1st Prize: Competition for the design of the cultural center and park proclaimed UNESCO World Heritage in 2005.

The main concept of the Masterplan is to place the Olonkho International Center in the Northern part of the site, facing the Lake Saisar, between Oyunskogo Street and the Tyoploe Canal. The OIC would be the main iconic building of the masterplan with a maximum height of 60m but its mass will be balanced by the presence of the new Park along the embankment of the Canal. The lake embankments are a key elements of the Olonkho International Center complex and become a part of it. Visitors will be provided with an easy access to the waterfront from the park side. The visitor’s route to the water will be both functional and cultural, an attraction point and a key point in the tourist route from the Olonkho International Center to the entire complex.

For this reason activity spots, including cafés and restaurants, will be placed along the waterfront to ensure access to and usage of it all year round and a pedestrian link to the water will be created below the highway.

All the other functions will be placed along Avtodorozhnaya Street, were all the city plant network is already placed, following a new set-back street designed as a tense arch. The arch constituted by the building façade is a statement of the new intervention towards the city and a limit for the new Olonkho Park at its shoulder. This new set-back is also a warm pedestrian way from the Southern residential settlement to the new business center and theOIC even if all the new buildings of the masterplan operate independently from each other as well as their functions.

In this view of the masterplan the park is the superior element both in literal and figurative sense. The park is the connective fabric between all the new functions and buildings. It represents the continuation of the Olonkho tale in outdoor rooms with symbols and elements of the Yakutian tradition. While the cultural itinerary is necessarily designed inside the OIC in winter, in summer the cultural journey takes place in the greenery of the landscape.

A big attention has been paid to the economical and environmental sustainability of any of them so as to the synergic relationship that makes the whole intervention a unique innovative piece of architectural, urban and artistic vision.