Archinect - News

A historic McDonald's makeover in the heart of Moscow is Landini's latest innovative menu item

2022-01-12T17:00:00-05:00

One of the more underrated landmarks of 20th-century geopolitics has undergone a complete transformation into a mirrored elevation of the surrounding community thanks to the latest in a global series of innovative redesign projects from Landini Associates for McDonald’s.

To mark its 30th year of operation in the former Soviet capital of Moscow, McDonald’s asked the Australian-based firm to remake the historic Pushkin Square restaurant into a more modern and experimental space that would double as the company’s Russian flagship and the home of a special initiative called Project Ray.

Photography by Anton Voronkov

Named after founder Ray Kroc’s vision to create a respectful and quiet space for people to take a dignified break from the every day, the project’s brief has meant reimagining the restaurant as a service point in heavily trafficked urban environments in order to be more appealing to a millennial consumer base. This has brought new spaces from La...

Renzo Piano's reworked GES-2 House of Culture makes its much-awaited debut in Moscow

2021-12-08T14:50:00-05:00

After over six years of planning and construction, Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s colorful GES-2 House of Culture has officially opened its doors in Moscow.

Situated on the edge of Bolotnaya Square, Piano’s latest museum, once a former power station, is a testament to the old Soviet concept of culture houses that serve as versatile communal gathering spaces to promote arts, performance, learning, and civic engagement.

Image courtesy GES-2/Facebook

Done over in a vivid arctic white and meant as the permanent home to the V-A-C Foundation, the noted cultural designer’s careful effort to restore the disused early 20th-century structure has yielded a light-filled cavernous space that houses a theater, a large nave-like exhibition hall, and performances areas that are all also inundated with clean air taken in by a pair of distinct 70-meter high blue steel chimneys.

Kjartansson's sketch for his "living sculpture" installation. Image courtesy GES-2 via Facebook.

The 20,000-square-meter (215...

Hani Rashid is out as the Hermitage Museum's Moscow expansion architect as the development changes gears abruptly

2021-11-30T16:58:00-05:00

A row is developing in Russia after renowned designer Hani Rashid was rather abrasively let go from a contemporary expansion of the State Hermitage Museum in Moscow.

The Art Newspaper is reporting that the 63-year-old architect was “unceremoniously” dropped from the museum’s satellite project after not hearing from the city or developers LSR Group in over a year.

“We received all of the necessary approvals for this project, but we stopped hearing news from Moscow about a year ago, just when we were ready to pour the concrete,” Rashid told TAN’s Sophia Kishkovsky.

This marks the second time in four years that the architect has been removed from a cultural project in the Russian Federation. Rashid was previously involved in a Putin-backed scheme for a cultural center in Vladivostok that ultimately led to his resignation owing to an issue surrounding the financial house that was backing the development, which the U.S. government had sanctioned.

A rendering of Rashid's now-scrapped d...

Moscow design team transforms former movie house into a technological hub for business and innovation

2020-02-18T03:30:00-05:00

In 1977, the movie house, Novorossiysk, was constructed. During the 80's cinema clubs, lectures, and film festivals used the site to meet and showcase film. Here Muscovites (Moscow residents) had the opportunity to watch the films of Takeshi Kitano, Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, and other foreign directors for the first time. Eventually, in the 1990s, the area became a platform for business development, business communication, training, and work.

Novorossiysk movie house before rennovation. Image courtesy of DBH, Moscow Agency of Innovations

After a significant renovation in 2017, the building turned into the Digital Business Space. The site's facade, interiors, and technical equipment were updated to reflect the area. The space was divided into different zones (foyers, classrooms, offices, digital workshops) where exhibitions, presentations, and lectures could be held. With the entire reconstruction cost close to $15 million the space became a new place for Moscow's business and ...

Strelka announces "The Terraforming," a research program headed by Benjamin Bratton

2019-08-27T17:45:00-04:00

The Moscow-based Strelka Institute has announced a new research program geared toward exploring the issues of planetary urbanism, global energy infrastructure, “geotechnology,” and speculative design, among other topics.

