Abandoned brewery in central Moscow to get a 21st-century revamp

One of Moscow’s oldest breweries is to get a second life as a cultural and residential centre. The new architectural project, designed by the Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with the Russian bureau APEX, won the 2019 World Architecture Festival prize in the Future Project category.

Praised as an example of “critical conservation”, the Badaevsky brewery is set to be an unusual project, with the housing areas to be raised to sit on columns to make space for a public green park on the ground level.

In addition to the park and the residential buildings, the project, spanning over six hectares, will include a nursery, an art and craft school for children, a dance school, a traditional Russian banya or bathing house, a farmers’ market, co-working spaces, a fitness centre with a pool, restaurants, shops and cafes, and a small local brewery with a museum dedicated to the history of beer-making on the site.

Established in 1875, the Badaevsky brewery fell into ruin after being closed down and abandoned in the 2000s. Having been given cultural heritage status, the factory site now requires the preservation of two of the three buildings that made the original brewery, including a Russian arcaded building and an English-style industrial cluster, as well as the complete reconstruction of a destroyed former brick factory, once the complex’s centrepiece, which will be done using historical documents.