Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is a major new international arts center in Moscow.  It promotes the development of contemporary culture in Russia and serves as a catalyst and meeting point for the city’s emerging arts scene.
 
The Center is housed at the former Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed in 1926 by the constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov.
 

The interior

At 8,500 square meters, Melnikov’s bus depot is a vast building, covering almost three times the area of the Parthenon. One of its most distinctive features is its parallelogram-shaped floor plan. This allowed for an ingenious parking system created by Melnikov called free-flow, whereby all of the fleet’s buses could enter, park and exit the depot without ever having to reverse.

The depot’s monumental proportions were offset by Vladimir Shukhov’s delicate structural design. Known for his innovative methods of analysis for structural engineering, Shukhov used only 18 narrow columns and a minimal amount of metal supports for the roof, which was modeled on that of Melnikov’s Paris pavilion.

Iris Foundation

The Iris Foundation was founded in 2008 by Daria Zhukova, it is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote the understanding and development of contemporary culture. The Iris Foundation supports all activities of the Garage in Russia and all over the world.

www.garageccc.com