Moscow: The Latest Architecture and News

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C+S Architects and Citizenstudio are among the winners of the Face of Renovation competition, an initiative to redesign the architectural image of housing stock across 31 sites in Moscow. The competition sought to improve the experience of the urban environment through the renovation of urban blocks, fostering a sense of identity through individuality. In redesigning the Metrogorodok area (lot no. 13), the two architecture studios focused on overcoming the uniformity and repetitiveness of the prefab housing estate while also enriching the public space through the plasticity of the facades, the use of colours and the creation of intermediate spaces.

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In the second half of the 20th century, Soviet architecture has spread a common aesthetic across highly diverse environments, being an integral part in promoting the totalitarian ideology that disregarded local cultures, envisioning a unified, homogenous society. Nevertheless, in practice, the architecture proved itself susceptible to adaptations and local influences, perhaps nowhere more than in Central Asia. The article looks at the architectural heritage of a geographical area largely excluded from the Western-centric narratives on Soviet Modernism, encouraging a re-reading of a layered and nuanced urban landscape, with images by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego.

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Text by  Reutov Design. Reconstruction of a small creative office in a 19th-century building. This is the former Tsarist factory for the production of weapons. After the revolution and the Second World War under the USSR, a scientific and technical complex was placed here, and in the future, this place was completely abandoned, turning it into an old office center.

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PLP revealed its design for a luxury residential tower in Singapore, featuring a lush vertical garden inspired by the city’s greenery. The biophilic design that blurs the line between indoor living areas and outdoor spaces strives to redefine metropolitan living by promoting health and wellbeing.

This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights cultural structures submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From pavilions to installations, this article explores the topic of cultural urban interventions and presents approaches submitted to us from all over the world.

Featuring a pavilion nestled in the sand dunes of the Persian desert, an afrofuturistic, interactive art installation proposed for the upcoming Burning Man event, and a new take on summer cinemas in Russia, this roundup explores how architects reimagined traditional gathering places and created urban interventions in all scales. The round up also includes a collection of structures in the United Arab Emirates, United Sates of America, France, and the United Kingdom, each responding to different contexts and topographies.

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The introduction of new techniques and materials, along with innovations in indoor plumbing systems, resulting from the industrial revolution, paved the way for vertical living. Investigating specifically a period of time where a flux of population was driven to cities, and social class divisions were being questioned, this article looks back at the evolution of the house plan in Europe between 1760 and 1939.

Tackling the transformation of the housing unit during the industrial revolution all the way to the interwar period, this feature highlights four prominent examples that rethought traditional layouts and responded to the challenges of their time. Still influential today, the mentioned models, restored for use, happen to be part of the 21st-century urban fabric. Located in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Moscow, the plans showcase the ever-changing interior wellbeing standards, directly linked to a broader metamorphosis, equalizing and providing for growing urban populations. Discover the evolution of living units from the Back to Back Houses to the Garden Cities of England; the Haussmannien Block, a Vertical Living for a Modern Bourgeoisie; the Extension of Amsterdam, from Alcove Housing to Social Housing Blocks; and the Transition Type House in Russia.

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Focusing on the different typologies of houses, this week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights conceptual projects submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From urban developments to tiny homes, this article explores the topic of residential architecture and presents approaches from all over the world.

Featuring a cabin amidst the verdant forested region of northern Iran, a development in Georgia that offers an 80% recreational space to 20% housing ratio, and a project in Paris that re-questions our urban reality, and rethinks traditional forms of housing, this roundup tackles a multitude of scales. In addition, it underlines a collection of beach houses in Greece, Italy, Argentina, and Latvia each responding to a different landscape and topography. Other ideas underlined include the renovation of existing developments in Moscow, a residential-led transformation of a former factory in Manchester, and a family of blocks grouped around an elevated communal garden in the Netherlands.

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Videos

As Covid-19 spread across the globe last year, cities underwent a transformation unlike any we had seen in the last century. The sudden disappearance of both human and automotive traffic as people bunkered down under quarantine was visible in cities worldwide and, astonishingly, continued even after quarantine restrictions were lifted.