchen, dining room and corridor is finished with ceramogranite, while all private zones like leisure space, study, and bedroom are finished with oak planks.
Built Area: 110 m2
Location: Moscow, Russia
Project Author: Peter Kostelov
Architect: Peter Kostelov
3D modelling: ZigotArt
Drawings: Yuriy Kurenskiy
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by Peter Kostelov appeared first on Dezeen.
This all-white summer house outside Moscow by architect Peter Kostelov has sunbeds and a see-saw but no windows or doors.
The house was designed for a Russian TV programme in which the clients and the architect meet only once to exchange ideas before the architect takes the project through to completion.
The clients were an active family who wanted their dacha, or summer house, to be a place for sport and exercise as well as sunbathing, barbecues and parties.
The only requirement from the parents was that the architect didn’t add a basketball court, so this gave Kostelove “complete freedom for fantasy and creativity,” he said.
Kostelov designed a building that’s open to the elements, with rolled-up blinds fitted into the wall openings to provide shelter when needed.
The built-in sunbeds are positioned alongside a small sunken bathing area at one end of the house.
A small cubicle with a bucket of water suspended above it allows residents to cool off after a session in the sauna room next door.
Horizontal bars have been fitted on the wall behind the see-saw where they function as a simple gym.
The roof terrace is accessed by sets of stairs at either end or by the central ladder. Sheltered underneath the roof terrace is a kitchen and dining area as well as an indoor shower.
Other projects by Kostelov we’ve featured include a Moscow apartment with metal walls and a summer house made of patchwork wood.
See all our stories about Peter Kostelov »
See all our stories about holiday homes »
See all our stories about Russia »
Photographs are by Zinon Razutdinov.
Here’s some further information from the architect:
The project was specially done for the TV programme Dachniy Otvet. In the frame of the programme the customer and the author of the project meet only once, and then time comes for projecting and construction which is the matter of the architect exclusively. After the project is fully done it is filmed and customers are invited to view and evaluate it.
The first meeting with the customers defined and specified the project vector and its functionality. The customers are a family with strong sport background. Consequently they would rather get the place for summer recreation including sports than for doing gardening.
In addition the people in the family are quite hospitable and active, especially the elder daughter who hosts young people, so quite often these meetings turn into informal youth parties.
As for the parents there was the only remark from them: “Anything but basketball arrangement please!” So this short remark gave a complete freedom for fantasy and creativity. Surely to get unforgettable village pastime there must be a variety for it: barbecue, open air pool, summer cinema, volleyball ground, horizontal bars and modernised enhanced sport facilities.
The territory was divided into five functional zones:
1. The Swimming and bathing zone has a pool, a shower and a bucket for dousing after sauna. A small overpass adjoins this zone with a well to get water from. A significant detail of this area is a solar battery which massively contributes to an environmentally sustainable usage of the watering system especially when it comes to unpredictable Moscow weather.
2. The Lying in the sun zone has a few beach beds, podiums, armchairs; there must be a shelter to hide from the sun, to relax, to read a book etc.
3. The Gym has simple but enhanced sport facilities: horizontal bars, parallel bars, “health disks”, and swing, badminton and volleyball playgrounds. There also must be a referee’s chair too. Finally a chest for changing clothes and towels and other things is a must.
4. Kitchen and dining room should have a small kitchen, grill-barbeque, firewood stock, dinner table, summer cinema, and stereo-system and hammock chair.
5. Observation point is in fact the second level which is intensively used for sunbathing. So there are a few check beds and watering system.
The weather in Moscow district is unpredictable and changeable which is quite typical and which defines the functionality of the project.
All components of the project like shelter, fragments of dead walls, horizontal and vertical ledges which cover light hatches depending on weather conditions and which either let the light through or prevent it from the sun, rain or wind. Due to zone planning and plain transformation the project creates maximum comfort for anyone in whatever weather conditions.