Directed by professor and theorist Benjamin Bratton, the three-year program will be tuition-free and will explore the topics above as part of a multi-disciplinary effort involving both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The initiative, The Terraforming, seeks to approach the future inhabitation of planet Earth a literal world-building exercise. A website announcing the program explains: "The term 'terraforming' usually refers to transforming the ecosystems of other planets or moons to make them capable of supporting Earth-like life. However, the looming ecological consequences of human activities suggest that in the decades to come we might need to terraform our own planet if it is to remain a viable host for Earth-like life."

A focu...

What makes a city vertical?

2019-07-18T13:38:00-04:00

Which is the world's most vertical city? You might think of Hong Kong, given its famous skyscraper skyline, but by different measures of verticality other cities come out on top

"According to building data research company Emporis," writes Matthew Keegan for the Guardian Cities series, "Seoul in South Korea has more high-rise buildings, with 16,359. Emporis defines a high-rise as a building at least 35m, or 12 storeys tall. In second place is Moscow, Russia, with 12,317 high-rises, followed by Hong Kong in third place, with 7,913."

The Garage Screen summer movie theater is now open, but for a limited time

2019-06-25T16:13:00-04:00

Russian firm Syndicate Architecture Bureau won an architectural competition organized by the Garage Museum and Strelka KB to design a temporary summer movie theater space in Moscow's Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure.

Aerial view of Garage Screen summer movie theater. Photo by Iwan Baan.

The design is a palpable contrast: while the lightweight material palette of the structure hints at its own temporality, its pyramidal profile makes it appear as though it will be standing well after its intended purpose has been fulfilled. The architects intended for the design to be "a self-sufficient central object" in the plaza, with a glowing, iridescent skin that changes appearance throughout the day.

Top of Garage Screen summer movie theater. Photo by Iwan Baan.

Garage Screen was launched in 2012 to show museum goers the best of Russian and international filmmaking, including documentary, experimental, and feature films. Garage Museum was founded in 11 year ago by Dasha Zhukova and Roma...

A Russian avant-garde designer apartment has been listed on Airbnb

2018-12-27T16:02:00-05:00

Two Moscow-based architectural heritage activists have renovated a Soviet avant-garde apartment and are now renting it on Airbnb. In the property listing, Alexander Dudnev and Konstantin Gudkov describe the apartment as a “time machine” to the Stalin era: “Located in a historical constructivist building, carefully restored and fully equipped with authentic and reconstructed furniture, lights and tableware, it will transfer you to 1930s utopia.”

We have done stories about beautifully designed rentals in the past, but given its rarity, this recent listing for an immaculately-preserved Moscow apartment from the 1930's stands on its own. It is likely that many of its patrons will miss plenty of its subtle modernist details, but they will be a delight to the few that yearn to experience the last remaining vestiges of Russian avant-garde design. Though many apartment buildings of this design movement still remain across Moscow, only a very small percentage have been taken care of in the way architectural heritage activists Alexander Dudnev and Konstantin Gudkov have treated this listing.

Dining Room. Photo: Sergei Kasyuk

Moscow apartment buildings come to life with facade featuring The Great Wave off Kanagawa

2018-12-20T14:15:00-05:00

A series of apartment buildings in Moscow have been covered with iconic Japanese artwork. Part of the Etalon City apartment complex, the architects had the 6 towers placed along the highway painted with a replica of The Great Wave off Kanagawa—Katsushika Hokusai’s famed woodblock print—spanning the 60,000 square meter facade.

Behind, the other buildings making up the complex have been given colorful patterns inspired by other cities including New York, Chicago, Barcelona, and Monaco. Splashes of yellow, blue, orange, and green cover three zigzagged apartment towers, while the public areas and landscape design will also pay homage to various locations.

The massive housing development is located in the south-western region of Moscow, and includes retail, social facilities, and a science park.

Russia cancels plans for ambitious NCCA museum in Moscow due to lack of funding

2018-09-26T18:13:00-04:00

Russian officials have abandoned a flagship project to build of a new State Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow. [...] the head of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (ROSIZO-NCCA), Sergey Perov, revealed to the Art Newspaper Russia earlier this month that the project had been officially scrapped due to a lack of funding. He said the government had been unable to find the 16 billion rubles ($240 million) needed to back the project.

Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects had originally emerged as the final winner of the international competition for Moscow’s new National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) back in 2013.

