Architect Rem Koolhaas has converted a Soviet-era pavilion into a space for art and an open library for Dasha Zhukova. Photo: Ben Pruchnie © Garage Center for Contemporary Art

Rem Koolhaas has converted a Soviet-era pavilion into a space for art and an open library for Dasha Zhukova that opens to the public on June 12, 2015. 

The 5,400 square-meter building will feature a state of the art façade consisting of a translucent double-layer of polycarbonate that is elevated two meters from the ground to visually reconnect the Museum’s interior to the park. The structure will be immediately recognizable worldwide by its unique silhouette, produced by two 11-meter wide, vertically sliding panels that rise seven meters above a rooftop terrace. The new building will provide Garage with inventive opportunities for programming through five exhibition galleries, auditorium, resource room, and education spaces, including a creative center for children, as well as a bookshop and café.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Gorky Park, Moscow. Image courtesy of OMA

Garage Founder Dasha Zhukova said that '' Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s past and future are inextricably linked to architecture. In 2008 we saved and restored the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, a spectacular and important example of Russian constructivist architecture in Moscow. In 2012 we erected a temporary pavilion with an exceptionally innovative design to utilize hi-tech construction methods and environmentally-friendly recycled materials. In 2015 we will open a new permanent home in Gorky Park, renovating a Soviet-era building with one of the most important architects of our time – Rem Koolhaas. I am certain that our collaboration will help us to create a new vision for contemporary art in Russia. Together with our Garage team, we will breathe life back into a site which was derelict and abandoned for over two decades.''

Photo Nicolay Zverkov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art,Gorky Park,Moscow; image courtesy of OMA

Founder, OMA Rem Koolhaas said that '' Now that preservation is increasingly important in our approach to existing cities, the period between the 1960s and 1980s is, worldwide, an exception. We can imagine saving Fin de Siècle, early Modernism, but the more anonymous and impersonal architecture that emerged after World War II has few fans and almost no defenders. That is why we were very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of Vremena Goda into the new house for Garage. We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the Soviet wreckage and fi nd new uses and interpretations for them; it also enabled us to avoid the exaggeration of standards and scale that is becoming an aspect of contemporary art spaces.'' 

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art,Gorky Park, education platform; image courtesy of OMA

Photo Nicolay Zverkov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art,Gorky Park,Moscow; image courtesy of OMA

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