Hasta La Ideas

Here are some photographs of the Moscow School of Management by architect David Adjaye, where four buildings precariously cantilever over a large circular base.

Adjaye, who was today announced as this year’s Design Miami Designer of the Year, completed the teaching and research institute in the city outskirts at the end of 2010.

Classrooms and lecture halls circle a restaurant at the centre of the 150 metre-wide school-on-legs and a car park can be found below.

The four blocks above individually house administration, a wellbeing centre, a hotel and student accommodation.

The walls of the wellbeing centre display a herringbone patchwork of glass and coloured panels, while the other three blocks show the same patterns in monochrome.

A private terrace is located on the roof of the school, surrounded by skylights into the rooms below.

Other projects on Dezeen by Adjaye Associates include headquarters for design brand Moroso and a visual arts space in London – see all the stories here.

Photography is by Ed Reeve.

Here is some text about the project from the architects:

Moscow School of Management Skolkovo

This teaching and research institution was founded in 2005 to educate a new type of executive capable of leading Russian business through the 21st century. The founders were of the view that a campus-type development would best represent their aspirations and, with this in mind, acquired an open site in an area that is scheduled to become an advanced technology park, just beyond Moscow’s outer motorway ring. Situated in a wooded valley, the site has the idyllic qualities associated with those of a traditional campus but the severe demands of a six-month winter were a barrier to pursuing an arrangement of this kind. Rather than being in separate buildings, the main elements of the brief are therefore housed in clearly identifiable volumes that nevertheless form part of a single development.

As a result of this strategy, the external appearance of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo changes dramatically depending on the direction from which it is seen, but practical and visual continuity is provided by the 150metre-wide disc that floats above the site. Despite its size, the disc minimises the footprint of the development on the site, and softens the visual impact of the lower stories of the development, as only a small part of it can be seen at any one time. The disc itself is two stories high and the main teaching departments are distributed around its outer edge, with the larger spaces on the lower floor. Between departments, a series of wedge-shaped spaces connection the centre of the disc, where the restaurant area is located, and the perimeter. With directional rooflights above, these informal gathering spaces bring light and views deep into the interior. The disc also includes a conference centre with its own auditorium, and the roof of the disc is a landscaped open space. This replaces the area of the site occupied by the building, where a protected car park and service area are located at ground level.

The group of buildings that stand above the disc give the development its characteristic profile when seen from different directions. Of these, the Wellbeing Centre occupies a pivotal position in anchoring the disc to the sloping ground on this side of the Setun River. Standing close to the edge of the site, its stacked recreational spaces still enjoy views of the river due to the splayed positions of the two residential buildings: student accommodation in the longer one to the north, and a five-star hotel that is linked to the conference centre below. The Wellbeing Centre is supported by the same structural grid as that of the disc, whilst the residential buildings are designed as bridge structures. Each of them is supported on two towers that cause minimum disruption as they pass through the disc to the ground; the consequences of this arrangement are visible in the long cantilevers at the ends of both buildings. A similar principle is employed in the structure of the administration tower, although the design of its facade is similar to that of the Wellbeing Centre. The gold colouring of the Wellbeing Centre reflects its importance in this powerful composition, an effect that is given further emphasis by a blue tinge to the facades of the residential buildings.

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Edison House by Adjaye Associates	The Periscope by VW+BS	GMS Grande Palladium by Malik Architecture

New York architects Work AC have won a competition to design a cultural hub on a St Petersburg island that has been closed to the public for over 300 years.

Former military warehouses occupy the eight-hectare New Holland Island and are to be fully restored to accommodate commercial spaces, galleries and educational facilities.

An elevated snaking promenade will weave in and out of each warehouse to provide viewing platforms.

A canopy nestled against two corner warehouses will shelter an exhibition area and garden.

Lakes and lawns will surround the buildings, while car parking and infrastructure are to be concealed beneath a grassy slope.

Visitors will be able to overlook the island from a tethered balloon that will float up into the sky.

Eight shortlisted entries for the competition, which was organised by The Architecture Foundation, have been on show at the Central Naval Museum in St Petersburg since 15th July.

Other masterplans featured in recent months include a flood-prone Vietnamese district and a zoological park on artificial islands – see all our stories about masterplans here.

More projects by Work AC on Dezeen include an urban farm of giant cardboard tubes and the headquarters for a fashion label – click here to see all the projects.

Here are some more details from New Holland Development:

Winner announced for New Holland Island Competition

The architectural practice WORKac is the winner of the competition to select a master planning consultant for the future development of New Holland Island in St Petersburg.

The competition, organised by The Architecture Foundation, invited entries from all over the world and an exhibition of proposals recently went on show at the Central Naval Museum in St Petersburg overlooking the New Holland site where it attracted 6,617 visitors within a two week period. Opinions left on comment cards filled out by the public at the exhibition overwhelmingly coincided with the views of the competition organisers in supporting WORKac’s vision.

