Hundreds of teams entered contest to improve housing across five pilot sites

Zaha Hadid Architects and Steven Holl have been shortlisted in a competition to improve Moscow’s run-down housing stock.

They were up against more than 100 competitors from countries as far afield as the Netherlands, Cyprus and China as well as a large number of Russian firms.

The Architectural and Urban Planning Competition, run by the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of Moscow on the instructions of the mayor, is looking for the best solutions for five pilot sites in different districts of the Russian capital.

Each site contains between 500 and 80 buildings to be renovated.

Twenty finalists will now develop concepts for the five experimental renovation sites: Kuzminki, Golovinsky, Tsaritsyno, Prospect Vernadskogo and Khoroshevo-Mnevniki.

Among the better-known finalists are Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Erick van Egeraat, Valode & Pistre, Carlo Ratti and Nikken Sekkei.