LDA Design, in partnership with KRNV Architecture, has won two sites in the Face of Renovation international competition, managed by the Moscow Government.

The sites span the city, from Altufevsky in the north east to the districts of Donskoy and Kotlovka in the south west.

Much of Moscow’s Soviet-era housing blocks are in urgent need of update. This competition was a call for the best ideas from around the world to transform architectural facades as the city pushes to raise housing standards and ensure existing stock is better integrated into new developments.

The initiative is part of a drive to create more liveable neighbourhoods, with greater emphasis on new, open and comfortable urban spaces, high-quality housing, well thought out transport infrastructure and easy access to the kinds of facilities that improve daily lives.

Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow and Chairman of the Archcouncil of Moscow, set out the scale of the challenge and the opportunity: “We have a chance to improve the environment and you should not be afraid to take it.”

Facades, if made to work hard, can connect our worlds inside and out creating a balance between nature and architecture. They are part of the story, but not all of it. They need to be safe, sensitive to their surroundings and indicative of better quality homes within.

As Evgeny Didorenko, LDA Design’s project lead for the competition, explains: “The greenest, most sustainable building is the one that’s already standing, but only if it’s brought up to standard, is knitted into wider new development and properly meets the needs of people today.

“Our vision was to take fragmented development and create a single urban fabric for each district that is green, welcoming, distinctive and self-sufficient with a large central park and shared open spaces connecting old and new homes.”