St. Simeon Verkhotursky Church

Traditional Orthodox architecture rethought

Location: Moscow, Russia
Client: PSN group

Programme: Modern design for Russian Orthodox parish complex including three-altar temple for 500 – 700 people and a number of premises for out-of-liturgical activity.

“What is a road exist for if it doesn’t lead to a temple?”
Repetance by Tengiz Abuladze, 1984

Today in Russia the Church retains its importance and still is a part of people’s everyday life. At the same time there is still no clear vision for the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church meaning, its architectural language and place in society and city.

Given a unique task for such a vision attempt, our team starts first a research of russian temple planning history and principles, and then creates two concepts for St. Simeon Verkhotursky Church architecture. The design concepts were oriented on several tasks:

to create an object in the ensemble of Domashiny architecture
to rethink the architectural image of Orthodox church
to identify traditions by means of contemporary architecture
to create a dominant on the cross of Novocherkasskiy boulevard and Donetskaya street
to create a big multifunctional complex (Sunday school for 100 students, Dining room for 100-150 people, house of clergy and service space) on the plot of 0,3 ha

Stages:
2015 Concept #1
2016 Concept #2

Team:
MLA+: Markus Appenzeller, Ildar Biganyakov, Arseniy Bychkov, Yana Golubeva, Violetta Gunina, Viktor Korotych,