Presentation of Zodchestvo-2016 Festival was Held at Trekhgornaya Manufactura

This year the festival format will change dramatically; apart from being an exhibition of achievements of architectural industry, it will also become a real tool for development of the territory where it will be held. The former Trekhgornaya Manufactura textile factory in Krasnaya Presnya was selected as a pilot site.

The idea to hold the Festival at the industrial site came to the curators of Zodchestvo Festival,Andrey and Nikita Asadov, when they were in Shenzhen, China, at the International Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (UABB), where the Russian Pavilion entitled “New Industries” was presented this year. Each time the Biennale is held at a new ex-industrial site, and after the exhibition, the place becomes improved, more interesting and popular.

‘The Chinese not only talk about modern post-industrial spaces, but also work right there,’ says curator of the festival Andrey Asadov. ‘Following the example of Shenzhen, this year Zodchestvo is going to become a real workshop, factory of thoughts, ideas, real initiatives and projects for on-the-spot territory development.’

Thus, it flows organically from the theme of last year’s Festival — New Industries, which showed the best ways for post-industrial development throughout Russia.

‘It’s great that new sites are being developed, and our two key events — ARCH Moscow and Zodchestvo — will be different from each other and cover more various themes. The idea to use events with large influx of experts and interested people is favourable for both the Festival and its sites,’ said Chief Architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov. ‘Post-industrial development of territories is a very positive direction; Moscow has just settled down to this course, thanks to the policy of Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.’

The Trekhgornaya Manufactura textile factory occupies about 9.5 hectares. There are 4 monuments of architecture and 14 city-forming objects in the area. Zodchestvo Festival will take place in two former production facilities — in one of them expositions of regions and business partners, and Forum will be held; while contests, special exhibition projects and discussion platform will be situated in the other one.

One of the main themes of the Festival, of course, will be the development strategy for the territory of the Trekhgornaya Manufactura. Open architecture competition for the concept of improvement of the former textile factory will be held. Two workshops on this topic will also be conducted under the supervision of AB “Rozhdestvenka”, which has already been engaged in the development of manufacture public spaces.

In addition to this, this year Zodchestvo will have two more new sites — HPP-1 on Raushskaya Embankment, which is about to change its functions and tries to evaluate its ‘creative’ potential; and the textile factory in the city of Ozyory, which is connected with the Trekhgornaya Manufactura and on the basis of which a research workshop in the form of summer school will be held.

‘Discussions concerning the city and various objects are always interesting; and I am not only for the initiatives related to practical meaning and easy-to-understand implementation, but also for the fact so that discussions come up by themselves’, says Sergey Kuznetsov. ‘Initiatives that come from professional circles as ideas for further development often turn out to be very helpful.’