An elegant pergola gazebo with comfortable benches invites you to relax, and the unusual wooden sculpture chaos (which, according to the authors of the project, demonstrates the process of lilac blooming in slow motion), an art object created with love and attention to detail, seems about to come to life. There are neat paths, a soft coating of marble chips, warm light from lanterns and young plants that will eventually create a picturesque shadow here.

The project, the scientific director of which is an associate professor Oleg Kudinov, was implemented as part of an internal grant from the National Academy of Sciences in the Scientific Enlightenment nomination under the title Architecture for Botany. From May to October, on days off from classes, students put their hearts into every element: from the first sketches to the final touches. They learned to feel the material, mastered the craft and created not just an object, but a place with character and mood.

The atmosphere of a real celebration prevailed at the grand opening on October 22. Yakov Aslanov, Vice-Rector for Educational Work and Youth Programs, Alexey Bogatsky, Vice-Rector for Infrastructure Development, Igor Pshenichny, Deputy Director of the Botanical Garden, and Natalia Chemerisova, Director of the Academy of Architecture and Arts, warmly thanked the young architects.

"We are in a unique place not only for our city, but for the country as a whole. The Botanical Garden and everything that surrounds it were made by human hands: all the buildings and, first of all, all the green spaces appeared here in the steppe zone on the initiative of SFedU professors (former Rostov State University) by V. F. Khmelevsky and V. N. Vershkovsky at the beginning of the last century. Currently, we are not only continuing these traditions, helping nature by conducting scientific research, but also trying to improve the garden area. And this pergola was also made by human hands. Today we see that the project was a success — everything was done beautifully and aesthetically," Yakov Aslanov, Vice Rector for Educational Work and Youth Programs, shared with the audience.

"I am proud of you, each of you has invested a part of your soul, your strength and your hands in the construction of this facility. When an architect sees the fruits of his labor, especially when he is still young and beginning, and sees how people use this building, the importance of the architectural profession increases. Each of you will go through a unique path from a student's bench to serious buildings, but this is the first time in all the years of the Academy that our students have managed to realize an object with their own hands in the material.

There was a lack of such a structure on this territory that would reflect the essence of modern architecture, at the same time, the artistic image of the pergola is very similar to the development of science – it is a combination of classical science, straightforward with a rigid causal relationship, then complications occur, connections appear as in non-classical science, and post-non-classical science in the form of chaos. which gives birth to new views of the world and new types of phenomena of this world," said Natalia Chemerisova, Director of the Academy of Architecture and Arts.

The architects of the project, Alexandra Chashchina, senior lecturer at the Academy's Department of Architecture and Design, co-founder of the Architecture and Design Studio, and Elizaveta Zubenko, a 4th—year architecture student and architect of the Architecture and Design Studio, told about the architectural idea and concept of the gazebo-pergola:

"Our gazebo is crowned by a syringarium. We had to come up with something that would somehow connect with the place. Therefore, after a long search, we decided to consider the process of lilac blooming in accelerated photography.

At first, there is a structural inflorescence, each bud is visible, all the flowers at this stage are the same and clearly distinguishable.

Then, this properly assembled structure begins to bloom. The buds get lost, get knocked down, and eventually they are indistinguishable from each other because they become part of the chaos array.

In other words, the basis of the concept is the flowering process. The realized form is an abstract visualization of the process. A unit into a mass, a part into a whole, a bud into a flower, a flower into an inflorescence, harmony into chaos.

At the end of the ceremony, the students sang, shared their impressions and already made plans for new projects — after all, when you see how your ideas transform the space, you want to create again and again.

Now the Botanical Garden has another magical place where theory becomes practice, dreams take shape, and golden autumn remains forever in the tree, the light, and the warmth of the hands that created this beauty.

Tatiana Varduni, Director of the SFedU Botanical Garden, and the entire team would like to thank the students and staff of the Academy of Architecture and Arts for creating such a warm and soulful space.

"We are sure that this place will become a point of attraction for our guests, especially during the flowering period of the syringarium, and we hope that this experience will inspire other departments of the university to joint creative projects," said Tatiana Varduni.