News

On May 16, 2017, the HSE Graduate School of Urbanism (GSU), together with the ARTS4CITY project, held a workshop on ‘Looking for Polycentrism’ in St. Petersburg. Workshop participants created an improvised map of a ‘decentralized’ St. Petersburg. Vicente Guallart, Academic Supervisor of the Shukhov Lab (Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design), and Nadezhda Khort, Manager of the Shukhov Lab, took part in the workshop on behalf of GSU.

Shukhov Lab, a Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design, has opened at HSE. Participants in a roundtable discussion dedicated to the laboratory’s opening agreed that to create the cities of the future, the present must be analyzed without adjusting to the forecasts.

The HSE Graduate School of Urbanism opens a Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design. At first, it will organize lectures and meetings with experts in urbanism, and in the new academic year, the laboratory will become an educational and research platform. But you can already meet it now – the Open Day will take place on December 15, 2016.

In April and May, the Graduate School of Urbanism (GSU) took part in three of the largest architecture biennales, held in Rotterdam, Moscow, and Venice. The exhibitions presented the results of independent research carried out by the School, student projects, and the results of an international student workshop organized by GSU.

Ksenia Ermakova, Sofya Paymanova, and Natalia Chernobrova, third- and fourth-year students of the HSE School of Design, have presented their vision of VDNH’s reconstruction as part of the Russian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

International Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design has recently opened at the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism. It will be headed by Vicente Guallart, a Spanish urbanist, chief architect for the city of Barcelona in 2011-2015, who will be joining HSE shortly. Mr. Guallart has talked to the HSE News Service about what the laboratory will do, what the Advanced Urban Design master’s programme, the principle of learning by doing, and the application of technology in the city life.

Claudio Silva, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University visited Moscow to take part in the Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning summer programme, Adaptive City. Professor Silva is a specialist in computer technology and big data. He works on interdisciplinary projects involving biotechnology, neurobiology, physics, ornithology, sports analysis, urban changes and others. Silva has been a major influence on researchers working in big data, for one thing, because of his determination to close the gap between academic research and practical applications.

Chief Architect of Barcelona, Head of Guallart Architects and founder of the world famous Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), Vicente Guallart has been a major attraction in the Adaptive Cities cycle of seminars (June to August 2015) organised by the Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning and the Strelka Institute. Guallart gave two lectures and took part in a round table discussion at the end of June and beginning of July.

Alexey Novikov has been Dean of the Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning at HSE since January this year. A PhD in Geography, he was head of Standard & Poor in Moscow and Thomson Reuters, and took over from the first dean of the school, the late Alexander Vysokovsky. Alexey Novikov talked to HSE News Service Editor in Chief Natalia Kogynina about what will become of the school of Urban Studies now, how to resolve urban planning conflicts and why urban planners are like lawyers.

Alexey Novikov has been named the new Dean of the HSE Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning. He will be continuing the work of one of HSE's founders and the School's first dean, Alexander Vysokovsky, who died unexpectedly on December 22 of last year.