Pavilion “Meta-formation”
- event
- ARCH Moscow, 2024
- dates
- May 2024
- location
- Russia, Moscow
- authors
- Anton Nadtochiy, Vera Butko, Sergey Nadtochiy, Alisa Silantieva, Alena Slukhina, Anastasia Solomko, Roman Kasyan, Timofey Zhilin, Ivan Proselkov, Matvey Naumov, Polina Yavna, Elena Argutinskaya-Dolgorukaya
- partners
- Cladding Solutions, Alexvit, Varton, MADE IN THE WORLD, Almo, Alternativa Group, Larta Glass, Smart Company, VITRULAN
For its 30th anniversary, ATRIUM created the Meta-formation Pavilion as part of the ARCH Moscow exhibition, presenting 11 projects developed by the studio’s architects over different years.
The key exhibit of the pavilion was a fictional environment made available to visitors as a computer game. Guests travelled through a virtual pseudo-natural and pseudo-architectural landscape, visualising one possible form of future reality.
For the first time, the architectural studio created an immersive virtual game based on its own projects, offering visitors the chance to explore them in an engaging and interactive format.
Fragments of this world also flowed into the pavilion interior, filling it with pink fur and uniting the floor, ceiling and walls into a single spatial structure.
The Meta-formation exhibition explored complex form-making, the influence of technology on architecture, and the creation of vivid spatial experiences. The project had an artistic, playful and discursive character. It raised questions about the values of contemporary architecture, the role of the architect and the authorial artistic statement, as well as the aesthetic and spatial qualities that the environment of the future may possess.
“Our profession is a game of creating the future. We create imaginary worlds that eventually become our everyday reality,” says Vera Butko, commenting on how the experimental installation relates to architectural practice.
At ATRIUM, we believe that architecture can inspire. For us, it is an art that creates distinctive emotions and meanings, as well as a way of reflecting the worldview of its time and place, says Anton Nadtochiy.
Over the four days of the exhibition, more than 700 people immersed themselves in ATRIUM’s metaverse through the Meta-formation game, while the pavilion was visited by around 11,000 people. The opening of the pavilion was accompanied by a presentation from the authors of the exhibition. Guests included the studio’s clients and partners, exhibition visitors and members of the architectural community, including Moscow Chief Architect Sergey Kuznetsov and ARCH Moscow founder Vasily Bychkov.
ATRIUM once again presented itself as one of the most innovative and creatively bold architectural studios. The architects also took an active part in the exhibition’s business programme: they presented the Future Generations Park project in Yakutsk in the Masters section, took part in the discussions How to Build the School of the Future? and Architecture in the Digital Age, presented a new concept masterplan for the NRU MGSU campus, and more.