Initially the idea of so called architectural “origami” seemed well turned. Surely in the course of construction the project was being transformed but the idea of a folding book, the saw cuts of which created new capacities, shapes and spatial ties-in appeared quite a winning one. More than that such approach made it possible to create tie-ins between closed and open spaces, between horizontal and vertical plains; as a result it makes the space interwork in a new way.
The project lives as double functional one: on the one hand it returns to nature and on the other the project protects from the wind, rain and sun heat. These two interworking forms have subtle boundaries and complement each other, working as all-in-one-piece project. The white colour was chosen to support the white buildings of the house and sauna.
Architecture: Peter Kostelov
Building: 2012
Constraction Area: 71 m2
Total area: 100 m2
Specifier: TV Channel NTV, programme Dachniy Otvet
Location: village Zenkino, Moscow region, Russia
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Peter Kostelov appeared first on Dezeen.
Three nations exemplify a “Common Ground” at the Biennale Architettura 2012 in Venice
“Common Ground”—the theme this year for Venice’s Biennale Architettura 2012—covers all exhibition spaces from Giardini to Arsenale, as well as the vast range of venues spread out all over town. Fitting into this larger concept while presenting their own respective themes were a number of national participants. Here are…
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Dezeen News: a British and American proposal for a new district built around manmade waterways has been selected as part of a masterplan to double the size of Moscow in the next few decades.
An international jury selected the entry submitted by Capital Cities Planning Group, which comprises London-based landscape architects Gillespies, London and Edinburgh-based urban designers John Thompson & Partners and international engineering consultants Buro Happold.
The expansion project is part of the Russian government’s plans to double the size of Moscow, already a city of 11 million people, in order to attract business and build the capital’s global reputation.
The winning proposal, called ‘City in the Forest’, is arranged around a series of lakes designed by Gillespies. The development would house 1.7 million people and provide 800,000 jobs, mostly in government, education and business sectors.
John Thompson, chair of John Thompson & Partners, said the winning proposal offered “a model for the further expansion of Moscow through the creation of a properly serviced, zero-carbon, transit-orientated urban hierarchy set within a forest and lakeside landscape.”
In April we reported that international firm OMA had scored highest in the first round of the competition to oversee Moscow’s expansion.
Above image shows map of the proposed city expansion
We’ve previously featured two bridges designed by engineers Buro Happold – a bridge over the River Soar in Leicester and the as-yet-unbuilt Metro West bridge in the Liffey Valley near Dublin.
See all our stories about Russia »
Here’s the full press release:
Moscow Expansion Winning Team Announced
Capital Cities Planning Group (CCPG), an Anglo-American team including Gillespies, John Thompson & Partners and Buro Happold, has won a prestigious competition to plan the future expansion of the City of Moscow.
The international jury headed by Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin awarded two prizes; one to CCPG led by Urban Design Associates of the USA for the design and planning of the new Federal District, and the second to Antoine Grumbach & Jean-Michel Wilmotte of Paris for the overall planning of Moscow.
CCPG’s winning proposal calls for a new ‘City in the Forest’ for 1.7 million people, providing 800,000 new jobs with a focus around the ‘Triple Helix of Government, Education and Business’. The new layout reconfigures the 155 km2 earmarked for the district and looks to create an integrated, properly-planned urban hierarchy served by a transit-orientated movement system.
The winning design by CCPG featured a new mixed-use capital district configured around a series of lakes designed by the UK Landscape Design Practice Gillespies. Brian Evans, partner in charge of Gillespies Glasgow Office, who led the British side of the team said: “We are all knocked out by this recognition for our work on the world stage. It seems that our design to use the natural topography of the site to create a series of lakes as the setting for the new Federal District was one of the key factors in the jury’s mind when they appraised the different proposals”.
John Thompson, Chair of John Thompson & Partners & Honorary President of the Academy of Urbanism, said: “We are delighted that our team has won the competition for the design of the new Federal District, bringing together international best practice to create a model for the further expansion of Moscow through the creation of a properly serviced, zero-carbon, transit orientated urban hierarchy set within a forest and lakeside landscape.”
