Granular Materials Embassy: Reframing Urban Decay and Material Agency in Moscow’s Transforming Fabric | Bachelors Design Thesis

Site Context

The project site is located in the historic fabric of Moscow, currently undergoing rapid transformation. Obsolete structures are being replaced by new, idealized forms of housing, promoting the image of Moscow as a perfectly ordered city.

Within this context of enforced cleanliness and control, granular materials — inherently unstable and inert — are perceived as undesirable, disrupting the city’s idealized appearance. The project investigates the displaced presence of these materials, revealing their suppressed role within the contemporary urban condition.

Design Process

The historic buildings surrounding the site are listed heritage structures, gradually deteriorating until they are officially declared uninhabitable. Within the project, this condition of material decay is reinterpreted as a design methodology. Fragments of the surrounding fabric are accumulated into artificial mounds, extending and partially embedding the existing buildings. These granular formations generate new inhabitable spaces, structured around co-existence with unstable matter.

Final Outcome

The project culminates in the design of an embassy — an institution mediating non-human life within the human metropolis. Structured as a conventional embassy, it consists of a residence, a consular department — understood here as a bureau for translating between non-human and human languages — and a representation of granular life.

Programmatically, the complex is divided into two halls accommodating workshops and a theatre, an office of translation embedded within the existing constructivist bathhouse, and two residential volumes: a co-living structure and a reconstructed housing block.

Conclusion: Ultimately, the project reimagines urban decay by integrating granular materials as active agents, creating an embassy that mediates human and non-human systems while embracing instability, transformation, and coexistence.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]