Image/Visualization by Luxigon

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Moscow park sparks wild urbanism on another level

2018-08-24T13:58:00-04:00

As Moscow’s Zaryadye Park approaches its first birthday next month, the city’s chief architect, Sergei Kuznetsov, is defending the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed green space for an unexpected feature: its aphrodisiacal properties. Just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, the firm’s carefully crafted experiment in “wild urbanism” has lived up to its billing, apparently, becoming something of a hotbed for outdoor lovemaking.

Moscow's one year old $245 million public park by Diller Scofidio + Renfro was meant to bring freedom of exploration and a feeling of comfort within the urban setting. The space provides visitors with an amphitheater, flora-covered terraces, green spaces with views of the city, and a 230 foot walkway over the Moscow river. The public space has also seen a high number of couples caught on park cameras having sex. "Wild urbanism" indeed.

Charles Renfro exclaims, “I love this! What freedom our park has brought to Moscow, and what tolerance it seems to be engendering from the authorities.”

Authorship dispute erupts over Europe's tallest skyscraper in St. Petersburg

2018-08-08T15:57:00-04:00

A row has broken out between former RMJM international group design director Tony Kettle and a Russian architect over who designed Europe’s new tallest building – an 87-storey skyscraper near St Petersburg. Staff at Moscow-based firm Gorproject have accused Scottish practice The Kettle Collective of trying to claim ‘authorship’ over energy giant Gazprom’s mammoth tower, currently nearing completion on the Gulf of Finland.

As Europe's tallest skyscraper nears completion, a dispute has erupted over the authorship of the completed project. The Moscow-based firm Gorproject claims design authorship over the Lakhta Center, while Tony Kettle claims the delivered design is his concept while working at RMJM. Letters on the issue were sent to the RIBA, the RIAS, and the Union of Architects of Russia. A statement from the client, Gazprom, asserts the design was RMJM’s original 2011 concept with Tony Kettle as design director.

The tower block as a recurring theme in post-Soviet photography

2018-05-04T15:24:00-04:00

In some places, the tower block has never faded from view. The history of mass housing in eastern Europe is complex and uncomfortable. Yet what’s striking is how prominently the tower block features in the work of contemporary photographers from that territory. These artists have every reason to turn their backs on such buildings. They’re ugly and overbearing, not to say reminiscent of an authoritarian past. But the mass housing block is a recurring presence in their work.

Writer and critic Ekow Eshun provides a beautiful overview of the tower block as a recurring architectural, social, and aesthetic theme in the works of post-Soviet-era photographers in Russia, Serbia, the Baltic states, and throughout Eastern Europe.

"However ugly and monolithic such buildings were after all, they provided homes for people and are worth time and scrutiny as sites of possibility and connection," Ekow writes. "They were places where people gathered to sleep and eat, to argue and to raise families. And they continue to be so. Perhaps this is a modest artistic aim. But it’s also a worthwhile one."

New key-less Moscow apartments use facial recognition to open doors and elevators

2018-04-17T15:26:00-04:00

A new Moscow apartment building has unveiled a fully-functioning facial recognition system designed to replace residents’ keys. [...] As well as allowing homeowners to enter the building without a key, the system automatically selects each resident’s floor when they enter the lift, and keeps tabs on cars and pedestrians leaving the complex.

Capital Hill Residence, Zaha Hadid's first and only private residence, finally completes

2018-04-13T19:07:00-04:00

Capital Hill Residence is the only private residence designed by Zaha Hadid that was built in her lifetime. Vladislav Doronin, the owner of the house, speaks on working with Hadid to build his unique residence in Moscow. Zaha Hadid Architect's Patrik Schumacher, who worked on this project, explains the legacy of Capital Hill Residence as a testament to Hadid.

Check out the video below:

Herzog & de Meuron plans "Horizontal Skyscraper", perched on top of stilts, for Moscow

2018-03-23T14:57:00-04:00

The Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled plans to redevelop a six-hectares old factory area in the heart of Moscow. Located at the former Badaevskiy Brewery that sits along the river, the project will renovate and repurpose the remaining clusters given the site's cultural heritage status. In addition, the firm will also raise two residential blocks above the site.

