Project Meganom To Remodel Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

Russian practice Project Meganom have won a competition to redesign the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

Their winning entry seeks to transform the museum complex into a hive of cultural activity, preserving the institution’s world class art collection whilst “actively engaging with the surrounding territory as a potential space for exhibition, dialogue, and communication.” The project focuses less on the provision of new areas but rather provides a single unified platform for a series of discordant parts, tying together all the elements of the environment into one cohesive design – “from buildings and monuments to benches and navigation.”

The current state of the museum is fragmented. Housed in a series of inaccessible private mansions and historic monuments, not originally designed as public buildings, Project Meganom’s proposal aims to bring a new level of cohesion to the institution. According to the architects, “the Pushkin Museum has become one of the most memorable icons of the city and is one of the most valuable architectural monuments: a temple of art and culture.”

Aerial View. Image Courtesy of Project Meganom

In their proposal, the extended area will become a “Museum Town, destined to become a place of cultural activity.” However, the conflict that hinders the realization of the project in its entirety is the contradiction between the need to increase the area of the museum and to follow the the constraints of heritage protection. Being under careful public scrutiny, “the attempt to increase the museum’s ground area and endanger the historical environment” is being opposed. The architects argue that the “museification of the spirit of the place, as well as a creation of the Restoration Center (school) could enrich the palette of activities of the Museum and have a healing effect on the area of Old Moscow, which has been traumatized in recent decades.”

Visualisation (night). Image Courtesy of Project Meganom

Rhizosphere. More than design

From the Architects. Rhizosphere – is the entire museum site: a united symbolic space, a thin layer, joining the roots of the buildings – fertile platform for urban culture and art. The sphere of museum culture absorbs the various plots and separate buildings, respecting the requirements for historical building protection, allowing for the programming of landscaping areas, public art exposition, and temporary elements.

Visualisation. Image Courtesy of Project Meganom

The project takes advantage of imperfect legislation, which focuses on preservation of buildings themselves, at times putting aside the historical context and its elements as an important factor to preserve and nurture. Rhizosphere is not only a design that can change over time but it’s an artifact, a protocol than can adapt over time. As a strategy for future development, it senses and takes into account the changing needs of time and culture, climate and city.

Courtesy of Project Meganom

Consistently integrating and merging together multiple layers of old and new, existing and imagined, the new sphere is destined to create a new kind of space which preserves the spirit of a historical town. When the visitor approaches the Rhizosphere from either side he immediately sets foot in the museum space. Here, everything is the same as in the rest of Moscow but has a unique quality – all the buildings join the architectural collection without a single incongruous sign or advertisement. The public space is open and saturated with art. In the winter the granite pathways thaw out to reveal the navigation which makes it easy to orient oneself in space.

Material Study. Image Courtesy of Project Meganom

The design of Rhizosphere is assembled through the modular granite pavement blocks with iron and bronze inserts across squares, boulevards, paths and courtyards, walls of varying heights, benches, objects carrying information and navigation, objects of art and preserved or recreated elements of the historical environment. An important role is given to the constantly evolving collection of trees and plants. The possible expansion of theRhizosphere by narrowing Volkhonka Street will create a new urban boulevard and a front facade of the Museum Town, facing the river.

Competition: Architectural Concepts Competition for The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Award: First Place
Project Name: RHIZOSPHERE. THE GROUND
Architects: Project Meganom
Location: Volkhonka Street, Moscow, Russia, 101000
Partner In Charge: Y. Grigoryan
Project Leader: E. Uglovskaya
Design Team: D. Apalkova, M. Fedorova, Y. Kuznecov
Collaborating Architects & Engineers: Arup
Transport Consultants: MIC Mobilty
Client: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Area: 21794.0 sqm
Year: 2014
Photographs: Courtesy of Project Meganom

Original article