Strelka Bar in Moscow

Located at Krasny Oktyabr – a former sweets factory in the Moscow center converted into business lofts for creative and media enterprises – Strelka is on the mission to bring everything contemporary and urbane to Moscow. It hosts regular workshops from the world’s renowned experts on architecture and design goes well with the weekly dance parties featuring quality electronic music acts.

Strelka is definitely an important hub for Moscow trendsetters, but it also seems like an enclave of a sort, an idealistic attempt to be everything that Moscow is (yet) not, pushing it a bit too far sometimes to the point of being unnatural and slightly pretentious.

Nevertheless, sometimes one needs to escape from the Russian chaos into the European order and comfort, to be surrounded by the pretty smiling faces talking about the latest trends in metacognitive architectural realms – and Strelka is just the place for that.

The school itself accept students for post-doc 1-year programs (in English), so it may also be a good base to stay in Moscow for a longer time, as they have the bursaries and sponsored accommodation to offer in addition to the very interesting study programs.

They also organize interesting conferences. Among the recent ones is the Books in the Air Festival on the future of online information distribution systems​ (with an interesting design by Timur Akhmetov) and the Russian architecture pavilion in Venice Biennale. 

Strelka is located in Krasny Oktyabr area, over the pedestrian bridge from Christ the Savior Church.  There’s a cheap Fabrika Hostel nearby.