Location: New York, Moscow, Basel
Founded: 2012
Kosmos is a young “virtual practice” that relies heavily on the process of drawing in order to understand a project. “Drawings are like the first reality checks”, says partner Leonid Slonimskiy, “You learn from the sketch, you continue with a more detailed image, refine it, and so on, until it gets built in reality.”
The drawing process also serves as a form of communication for the team’s four partners who, despite all being Russian, work in architecture offices scattered around the globe: in Basel, New York and Moscow. Beginning with fast, dirty sketches, the team find and communicate the concept and shape of a project together, before using more detailed sketches to finalise materials, techniques and colours.
Previous page: Kosmos at work. This page: Working sketches for exterior and interior of EMA cultural centre in Moscow. (Images courtesy Kosmos)
K O S M O S Architects is a virtual office, which collaborates from different continents and brings together 4 partners who are based in New York, Moscow and Switrzerland. The office designs projects of all types and scales: from a door handle to a city; from hardcore architecture to pop-up art installations. K O S M O S combines art and technology, global experience with respect to local context, European professionalism and Russian drive.
k-s-m-s.com
The resulting images are charming yet precise. The progression of ideas is clear in drawings that become increasingly populated with detail; as though the illustrations themselves – such as the EMA, a pop-up art space in Moscow – are under construction.
The studio’s images for a proposal for the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense, Denmark (which won first prize) are equally dynamic. Shown from multiple angles and in different levels of detail, the project comes alive with a fairytale force – way more exciting than your average render. I (gk)
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