«Nizhnie Mnevniki» subway station in Moscow

Nostalghia

White vaults filled with light, and marbles of gorgeous colors and textures, that’s the image of Moscow Metro from authors’ childhood memories. Thin sheets curved into the vaulted shape and cut with semicircles of arches are placed inside the station. Originally strictly utilitarian, thus the station is created anew. Fragments of textures and colors of marble cladding reappear under restorer’s hand, like an old frescoes once hidden beneath the layers of whitewash. Through the signs and images of space, surfaces, materials, we establish connection with the history of Moscow metro and its architectural past.

Architecture of street pavilions echoes the underground vaulted space, the first allusion of what awaits underneath.

Two-tear arcade wall runs through both upper and lower underground levels of station. Atrium space with escalators appears as an image of antique structures, cirques or aqueducts with the system of spacer arches.

Platforms level is shaped by long parallel naves and rows of light-filled semicircular arches. Through the openings of arches, lit brightly by inside hidden lamps, the light soaks as if from within the walls. In the place where the central nave should be, a zone of trains is located instead, treated as a cutout black emptiness, taken off the visual communication.