MAGICAL MOSCOW PARK

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in partnership with Hargreaves Associates and Citymakers, has opened major portions of Zaryadye Park — the first large-scale public park to open in Moscow in the last 50 years.

Scheduled to reach full completion later this year, the 35-acre scheme includes an overlook that cantilevers 70 metres over Moscow river, five pavilions, two amphitheatres and a philharmonic concert hall. The international team sought to transform the historically commercial territory into a vibrant public area, intertwining landscape and hardscape, complementing the city’s traditionally symmetrical park spaces.

Charles Renfro, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, explains “Zarydaye Park is at once park, urban plaza, social space, cultural amenity, and recreational armature. In order to maintain the maximum level of accessibility, our design overlays landscape onto the 14,000 square metres of enclosed program required by the competition brief. The resulting simultaneity generates a series of elemental face-offs between the natural and the artificial, urban and rural, interior and exterior.”

Zaryadye Park features a custom stone paving system that aims to seamlessly blend nature and architecture, and encourages visitors to meander. Moving between each of the site’s four corners, visitors find terraces that recreate Russia’s varied natural landscapes.

Green areas provide spaces for park-goers to gather together, while the sectional overlay facilitates active and passive climate-control strategies that ensure visitors can utilise the park throughout the year. Programmed destinations include performance spaces, cultural pavilions, and a series of observation points that frame views of the Moscow cityscape.

Zaryadye Park was designed by an international consortium — led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in partnership with Hargreaves Associates and Citymakers — that also included Transsolar, Buro Happold, Central Park Conservancy, Directional Logic, Arup, Arteza, Mahpi, and Mosinzhproek.

“Our ambition for this central park in Moscow to express itself as a national park for Russia at large,” described Mary Margaret Jones, a senior principal and president at Hargreaves Associates. “The site’s natural slope lent itself to a physical palette that samples Russia’s distinct regional landscapes: tundra, steppe, forest and wetland forest.”

Petr Kudryavtsev and Andrey Grinev, founding partners at Citymakers, added, “We have integrated holistic strategies to keep the park activated year-round including constructed environments that temper the city’s harsh climate; social and cultural programs geared towards nature exploration; and a long-term, sustainable management model.”

Images © Diller Scofidio + Renfro