Developers have released design plans for the housing element of the Moscow ZiL industrial zone redevelopment.

According to RBK Realty magazine, nine architecture firms from Russia, the USA and the Netherlands will be working on housing in the redevelopment of the former automobile factory, located in the south of Moscow. [...]

The building presented by Dutch agency Neutelings Riedijk Architecten consists of 10 towers, each with a golden glass and steel facade. — calvertjournal.com

Moscow's landscape is filled with Soviet-era buildings, many of them shuttered after the privatisation programme of the Nineties. Built for the people's benefit, they are now shut away off from public access, patrolled by security guards, most of whom never dream of exploring the upper floors.

But it is the roof of the Moscow pavilion that brings us here. Because of its concave shape the roof looks like a giant skate ramp. My friends and I want to see if it can perform like one too.  — calvertjournal.com

We suspect the city’s notoriously bad traffic and general “aloofness” of the people contributed to its low ranking, as well as its culinary scene, which was also ranked dead last in this year’s poll. — Travel + Leisure

The ideals of Novye Cheryomushki may have died, but its methods and techniques remain — having managed to make some people very wealthy. Moscow suburbia is not so much the remnants of a great experiment, perhaps, but suburbia like any other suburbia — a place of dreams and boredom, great ideas being implemented and then slowly crushed. — calvertjournal.com

The design is relatively straightforward and free of OMA’s usual quirky structural tricks, once you get past the sliding entrance portals. Plywood-lined steps...lead you to an educational area, where visitors can explore the Garage digital archive, and back down the terraced levels of a bookshop. Up on the main gallery floor, there’s a big open space, currently filled with ping-pong antics...When the building is finally completed in [Sept.], a big red staircase will lead up to an open roof-deck. — The Guardian

Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum for Contemporary Art is due to open the doors of its new $27m home in Gorky Park to invited guests on 10 June and the public two days later. The museum is housed in a Soviet-era pavilion that has been converted by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas [...].

In another riff on the building’s architecture, Garage will be hosting a conference in October on Soviet Modernism, a project of the Austrian curator Georg Schöllhammer [...]. — The Art Newspaper

The plan was to create a new type of city that answered the needs of Moscow’s creative middle classes. But did the exit of Sergei Kapkov, the culture minister who ushered in these changes, also signal the end of the city’s urban revival? [...]

“Kapkov’s reforms provided a whole generation of young creative types with a sense – perhaps somewhat illusory – that they could do things on a small scale; that there was a real fabric of life in a public city,” said Tsentsiper. — theguardian.com

The State Hermitage Museum signed a protocol of intent on Wednesday, 11 March, with the St Petersburg-based LSR development group to open a satellite branch of the museum in Moscow, on the grounds of the landmark former Soviet ZIL automobile plant. [...]

Also present was the Canadian architect Hani Rashid who will design the satellite with his New York-based firm Asymptote Architecture. Russian media report that construction is due to be completed by 2018. — theartnewspaper.com

Big, brash, and full of energy, Moscow is a city that knows how to make an impression. But for all its attractions — world-class museums, clubs and rapidly transforming food scene, to name a few — its downsides are impossible to ignore. [...]

This week, The Calvert Journal considers Moscow’s prospects, consulting experts at the Moscow Urban Forum, looking in detail at two projects in the pipeline — VDNKh and Zaryadye Park — and checking out some neighbourhoods that are already going places. — calvertjournal.com

This process is cheaper and faster than restoration, and allows developers to make cosmetic improvements as they see fit. Moscow, you are a fake and a fraud. — NYT

In A Model for a City photographer Petr Antonov studies Moscow as the perfect example of a post-Soviet urban environment. The streets, buildings, cars and people captured by his camera are isolated from their everyday purposes and work like visual elements of the cityscape. [...] Antonov successfully captured the change so typical for most post-Soviet cities: newly built high-rises and faceless malls emerging on the horizon, ugly signage and never-ending building works. — calvertjournal.com

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art announced yesterday that its forthcoming permanent home inside the Soviet-era eatery in the capital’s central Gorky Park is due to open in June 2015. [...]

And Rem Koolhaas, who was tasked with transforming the abandoned restaurant's ruin for the museum, is leaving it largely untouched. — blouinartinfo.com

Moscow City Hall has formally prohibited the moving or reassembly of a Soviet architectural landmark that has been under threat of demolition blamed by conservationists on real estate developers. [...]

The radio tower's materials, architectural composition, structural elements and location all fall under the conservation order by City Hall's heritage department, published by Consultant.ru judicial database.

This puts an end to earlier proposals to move or dismantle and rebuild the tower. — themoscowtimes.com

Moscow wants to make Russia the "center of the sporting world," but the price tag will be steep. Four years before the 2018 World Cup, costs are exploding in the next host country, with the two most important stadiums each costing more than a billion euros. — spiegel.de