C.R.E.A.M Factory Part 1 Project 2013 Jesper Victor Henriksson Architectural Association London | UK The Cream Factory is the “capitalist-realist” cultural institution. By exploiting typological convergence between the factory and the museum, a new hybrid building allows for the production, storage, exhibition and trading of art. It reacts to the unique Post-Soviet Moscow context, where political and financial instability, as well as ideological ruptures force the urban fabric to endure ubiquitous lobotomies and genetic manipulation. It is a ruthless functionalist management instrument, tuned to generate and consume surplus value. As a response to its condition, the proactive design strategy focuses on progressive preservation and revision of the deep organizational properties of the existing sites rather than visionless nostalgia or renovation. Through critical readings of the linear diagrams that revolutionized, not only the manufacturing but also social practices, the derelict and disused Hammer and Sickle Metallurgic Plant becomes a new cultural platform. Conceptually and literally condensing art-world practices into a linear, streamlined and vertically integrated architectural machine, the projects explore how a contemporary factory could in fact become the contemporary museum.The CREAM Factory is an exploration and exploitation of the relation between Culture and Capital. It is a study of how capital can influence architectural form but also how architectural form can influence capital. The project gives a diagnosis and illustrates the new roll and identity of the contemporary museum. How, when tied to rules of the free market, it has accumulated new ambitions that impose new programmatic and organizational challenges. Challenges that require a re-conceptualization of its architectural concept. By learning from the Factory, which since its birth has been a metaphor for progress and change and adopting its diagram, The CREAM Factory conveys a mutated typology of the Museum and Factory. The project is a provocative illustration of a hypothetical condition. An alarming example, exaggerated to clearly illustrate a point. It is by nature a political act, since it has to react to the transformations in political, economic, and social environments. Proposing an architecture, The CREAM Factory, the prime instrument for proposing that change, becomes an instigator and ultimately an initiator. Tutor(s)