Monika Berstis

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Moscow’s Russian Jewish Museum brings new life to the historic Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage designed by Konstantin Melnikov in 1926. Graft’s solution of adaptive reuse integrates museum studios, a children’s museum, a learning center, space for changing exhibitions and events, an auditorium, lecture halls, a restaurant and bar, a museum shop and space for administration and staff. The outside structure remains untouched. An undulating surface creates a landscape in the interior which illustrates a relationship between current and historic activity in the Russian Jewish Community: permanent exhibits at the underground level describe Jewish history and inform the floor above, the stage for today’s Jewish community. The formal contrast of the rippling interior surface to the exterior shell enhances the beauty of the Melnikov’s structure while telling a stormy history. The two architectures create a cooperative balance between yesterday and today, interior and exterior.

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  Graft, 2008
  Russian Jewish Museum
  conversion of the Bakhmetevsky bus garage
  Moscow

  Responsibilities: developing plans, presentation documents
  and renderings
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  ©2015