Skoltech Interiors | Sredaa

Skoltech Interim Campus is a temporary home designed by Sredaa for the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. While waiting for the permanent campus by Herzog and De Meuron, Skoltech required a building to accommodate the developing layout of workshops, laboratories, office spaces and auditoriums. Originally being a part of the Technopark Office Centre, the ‘shell-and-core’ building’s interior architecture was designed by Sredaa from scratch to meet the Skoltech’s requirements. 

Skoltech is a progressive institution founded in 2011. Sredaa took on functional approach and referred to utilitarian features of spaces traced during planning stage. Functional scheme suggested splitting spaces of the building into two groups: basic rooms and those spaces for circulation, both horizontal and vertical (corridors and staircases). Architects principally split the visual appearance of these two types of spaces. In those, linked to movement, colour was used as main element of design, and in those linked to work, rest and service (maintenance), monochrome scheme was applied to create neutral atmosphere with technical features embedded to transform spaces to fit activities by different research clusters. 

Cohort Space is one of the key elements of the project. It is a common space for students based on a staircase-like structure with resting on the top and two meeting rooms taking up space below the stairs. Structure is trimmed with soft green felt, which aims to create welcoming and tactile environment. Architects were interested in bringing up notions of traditional academia by constructing amphitheatre-like structure, however filling it with new meanings of contemporary institution. While there is a possibility for those sat on a staircase to follow the formal lectures and talks given in front of it, space of Cohort could be used in a variety of imaginative ways for meetings, group work and rest, stating the independence of thinking and team work as key to contemporary research and science.