ETU “LETI”: LETI Hosts St. Petersburg Architecture and Design Opinion-Makers
The visit started with the insightful LETI campus tour guided by Vladimir Pavlovskikh, Head of the Property Development Office. The tour was followed by his presentation of LETI development plans, which foresee a new 9-storied mixed-use building and Gazprom training center on the campus, a hostel outside it, and suburban property development. International jury members of the joined the group by Zoom.
A lively discussion was triggered by the presentation of Anastasia Minina, Vice-Rector for International Affairs. She suggested interdisciplinary projects, which would integrate LETI’s innovative engineering into architecture & design projects. For this, ETU “LETI” can offer its technologies and solutions in electronics, heritage science, bionics, animal-centered computing, and other disciplines. Such projects would add cutting-edge technologies into the creative industry projects.
“The most important point is that the LETI could take on the engineering implementation of ideas that may seem fantastic to us. We can propose to use technologies that our students don’t know, and for which LETI has competence and production capacities. This would bring creative projects to an unprecedented level.”
Dmitry Kharshak, Head of School of Design, Higher School of Economics – St. Petersburg.
Representatives of the St. Petersburg architectural academies proposed joint seminars, workshops, and exhibitions for their students, so they could understand the possibilities of combining their knowledge and artistic approach with ideas and innovative technologies of LETI.
By April 20, the Organizing Committee of the Young Architects’ Contest has received more than 130 applications for participation, including international students of Russian universities and young international architects.
The Jury will assess submitted design & architecture projects after the May 25 application deadline, and the finalists will be chosen based on the total score. The finalists’ projects will be exhibited in the public spaces of the LETI campus. The final award ceremony is planned for September 2021.
Winners will be offered traineeships in international companies and architectural bureaus and invited to work within contracts on the renovation or design of LETI’s future academic spaces.