Boris Bernaskoni


Boris Bernaskoni is a Russian architect, engineer, publisher, the recipient of various architectural awards and a participant in various architectural exhibitions. He is the founder of the BERNASKONI bureau. Boris Bernaskoni is a founding member of the Urban Council Board at the Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow. Boris Bernaskoni first achieved international recognition in 2008 when he won an international competition for the Perm Museum of Modern Art that was juried by Peter Zumthor and had participants like Coop Himmelbau, Zaha Hadid and Asymptote. His Matrex project received high acclaim at the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2016. In 2019 Bernaskoni participated in several events at the Davos World Economic Forum, talking on transformable architecture in the cities of the future and urban digitalization.

Background

Bernaskoni is Russian and was born in Moscow, but inherits his surname from a family of Swiss-Italian immigrants to Russia in the late eighteenth century. The Bernasconi family of Lugano had produced many baroque and classical artists, stuccoists and architects who were active across Europe. Boris's own ancestors came to Russia work on the palaces of Saint Petersburg and its environs, and include such figures as Antonio and Giuseppe Bernasconi.

Education

Bernaskoni graduated in Architecture from the Moscow Academy of Architecture, having studied in the department of "Housing and Social Design Construction" under the supervision of Professors Belov, Khazanov and Pakhomov. In 2000 Boris completed a 2-years long course of Marketing at the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics. He then joined a postgraduate course in "Composition in Architecture" at the Moscow Academy of Architecture in 2000-2003.

Teaching

In 2001 he led a "sense analyses" seminar for students of the Moscow Academy of Architecture. Since 2003 he has been a lecturer at the Moscow Academy of Architecture's Urban Planning department. In 2004 he has led a project seminar in New York for students of the Moscow Academy of Architecture invited by the Harvard Design School.

Architectural works

Bernaskoni set up his practice as soon as he graduated in 2000. He founded an interdisciplinary bureau that works at the intersection of architecture, communication and industrial design. The bureau specializes in the design and realization of various architectural objects: urban projects, office and residential buildings, exhibitions and museums, country houses and industrial objects. The bureau's portfolio includes many significant projects: Matrex, the main public building at the Skolkovo Center; Hypercube, also at Skolkovo; masterplans for Preobrazhensky in Yaroslavl Oblast and the Red October chocolate factory complex in Moscow; New Holland Summer in Saint Petersburg; the country houses Volgadacha and Mirror Mongayt; competitive projects for the Russia Pavilion in Shanghai, PERMMUSEUMXXI, the Tetris residential building, reconstruction of the Central House of Artists in Moscow; the exhibitions OLEGKULIK and Kandinsky Prize; identity and the interior of the Government of Russia Press Center and the BBDO Moscow office space; and industrial design of the national class sailing boat EM-KA.

Projects

Matrex
Matrex was built at the Skolkovo Innovation Center in 2015 near the Skoltech Complex. This project provides a basis for the development of informational and energy efficient technologies, with a special emphasis on transparency of space and work. The mixed-use building combines Class A and startup offices, apartments, the transforming hall, the spiral museum, the restaurant. The truncated pyramid contains an internal space in the form of a giant Matryoshka, or Russian nestling doll.
Yeltsin Centre
A first for Russia, the Yeltsin Center is a presidential centre on the model of US presidential libraries. It is a social, cultural and educational institution built in the city of Yekaterinburg, birthplace of President Boris Yeltsin. The centre houses a museum, art gallery, educational centre, documentary film centre, bookshop, café and other public facilities. Due to lack of vacant sites, Bernaskoni redesigned an existing business centre, to which he added a new form. This was achieved mainly through a curtain wall, covering half the premises in a sheet of steel, perforated with a series of openings displaying rotational symmetry. The resultant Center is a modest and neutral structure that nevertheless has a visual identity and silhouette distinct from any other building in Yekaterinburg, which the architect has characterized as its “urban supergraphics”.  
Hypercube
Hypercube is the first building at the Skolkovo Innovation Center. The decision to erect the Hypercube building was made by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. The building is a platform for communication, combining the roles of a public space and generator for new start-up enterprises, and part of a university campus. The building has its own energy and water supplyautonomous systems. Hypercube was built in accordance with the green standard "Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design".
Arc
The Arc pavilion was created especially for Archstoyanie, an architecture festival held in Nikola-Lenivets, Russia. Arc stands on the border between forest and field. Its wooden elements are stacked on top of each other with gaps forming rooms and stairs leading up to a viewpoint. The interior is annually transformed into an art installation. The materials Arc is made of are to be reused for useful construction or fuel for domestic heating purposes.
Mirror Mongayt
Bernaskoni solves the problem of how to build an eco-friendly designer villa with a small budget. The front facade is designed as a temporary structure made up of mirror panels. It is assumed that the facade will change every eight years. The space inside is vast, with high ceilings, open plan spaces and an abundance of bare wood.

Books

MATREX, August 2016
The book forms an integral part of the Matrex exhibition project at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. In tracing the unconventional cultural histories of the Matryoshka and the Pyramid, the book discovers their various interconnections, with the core of the publication covering the concept, architecture and program of the Matrex building at the Skolkovo Innovation Center.
Hypercube, May 2015
This book is about the ideology, programme, technologies and aesthetics of the Hypercube. The study will focus on the materials, solutions and technologies that enable the building to respond to global energy, ecological, social and economic challenges.
Interface Antifoster, August 2008
This book is about architects' solutions to a social dispute. The book contains extracts from publications on Norman Foster's projects for the "Inteco" development company, the opinions of experts, open letters to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and architect Norman Foster, and an alternative project for an International Culture Center on the disputed territory.
MUSEЙ, May 2008
The book includes exhibits, exhibition spaces and museums designed by Bernaskoni bureau in 2000-2008. The projects are arranged in the following order: from exhibition pieces to a building, thereby demonstrating the idea of a gradual transformation of museum space from an introverted object into a spatial environment. The book covers 12 projects, each of which reflects a different treatment of the idea of museum space.

Exhibitions