Earlier this year the Russian Federal Government announced that it was doubling the territory of Moscow to enable it to grow into a competitive 21st century world capital. In February 2012, Sergey Sobyanin, the Mayor of Moscow announced an international competition and selected 10 teams from around the world to prepare plans for the Moscow Region, for the City overall and for the planning and design of a new federal capital for the ministries of the federal government.
The Government of Moscow set up a 6 month, 3-stage process with all the teams working and reporting to the Moscow Government on a monthly basis. The finished work of all the teams is currently on show at a public exhibition in Gorky Park.
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new masterplan for city expansion appeared first on Dezeen.
A l’occasion de la Biennale de l’Architecture organisée à Venise, le pavillon russe a surpris en proposant une installation entièrement composée de QR Codes géants. Visuellement réussi, ce lieu a ouvert le 31 août 2012 et il se visite avec un appareil électronique type smartphone ou tablette. A découvrir dans la suite.
Russian studio Za Bor Architects have furnished the new St. Petersburg offices of internet company Yandex like the desktop of a computer, with pixellated backgrounds and huge icons (+ slideshow).
The offices are organised along a 200-metre-long corridor, where screens and shelves take the shape of a music play button, cursor arrows, the @ symbol and even a Pacman logo.
A printing station is concealed behind a large bulbous clock and meeting rooms are framed by ribbon-like shapes and coloured curtains.
The reception desk resembles a text box, like one where a computer user inputs their username or password.
Yandex is currently the largest search engine is Russia and the architects explain how they wanted to give guests the impression of being ”inside the Yandex search service.”
We’ve also featured interiors of other technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Skype – see them all here.
See all our stories about office interiors »
Photography is by Peter Zaytsev.
Here’s a project description from Za Bor Architects:
It is indicative that this office is to some extent a return to the roots of cooperation of za bor architects and the largest Russian IT-corporation Yandex.
The first office developed for Yandex by za bor architects is in the same building of the Benois business center in Saint Petersburg, but on a lower floor. In 2008 it was a brilliant premiere published by almost all the leading architecture and design media in Russia. The project has picked up many awards.
Four years later za bor architects and Yandex had decided to repeat the success on a larger scale – Yandex Saint-Petersburg office II is almost twice as large as the previous one – it houses the entire fourth floor of the building and has a corridor about 200 meters long (total floor area 3310 sqm), but size doesn’t matter, clients wanted an “extraordinary office like no other.”
So the architects had at least two challenges – first to organize a very complex space outstretched along a central corridor axis. The second challenge was to make the office a showy and impressive.
After a long thought Peter Zaytsev, and Arseniy Borisenko, the project architects, decided to use the double loaded zoning, with meeting cells, work areas, and unusual objects located along the corridor. The unusual objects being provided with a particular function. As a result of this concept implementation, guests find themselves inside the Yandex search service: at the reception they are met by a well-known “Search” button and a yellow arrow (an unofficial Yandex logo and a significant part of the web-site).
While passing the corridors they see the familiar user name and email password input boxes, and at each step they meet symbols and icons of Yandex services, although they are not always easy to recognize as tiny pixel icons, had turned into 3D objects.
The office guests receive a unique transcendental background, the one of which Aldous Huxley hadn’t even dreamed of. Visitors find themselves both in an amazing space which architects had transformed from linear into 3D, observing the pixel objects which grew to gigantic proportions.
Thus, according to the architects conception, guests and employees of the office are involved into Yandex net services, to which they are accustomed to work with exclusively in 2D screen. That is why in some places miniature “icons”, which grew to giant size are breaking to large volume “pixels” sprouting from the walls.
Bright colors, spots scattered here and there, guide visitors through the office and cheering up the office staff.
Speaking of function, many of the major elements seem to be decorative only at first glance. The spiral elements for example are separating the informal communication zone from the corridor. The casted polymer “jellyfish” clocks contain network printers station, etc.