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Based in New York City, WORK Architecture Company (WORKac) is involved with numerous cultural institutions and urban planning projects. The practice were the master planners of the new BAM cultural district in Brooklyn and the award-winning architects of Diane von Furstenburg’s Headquarters in New York’s Meatpacking District. It is currently working on three major museum projects for the Blaffer Museum in Houston, the Clark Art Institute at Mass MoCA and the new Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York City. WORKac is also the winner of the Hua Qiang Bei redevelopment competition at the heart of Shenzhen, China. Identified by Icon magazine as one of the 25 most influential design firms in the world, the practice has won numerous honours and, in 2009, was among the finalists for the US National Design Awards.

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New Holland is an 8-hectare island bordered by two canals and a river in the heart of St Petersburg, within 20-minutes walk of the Hermitage and the city’s other major cultural sites.

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The island was conceived by Peter the Great in 1719, and became Russia’s first military port in 1721. It belonged to the military since its foundation and had thus been closed to the general public for 300 years.

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WORKac’s winning entry creates a public park, whose topography transforms New Holland Island into an outdoor amphitheatre and performance space. An elevated promenade brings the park to the interior of the existing structures, connecting a series of programmatic ‘voids’ – art, design, education and commercial – that builds on St Petersburg’s rich cultural history to create a new vibrant cultural hub for the city.

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WORKac principals Amale Andraos and Dan Wood said: “We are very excited at the opportunity to work with the Iris Foundation and NHD on this critically important project for one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Our master plan balances preservation with innovation, respecting St Petersburg’s past while paving the way for its continued artistic development and future.”

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As the project moves from the concept phase to the planning phase, New Holland Development and the Iris Foundation plan to hold a series of closed and public discussions with interested parties to ensure that the public’s input continues to be a central part of New Holland’s development.

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Stockholmsporten by BIG	Zoological Park by TN Plus and Beckmann N’Thépé	Huaxi city centre by MAD and others

Paris landscape designers TN Plus and architects Beckmann N’Thépe have won a competition to design a zoological park on a series of artificial islands for the outskirts of St Petersburg.

Spread across 300 hectares, the park will replace the historic but cramped city-centre zoo.

The site will be arranged to loosely reflect the layout of the Earth’s continents when they first began to separate.

Different species of animals will be located in their native zones within this diagram.

Construction is scheduled for completion in 2014.

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More stories about zoos on Dezeen »

The following information is from the architects:

New Saint Petersburg Zoo
Primorskiy’s Zoological Parc

Landscape designers: TN Plus / Architects: Beckmann N’Thépe

Bruno Tanant et Jean Christophe Nani – Landscape designers TN Plus, Aldric Beckmann et Françoise N’Thépé – Architects Beckmann N’Thépé, win the international compétition for the completion of the Primorskiy’s new zoological Park, Saint-Petersburg (Russia).

Founded in 1865 Saint-Petersburg zoo is the oldest zoological park of Russia. As most of other parks across Russia, it suffers today from a cruel lack of space, being located in the heart of the historical town center. The city has hence decided to create a new zoo, which will range over 300 hectares, on the town’s outskirts, escaping this way the high population density of the urban area. The project preserves a large strech of land, and implements an environmentally beneficial approach.

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Concept

Thousands and thousands of years ago, the surface of the earth was but one and only supercontinent, known as the Pangea. Subject to tectonic forces, the Paleolithic Pangea over time broke into splinters, which slowly organised themselves in a configuration that, although always prone to movements, we still are familiar with. Ecosystems, once linked with each others, are today kept apart by oceans and seas. Species of the same origin have followed a distinct path on each separated continent.

The project offers a symbolic sample of every continent in an attempt to recreate the illusion of a reunited Pangea within the very zoological park of Saint-Petersburg. The archipelago therefore created will be made of islands representing South East Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, North America and Eurasia, the two latter being linked with each other by the pack ice of the Arctic Pole. The chosen site enjoys a profuse water supply, and hence is particularly fitted for such an insular organization of the various environments.

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Project

Nowadays the environment requirements and the green consciousness of the public are increasingly considered a core issue. The very background of a zoological park itself induces a mandatory respect of those values. Harshly criticized for a long time, zoological parks are today considered major stakeholders of biodiversty preservation. Even though it is an artificially recreated leisure area, the Primorskiy Park is above all an educational tool allowing each and everyone of us to better grasp our own history, and also a research center helping to preserve our Earth. So much goals were aimed both by architects and landscape designers of this project who managed to convince and share their ambitions.

Zoological Park of Saint-Petersburg
Expected time of complétion: 2014
Surface : 96 ha on a total area of 300 ha
3474 animals ( 479 species)

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Korkeasaari Zoo by TN+ and Beckmann-N’Thépé	Aviary by Group8 with Guscetti & Tournier	Elephant House by Foster + Partners

Dans le même esprit que Aurora Borealis Timelapse, voici cette superbe vidéo d’aurores boréales par Terje Sorgjerd grâce une captation pendant plus d’une semaine au parc “Pas National” proche de la Russie. Le tout sur la bande son du film Gladiator : Now we are free.

Previously on Fubiz

• Aurora Borealis Timelapse
• Core Experimental
• Alexey Kurbatov

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Un superbe travail de l’illustrateur russe Alexey Kurbatov basé à Moscou. Une série de portraits de personnalités avec beaucoup de style et d’imagination. Des illustrations entre le mois d’avril et de décembre 2010 à découvrir sur son portfolio et dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Dyson – Winter Tale
• Music is Math
• Creative Portraits by Jason Lee

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