World Architecture Day is a professional holiday for AD readers. It is celebrated not only by those who design buildings, but also by those who are able to appreciate the beauty of architecture. Especially for you, we have collected 10 impressive projects in Russia.                      

Ekaterina Karpukhina

Photo: Oleg Kovalyuk

House of Culture “HES-2”

On December 4, a new public space will open in Moscow — the House of Culture “HES-2” according to the Renzo Piano Building Workshop project. And although the building was not built by Renzo Piano, but by architect Vasily Bashkirov back in 1907, it was the RPBW bureau that managed to fit the industrial building into the urban landscape. The team not only restored the object, but also rethought the industrial past of the building and presented it in a new reading. For example, the architects decided not to recreate the original facade, which, of course, has changed over a hundred years. They paid homage to each epoch and thus emphasized the historical value of the building. 

Photo: Yuri Palmin

Prospect HES-2. Photo: Gleb Leonov. View the project

Office building designed by Sergey Choban in St. Petersburg

In 1911, the machine-building plant “Russia» stood on this site. Many years ago, the factory was closed, and for more than ten years there has been a large-scale reconstruction. As part of it, the architects of Tchoban Voss Architekten have already built a multifunctional commercial house Benois, an office complex Seasons Ensemble and a residential complex «Five stars». Now there is a new office building Ferrum 1 with a facade made of Corten steel. This material is resistant to corrosion and has a bright, expressive appearance. By the way, the name of the business center translates as “iron” and is a reference to the material of the facade and to the industrial history of the place.

Photo: Ilya Ivanov View the project

RMK headquarters in Yekaterinburg under the Foster + Partners project

Architects of Foster + Partners bureau have built the headquarters for the Russian Copper Company. The peculiarity of the building is in its unusual facade, which resembles the structure of a copper crystal lattice and repeats its color. Natural copper was not used for finishing, because over time it acquires a green hue.

Photo: Oleg Kovalyuk

The official name of the project is Diamond Building. The facade of the building really consists of faces, the shape of which takes into account the angle of incidence of sunlight. This is especially important for the difficult Ural climate: in the cold season, a lot of natural light penetrates through the lower part of the glass module, and the upper closed part, on the contrary, protects the structure from overheating.

Photo: Oleg Kovalyuk View the project

Military-historical museum complex “Zoya» in the village of Petrishchevo

The architects of the A2M bureau built a museum in the village of Petrishchevo, on the spot where Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the first woman awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously) during the Great Patriotic War, was executed on November 29, 1941. On this field, surrounded by a small one-story village, there was already an old museum, an obelisk and a monument, as well as a house in which a girl was tortured the night before her execution. The task of the bureau was to create a memorial complex that would combine all the iconic elements together. 

The museum building itself is on the scale of a miniature village: the structure consists of several volumes that echo the houses of Petrishchevo. Each of these “cubes” — there are only eight of them — fulfills its function: there are exhibition halls, cafes, a wardrobe, united by a large and bright foyer.

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TUMO School of Creative Technologies in Moscow

The TUMO School of Creative Technologies, according to the architects’ idea, was supposed to resemble an iPhone: be the same high—tech, minimalistic, but most importantly — adaptive, because TUMO has a non-standard approach to the educational process. The building is located on the territory of the Krasnopresnensky Sugar Refinery, in the only preserved historical building. Architects from CNTEZ bureau and Ivan Potseluev from Alllevels Architecture & Engineering worked on the facade and its interiors. First, the load-bearing structures were strengthened, the foundation was strengthened and the geometry of the walls was corrected, and then the facade was decorated with perforated metal, and the interior space was executed in red and white tones.

Ivan Yerofeyev

Photo: Ivan Yerofeyev View the project

Skoltech campus designed by Herzog & de Meuron 

The building, which opened in 2018, was the company of another large—scale project from the star architect David Adjaye — the Skolkovo Business School. The structure designed by Herzog & de Meuron consists of three rings filled with rectangular blocks — the Eastern Ring, the Agora and the Western Ring. This design emphasizes the central role of the university in this area of Skolkovo. The outer ring and two small inner ones accommodate all the educational sites and public spaces of the university. Offices, university administration and meeting rooms are located in the outer ring, while classes for classes and the main (central) lecture hall are concentrated in the inner rings.

Photo: Ivan Baan

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Charitable educational complex “Point of the future” in Irkutsk

Last year, an educational complex “Point of the Future” appeared on the bank of the Angara River, on the territory of which there is a kindergarten, junior and senior schools, a sports building, a swimming pool, a hockey field, a psychological support center and even a whole cottage village in which 19 families raising a total of 113 foster children received free housing. 

The concept of the complex was developed by the Danish bureau CEBRA together with the Russian studio UNK project. There are almost no traditional corridors in the school, instead there are multifunctional spaces. For example, in the center of one of the buildings there is an atrium where you can hold meetings, creative classes, stage theatrical productions, arrange press conferences.

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The new Côte Rocheuse winery in Krasnodar Krai

The owners of the Côte Rocheuse vineyards first asked Alexander Balabin, the founder of the Severin Project company, to design a purely technical building, but over time the task changed: first the customers came to understand that architecture should become an integral part of their future production and brand, and then they asked to build a “modern winery that is not inferior to the world’s leading analogs”.

Photo: Severin Project, Daniil Annenkov

The architect enclosed all the technical rooms in a laconic rectangular volume, which he maximally deepened into the slope available on the site. And above it he placed an oval object resembling a pebble, in which public spaces are located: tasting room, wine library, bar, restaurant and panoramic terrace with access to the roof.

Photo: Severin Project, Daniil Annenkov

Dominion Tower Business Center designed by Zaha Hadid Architects

The Zaha Hadid Business Center opened in Dubrovka in 2015, but it still gets into all the collections of impressive modern buildings in the city. Zaha’s architecture was ahead of its time, so her projects are unlikely to look outdated in the next decades. The center is a building, as if composed of large plates displaced in relation to each other. The same principle is used in the interior space: balconies with stairs communicating with each other are displayed in the atrium — their shapes are also shifted relative to each other and visually supported by contrasting trim. 

Photo: Hufton + Crow

Photo: Hufton + Crowview the project

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