The project has turned out rather complex, the first thing because no one did such things before, not only in Saint Petersburg but even in Russia. Therefore, many solutions are made on the spot during on-site designer supervision.
The difficulties were not caused by 3D objects – they are made according to advertising designs technologies (their cages are filled with polystyrene foam, meeting all standards of fire and environmental safety).
On the other hand – the ceiling, build up of original “blades” was extremely difficult to install.
As Yandex offices have twenty-four-hours operation schedule, the project was provided with variety of well-developed recreation zones.
In addition to working areas and rooms, the office has a gym, cafeteria, showers, and several coffee-points.
The number of formal and informal points for negotiation, two lecture halls, and workplaces perfectly equipped with Herman Miller and Walter Knoll systems, make this office a place of attraction, fascinate visitors, and surely makes work very enjoyable pastime.
Plan – click above for larger image
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by Za Bor Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Every surface inside the top floor of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is covered in QR codes, which visitors decode using tablet computers to explore ideas for a new Russian city dedicated to science.
Downstairs, visitors can peer through lenses to catch a glimpse of the gated and secretive science towns established under the Soviet Union, intended to provide a contrast with the open and collaborative vision presented upstairs.
The Skolkovo science and technology centre will be located near Moscow by 2017 and bring together 500 companies working on IT, biomedical research, nuclear research, energy and space technology plus a university and homes.
The architectural team includes Pierre de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima and the Venice Architecture Biennale’s director David Chipperfield, plus the winners of several rounds of competitions to be held as the project progresses.
The exhibition is curated by Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov, who are masterplanning the Skolkovo project and were part of the team behind The Russia Factory exhibition at the same pavilion two years ago.
The 13th Venice Architecture Biennale opens to the public today and continues until 25 November.
More stories about Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 »
Our photos from the biennale on Facebook »
Our movie interview with biennale director David Chipperfield »
Photographs are by Patricia Parinejad.
Here’s some more information from the curators:
In this part of the exhibition we show plans for a new city of science located near Moscow, in Russia. This project already involves some of the most important scientific centres in the world and will include a new university and homes for more than 500 firms working in distinct fields of science – IT, biomedical research, nuclear research, energy, and space technology.
Currently,these firms are situated in different parts of the world and interact with one another as a network. Our objective is to construct a city for this new community.
In our pavilion we have tried to find an architecture metaphor for connecting the real and the virtual. People today live at the intersection of on- and off-line; ‘our common ground’ is becoming a cipher for infinite mental spaces.
What will the city of the future look like, and, in particular, the city of science? The answer is to be found in the Skolkovo project. For the moment, these are plans; but their implementation should be competed in 2017.
The core of the architectural team for the project consists of Pierre de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, Mohsen Mostafavi, Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, David Chipperfield, Yury Grigoryan, and Steano Boeri. The team is continually growing. We recently held our first competition to find additional architects for some apartment buildings. 600 architects took part in the competition, of whom 10 received commissions. Another three large competitions are to be held. Come and join in!
Duing the cold-war period from 1945 until 1989 more than 60 gated towns and cities were created in the Soviet Union for scientific and technological research. The existence of these cities was kept secret. They were everywhere in the country, and yet it was as if they did not exist.
The people who worked within were isolated from society and were sometimes, for the sake of secrecy, given new names and surnames. These cities and their inhabitants were invisible except to the watchful eyes of the secret service.
For the exhibition we named this secret country ‘i-land’. It is the subject of the exhibition on the ground floor of the Russian Pavilion.
The new city – the Skolkovo innovation centre – is an instrument for transforming science after the end of the cold war. This is an open city which is being created by some of the world’s most acknowledged architects, and we hoe to attract some of the world’s advanced scientists. We called this city of the future ‘i-city’. You will find it on the upper level.
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Architeture Biennale 2012 appeared first on Dezeen.
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