The result is a "horizontal skyscraper"—described as a "piece of city lifted up in the air,"—that sits on many slender stilts. According to the firm, the choice to elevate the additional buildings 35 meters in the air brings three key advantages: "first, the new green area, an urban park, emerges in the vacated land under the hovering structures, between the heritage buildings and the river front; second, despite the substantial densification of the site, the historical buildings retain their direct connection to the river and their clear visibility and access to the city; and third, all the flats in the hovering str...

Explore Soviet architecture while dancing through Moscow

2018-03-01T14:26:00-05:00

A new tour group fusing Soviet architecture with the latest Russian electronica is launching a series of outdoor parties amid the historic courtyards of central Moscow. Culture group MosKultProg will be holding two events in March, mixing historian Sergey Niktin's historical tour along Moscow's legendary Kutuzovsky Prospekt with sets from St Peterburg-based DJ Egor Holkin.

Moscow keeps expanding its options for exploring the city's mesmerizing architecture: if you've done the virtual/augmented reality tours of never-realized icons of Soviet architecture and already 'Pokémon Go-caught' all the famous figures of Russian history via the Know Moscow.Photo. app, you can now take an architectural walking dancing tour while grooving to epic DJ sets of Egor Holkin.

The organizers behind the concept, TanzProg, plan to bring their edutainment initiative also to other European cities this summer, including London and Paris.

OMA reveals renovation plans to transform the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow

2018-02-20T13:42:00-05:00

OMA/Rem Koolhaas have released plans for their redesign of Moscow's New Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. As one of Russia's largest museums, the space hosts 20th century Russian and Soviet art including works by Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Soviet artists such as Aleksandr Deyneka and Vera Mukhina.

Image courtesy of OMA.

Image Courtesy of OMA.

Since 1985, the gallery has sat in a large modern building designed by N.P. Sukoyan and Y.N. Sheverdyaev that consists of multiple exhibition halls for a total floor area of 61.091m². OMA's redesign will create four distinct sections of the museum—a space for art storage, an Education Center, room to house the collection, and a Festival Hall. The renovation will also focus on creating a new entrance along the Moscow river and carefully placed cutouts in the façade will open up the interior spaces to the city.

Image courtesy of OMA.

The redesign will be OMA's third cultural project in Russia, having previously worked on ...

The Moscow That Never Was: new VR/AR tour showcases unrealized icons of Soviet architecture

2018-01-04T15:24:00-05:00

New virtual reality tours are giving Muscovites the chance to see the Russian capital as the socialist utopia envisioned by the city’s Soviet architects. The new project, The Moscow That Never Was, lets visitors glimpse shelved Soviet landmarks as they should have appeared on Moscow’s streets using VR goggles.

The 2-hour virtual/augmented reality tours through central Moscow feature utopian architectural projects that never quite saw the light of day, including the infamous Palace of the Soviets (imagined as the world's tallest building, crowned with a 300-ft Lenin statue), an alternate Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin's eighth 'sisters' skyscraper in Zarayadye Park, the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry HQ on Red Square, among others.

More information about the The Moscow That Never Was tours here.

All images via Retro Futuro.

DS+R's high-profile Zaryadye Park project in Moscow vandalized only days after its grand opening

2017-09-18T19:16:00-04:00

The Russian President Vladimir Putin opened Zaryadye Park near Red Square on 9 September, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, creators of New York’s High Line, but what Moscow city officials are lauding as a “new symbol of Russia” preservationists are decrying as a travesty that impinges on the Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral, two of Russia’s most sacred landmarks.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Zaryadye Park proposal for an ambitious replacement of the colossal Soviet-era Hotel Russia near the Kremlin in central Moscow won the international competition back in 2013 with a "wild urbanism" concept.

Rendering of DS+R's Zaryadye Park project in central Moscow. Image courtesy of Mos.ru.

The project has faced criticism from the city's preservationists, reportedly exceeded initial cost estimates, and already suffered a major act of vandalism shortly after its festive opening with Russian President Vladimir Putin in attendance.

One of Zaryadye Park's highlights is its V-shaped 'Floating Bridge,' extending far above the Moscow River. Image courtesy of Mos.ru.

