Text by CLOT Magazine
Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design is a non-governmental educational institution based in Moscow. Founded in 2009 with the aim of ‘changing the cultural and physical landscapes of Russian cities’.
Through an educational project that includes research tools adopted from various disciplines like sociology, economics, architecture, and political and cultural studies, the Strelka Institute trains future architects, designers and media professionals. The program is project-based, and architects and researchers from top companies like OMA, MIT, Hyper Island or The Why Factory have taught and given lectures.
Moscow has seen design project implementation by leading international bureaus such as OMA, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Zaha Hadid, and Herzog & de Meuron. How do the leading architects feel about the results and prospects of working with Moscow?
To go deeply into this and other questions, Dutch architect, founder of OMA and previously the director of the Strelka Institute educational programme Rem Koolhaas participated on July 17 in the panel discussion Window to Europe. Did Moscow Manage to Find a Common Ground with Foreign Architects?
The panel was held during the Moscow Urban Forum business programme and Winy Maas, co-founding Partner at MVRDV; Charles Renfro, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R); Francine Houben, founding partner at Mecanoo architecten; Sergei Tchoban, partner at SPEECH; Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow; and Yuri Grigoryan, head of Project Meganom joined Rem Koolhaas at the panel. Giovanna Carnevali, Director of the Architecture Competition Department at Strelka KB, moderated the discussion.
I did not at all anticipate the kind of enormous impact Strelka would have here. And I didn’t anticipate at all how Moscow itself would in a way become a kind of magnifying machine for architectural thinking (…), Moscow now recognises public spaces as a key component of the city, said Rem Koolhaas during the Forum discussion.
