DK Mashinostroiteley Voronezh City Palace of Culture, GDK

2020: Reconstruction of Mashinostroiteley recreation center

February 28, 2020 Union of Moscow Architects announced that he was among the winners of the President's grant competition RUSSIAN FEDERATION for the development of civil society.

On February 21, 2020, at a meeting of the Coordinating Committee of the Presidential Grants Fund, the results of the first competition in 2020 were announced. In total, 9,308 projects were submitted to the competition by non-profit organizations from 85 regions of the country, of which 2,017 were selected. The total amount of grant funds allocated for winning projects is more than 4 billion rubles.

The Union of Moscow Architects for the first time submitted an application and became one of the winners of the competition of the Presidential Grants Fund for the Development of Civil Society. The grant received the project "Identity in the Typical," dedicated to the study of Soviet Houses of Culture, their potential for development, options for reconstruction and adaptation to the modern needs of people.

Throughout the 20th century, hundreds, if not thousands, of Houses of Culture were built in the Soviet state. Performing various functions - a theater and a cinema, an exhibition hall, a platform for children and adult creative studios - they were a concentration of cultural and social activity in almost every district and settlement in Russia. Since the 90s of the last century, with a change in the economic and political situation, the system of Houses of Culture has ceased to function. But most of the buildings have still been preserved, and most importantly, people have retained the need for local cultural centers, but in a modern format and with expanded functionality.

In 2018, in Voronezh, a group of young architects led by Daria Naugolnova and Alexey Boev initiated the project "Identity in the Typical" in order to study the potential and possibility of reformatting local Houses of Culture. Very quickly, the project went beyond the borders of one city and received the support of several Russian and international organizations supporting initiatives in the socio-cultural sphere. A large-scale study was conducted. In 2019, thanks to the support of the Voronezh administration, a project for the reconstruction of the local recreation center Mashinostroiteley (City Palace of Culture, GDK) was developed and implemented, which opened in December 2019.

To scale the project "Identity in Typical," collect information and conduct research in other regions and cities of Russia, and most importantly to develop a methodology for the renovation of Houses of Culture throughout the country, the team needed the support of a professional community. The Union of Moscow Architects saw great potential in the initiative of young architects and joined the project, providing its resources and opportunities for its development.

The first step on this path was the Presidential Grant application. Receiving support from the state will allow during 2020 to continue research at a higher level, to hold a series of workshops, conferences, exhibitions in various regions of our country in order to establish a dialogue between representatives and leaders of the recreation center, the architectural community, the local administration, journalists and local residents. And also to prove by concrete examples the mutual benefit from rethinking the functioning and rebranding of the recreation center and to prepare methodological recommendations for launching renovation programs of the Houses of Culture by local communities and initiative groups.