Flyover Moscow with aerial photography of the city's architectural icons

2017-08-23T09:00:00-04:00

In a scene from Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams' character, the English teacher John Keating, famously climbs on top his desk to remind himself, and his students, that "we must look at things in a different way. The world looks very different from up here." Thanks to satellite and drone technology, we can now take Williams' advice quite literally by looking at the world from up above.

Sadovye Kvartaly Residential Complex

Using a remote-controlled drone, the photographer Denis Esakov has done just that by capturing the amazing "fifth facades" of Moscow's architecture. Photographing over seventy buildings throughout Europe's largest metropolis, Esakov flies over the city to reveal previously unseen geometries of the city's greatest architectural icons. The new vantage point exposes intriguing compositions that spark a re-evaluation of the works themselves and a query into the hidden symbolism behind the plans that up until now, have remained the secret of the architects and their c...

Moscow's new Avant-Garde Museum opens to the public

2017-07-14T17:22:00-04:00

As government officials in Moscow earmark Constructivist buildings for demolition in a massive project to relocate up to 1.6 million of the city’s residents, a non-profit museum dedicated to preserving Russia’s avant-garde architecture has opened in the Shabolovka neighbourhood.

The new Avant-Garde Museum is located in Na Shabolovke Gallery, which is a part of Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing complex built in the late 1920s by the rationalist Asnova (Association of New Architects). It is part of a district with a rich heritage of early Soviet architecture and design, dominated by the famous hyperboloid Shukhov radio tower. Supported by private grants and volunteers, the museums features photographs, video footage, archaeological fragments, archival materials, blueprints, salvaged interior fittings such as door handle, and tools belonging to the tower's visionary engineer, Vladimir Shukov.

"The idea for the space came from the local historian and activist Ilya Malcow, who has spent years collecting artifacts of the area—many of which are now on show at the museum. The neighborhood is unique, he says, because it was built virtually from scratch after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to house workers for the new factories and institutions.

Photo by Olga Alexeyenk...

Thousands protest in Moscow against planned demolition of Soviet-era housing blocks

2017-05-15T14:46:00-04:00

An interactive map of the former Soviet Union’s Constructivist architectural heritage went online just days before the city of Moscow published a list of 4,500 apartment buildings proposed for demolition as part of a plan to relocate up to 1.6 million residents. Describe by many residents as a property grab [...] the demolition plan has proven so unpopular that thousands turned up for a demonstration against it in Moscow on Sunday 14 May carrying signs with slogans like “My house is my castle”.

"The plan has also alarmed preservationists," The Art Newspaper writes. "Initially described as an effort to upgrade residents from pre-fabricated mass housing built under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the architectural targets have broadened and fears are mounting that it has become a carte-blanche for developers to destroy any building that stands in their way."

The Guardian's Alec Luhn calls the demolition plans "the most extensive Russian resettlement project in half a century," and some compare them to the forced collectivization of property under Stalin.

At the VDNKh park in Moscow, Workhaus design an educational "Urban Farm"

2017-01-25T17:29:00-05:00

Larger than the entirety of Monaco, the VDNKh is a trade show and amusement park in Moscow that houses, alongside other things, a slew of historical national pavilions and teaching spaces. Recently, an urban farm was added to the site, intended to serve as both a leisure space and an educational opportunity for children and adults. Designed by the Moscow-based studio Wowhaus, the project includes a completely new building and several pavilions set in a bucolic landscape.

The project, aptly titled “Urban Farm”, houses goats, donkeys, sheep, cows, rabbits, chickens, geese and ducks. An “orangery” is divided into three zones: one for hydroponic cultivation of herbs and vegetables, one for flowers in soil, and one for exotic plants in tubs. The spaces are designed so that they can also be used for public lectures.

Additionally, there’s a cooking school for children, a “woodland library”, a fishing area and picnic areas. The Urban Farm isn’t just about agriculture, though. The site will al...

Strelka Institute announces enrollment campaign for postgraduate education programme

2016-10-04T14:40:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Strelka Institute.

During the new academic year Strelka students will answer the question: ‘What has become “The New Normal” in the modern world?’

Strelka Institute for architecture, media and design launched the enrollment campaign for the postgraduate education program. The theme of the 7th academic year at Strelka is The New Normal.

