In a presentation at the French Embassy, Skolkovo architects unveiled the masterplan for the innovation city: it shows an architectural concept proposed by the French company AREP-Ville. Architect members of the Town Planning Council are working on a detailed design of the city’s districts and the local university will open its doors to students in two years.
Another milestone has been reached in the Skolkovo Innovation Center construction project: the city’s masterplan designed by AREP-Ville has been approved. Specialists from the engineering firm SETEC and landscapers from Michel Desvigne – both French companies – assisted with the design. The presentation took place at the French Embassy in Russia today, 8 September.
“Now that we have approved an architectural concept, we can start designing buildings and facilities,” said Skolkovo Executive Director in Territory Development Viktor Maslakov.
In fact, the masterplan is an incarnation of the AREP-Ville architectural concept that won the architecture competition this March: the innovation city will resemble a W tilted to the left, comprised of four large zones and five clusters (the possibility of a sixth cluster is under consideration) and located between the Setun River Valley and the Minsk Highway, practically alongside Moscow Ring Road.
As Anton Yakovenko, Skolkovo’s Strategic Partnership director, reported at the presentation, the project will be carried out in several stages. The university, technopark and several residential blocks will be built in two central zones by 2014. That same year, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, created in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will open its doors to its first students; it expects to train a total of 1,800 students. The next stages of the project will include construction of the Innovation Center’s south-eastern section, followed by its north-western district.
Right now, it’s impossible to say exactly what Skolkovo will look like when it is finally built: area supervisors selected from the Foundation’s Town Planning Council have not yet approved final plans for their respective zones, although sketch plans do exist. For example, the zone called “Block T1,” located in the south-east of the innovation city (supervised by Sergey Tchoban and Kazuo Sejima), may be based on the St Petersburg model of distinctly outlined blocks. There are several options for other Skolkovo zones, too: proposed design concepts for the innovation city’s entrance zone were shown at the presentation for the first time. These include a giant sphere designed by Japanese architects and an equally huge cube proposed by a Dutch firm.
“We believe these concepts will help the city entrance zone look ‘tapered’,” Yakovenko said. He added that they are now working on a feasibility study of all the proposals.
However, the architecture competitions have hardly begun: area supervisors are only now finalising plans for the city’s districts, and these plans will be submitted for approval in the near future. That’s when an architecture competition will start, with winners eligible to design individual buildings. Maslakov delivered this information in his opening remarks. It has already been announced that some designs will be drafted by area supervisors and members of the Skolkovo Town Planning Council, including two Russian architects, Sergey Tchoban and Yuri Grigoryan.
Only in the transportation arena is the situation clear, and that’s because it’s dictated by the future city’s geographic location.
Currently, Skolkovo is linked with Moscow by the overly congested Minsk Highway, and the masterplan designers realise that this situation needs to be fixed. They say that guests of the innovation city should not rely on using personal transportation: eco-friendly buses and taxis will be provided within the city, while permanent residents will ride bicycles. All inbound fuel-powered vehicles will be left at special park-and-ride lots. Right now, the designers are looking at space for 8,000-12,000 cars, but this number will decrease over time, as the public transportation system assumes the load of most external passenger flow.
However, parking lots for fuel-powered cars and “external” public transportation terminals will be located around five connection hubs. The main hub will connect Skolkovo with the Trekhgorka station in the Belarus direction, while in the southern direction, the hub may connect to the Aeroexpress line – this option is currently being worked out. In addition, Moscow city authorities have promised to build a metro line to Skolkovo; the location of the future city is part of the Greater Moscow area.
As for the innovation city’s population, it will host a total of some 45,000, with 30,000 permanent residents (researchers, students and university professors) and 15,000 people (including 4,000 guests) visiting Skolkovo during the day. But all that is still a long ways away.