The urban consultancy Strelka KB has announced the winners of the international competition for alternative housing in Russia. Designed to test the country's new Integrated Guidelines for Urban Development, the competition asked participants to rethink standardized housing and apartment typologies. 689 projects were submitted from 37 countries to address issues of adaptability, ergonomic efficiency and functional diversity.
The competition participants were asked to face a paradigm shift in urban territory development and residential construction in a Russian context. The competition was held in two stages. After a popular vote and a jury decision in September 2018, 20 finalists were chosen and given grants to improve their projects. In total, the 20 finalists developed 111 buildings and 320 model apartments. In the second stage in December 2018, first, second, and third category winners were chosen and received additional grants. The competition participants proposed solutions that accounted for the various demands of future users: from basic, everyday needs to socializing and self-realization.
Five solutions won a 1st place mention: AKVS architecture (Serbia), atArchitecture / Avneesh+Neha (India), SIDEREAL (Spain), STVX+Maria Eizayaga+Emilio Lopez (Mexico), and The Center for Spatial Technologies+Leverage Strategy (Germany). The international jury consisted of Natalie De Vries, Alessandro Bosshard, Vladimir Plotkin, Bart Goldhoorn, Claudia Ricciardi, Anna Shapiro, Olga Aleksakova and Yuliya Burdova, Nicholay Lyashenko and Alexander Tsimailo, and Giovanna Carnevali.
Denis Leontiev, CEO of Strelka KB, said that, "Strelka KB is a platform for high-profile competitions in Russia, used by emerging Russian architects and more than 5,000 bureaus around the world. Any big challenges that clients come to us with, whether they are the creation of from nanotech laboratories and high-tech buildings to public spaces, housing and sports facilities — we conduct competitions to suit their needs. For us, competitions are a crash test for the functional models that we ourselves create for a territory or a housing complex."