Research will focus on the new contemporary condition, which has emerged because of the rapid development of technology — including machine intelligence, biotechnology, automation, alternative spaces created in VR and AR — and define new paths for urban design and development.

The New Normal is:

30 international students from Russia and abroad
monthly stipend of $600
5 months from February 2017 to July 2017
for experts in media, architecture, design, urbanism, creative industries (artists, scenarists, writers, filmakers), and other fields like software studies, digital media, social sciences
in English

Students will learn the met...

Moscow's own version of Pokémon Go will let you "catch" famous figures from Russian history

2016-07-25T13:46:00-04:00

Moscow City Hall has announced the launch of its own version of online game “Pokemon Go.” Russians will be asked to find and "catch" historical figures in the streets of the capital via an app called “Know Moscow.Photo.” [...] people will be able to catch and take a selfie with [...] Yury Gagarin, Alexander Pushkin, Pyotr Chaikovsky, [founder of the first Russian university] Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and the tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” [...]

Moscow's metro expansion moves ahead of schedule

2016-05-11T17:14:00-04:00

The already rapid expansion of the Moscow metro may be picking up steam, if a flurry of announcements in recent days is to be believed. A brand-new portion of the Butovskaya metro line, which will link the southernmost stations of the orange and gray Lines, may be open to the public by the end of this week, Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin said Friday, RIA Novosti reported.

"The new line will include three stations — Ulitsa Starokachalovskaya, with a transfer to the gray line station Bulvar Dmitria Donskogo, Lesoparkovaya and Bitsevsky Park, which connects to the orange line station Novoyasenevskaya."

Moscow is in the midst of a major infrastructure-overhaul, with plans to increase the number of stations by nearly 40% by 2020. And, if the reports are correct, they're way ahead of schedule.

The master plan includes some 79 new stations, radically changing the city and how people get around in it.

More Muscovite news:

Moscow's iconic Shukhov Tower added to World Monuments Fund Watch List

2016-03-21T13:32:00-04:00

The Shukhov Tower, a 1920s broadcast transmission tower in Moscow that is a landmark of modernist structural engineering, has been placed on the 2016 World Monuments Fund Watch list of endangered global cultural heritage sites. Activists in Moscow organized two days of events over the weekend to observe the tower’s 94th birthday [...] At a Kremlin meeting last December, Mr. Putin praised activists for rallying to save cultural heritage sites and dressed down officials for not doing enough.

The Shukhov Tower, also known as Shabolovka Tower, previously in the Archinect news:

Editor's Picks #432

2015-10-25T18:43:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg penned an essay on The humanity of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, wherein she argues "the Biennial is more about architects than it is about architecture."

Meanwhile Julia Ingalls reviewed the book Conversations with Architects: In the Age of Celebrity, by former corporate interior designer turned international architectural curator Vladimir Belogolovsky. DTElmore was convinced "this article has helped me to see that now, more than ever, buildings and criticism of buildings are inextricably linked to the characters that design them, possibly to the detriment of architecture."

News

Moscow is on a roll, of post-industrial rehab; with Renzo Piano Building Workshop releasing a redesign - for turning a Moscow power station into an art site for the V-A-C Foundation and Neutelings Riedijk Architects proposing golden glass and steel towers for a defunct Moscow auto plant.

The SANAA designed arts and community center, the River, finally opened its doors to the public...

Renzo Piano Building Workshop redesigns Moscow power station into art site

2015-10-15T14:21:00-04:00

Instead of belching oppressive fumes over Moscow's recently pedestrianized Red October District, the iconic smokestacks of the century-old GES2 power station will be transformed into conduits for ventilation as part of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop's sustainable redesign of the facility into an art site for the V-A-C Foundation.

Spearheaded by the Building Workshop's 46-year-old Paris-based partner Antonio Belvedere, the site will fit into a 150 meter by 150 meter square and feature three main "poles": Welcoming, Education, and Exhibitions.

The latter two poles are conceived of as interior spaces, and will incorporate classrooms, residency spaces, and a flexible gallery that can accommodate a variety of different artistic mediums.

The largely outdoor Welcoming pole will include a sculpture garden, restaurant/cafe, library, an indoor/outdoor piazza, and serve as host for live events and temporary art installations.