HSE Art and Design School Alumna Creates a New Look for the Pokrovka Table Tennis Hall

The table tennis hall at the HSE University complex on Pokrovsky Boulevard has received a new look. Olga Terekhova, a graduate of HSE Art and Design School, helped create the design and painted the murals herself.

Vladimir Eliseenko
Deputy First Vice Rector

‘The table tennis hall at HSE University on Pokrovsky Boulevard was created literally out of nothing. Students asked to put tables in the halls of the building, but there was no good place. And then we found the basement of the server room, which, at the current level of IT development, does not need to be located in the building.

As a result, we opened a cool hall, which is very popular among students. This March, with the help of the HSE Art and Design School and Olga Terekhova, it has also acquired an extremely colorful graffiti design.

The wall color is not just a matter of design. White walls created discomfort for the players, because the tennis balls, which are usually white, always blended in with the white background of the wall.’

Olga Terekhova
Alumna, ‘Animation and Illustration’, HSE Art and Design School

My curator Julia Blukher invited me to take part in the brief of the design laboratory for the painting of the table tennis hall.

The sketches were ready in May 2020, but due to the lockdown, I started painting the hall only in December and finished in March.

They told me that the hall needs painting—everything else was to my taste. I liked working with simplified and expressive forms that would reflect the essence of the game. It was necessary to choose few colors, and I decided on pink and blue.’

The table tennis hall is located in room Z003 in the HSE building on Pokrovsky Boulevard. It is open Monday through Friday, 12:00 to 19:00.

March 22, 2021