The new building of the multifunctional complex President Plaza "A" class on Kulneva Street was commissioned in December 2014, and was designed from 2010–2011. Its large parallelepiped replaced the production and administrative building of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation in the middle part of the territory, surrounded by the buildings of a large office complex, formerly known as Mirax Plaza and located opposite the Moscow City, between the river and Kutuzovsky Prospekt - however, this building is part of the famous complex has never entered, although it is surrounded by it on three sides.
Sergey Kiselev managed to start the construction of two austere northern towers of Mirax - the President Plaza is located right behind them, and now it is clearly visible from the outside of the Third Ring. At some point, it may even seem that the new building has become the finishing touch of the "island" between Kulneva Street and TTC, but this is not so - when the extended building of the former Mirax is built, which Vladimir Plotkin is in charge of by the decision of the Arch Council, he will close the President Plaza by its volume. Ultimately, a complex will appear on the site, designed by three different, but well-known Moscow workshops: SKiP, SPEECH and TPO "Reserve".
The plans for the reconstruction of the building by the department manager emerged in 2006. Since then, the 1.3 hectare site has changed owners several times. The construction was started and frozen, depending on the wealth of the owner and considerations of the increased load on the transport network. During this time, projects of the parallelepiped on Kulneva Street managed to be completed
Nikolay Lyzlov, Vahagn Vermishyan, and probably many more authors.
The new President Plaza inherits its rectangular shape from its Soviet predecessor, thus making the best use of the site's potential. In a rectangular volume of 135x75 m, in seventeen above-ground floors with a total height of 68 m, the maximum usable area is inscribed, and it was originally planned to place apartments in the end parts, but later this idea was abandoned, giving all the premises to offices. A wide area of development requires a large courtyard - it was near the Soviet building, which was a blank square around an empty core. SPEECH architects have optimized the layout: their building has two identical courtyards, separated by a wide lintel with usable areas, which have thus become noticeably larger. The courtyards, about 25x33 m in size, with an area of slightly more than eight hundred meters - a little more than the average St. Petersburg "well" - are intended primarily for lighting. Therefore, the panoramic glazing of their smooth internal walls is interrupted only by strips of interfloor ceilings, and two types of glass were used to revive these surfaces - transparent and colored, painted in a mass of warm tones: yellow, orange and red, the brightness of which balances the violet color.
The first floor is given to cafes and trade, the second is conference rooms and fitness centers - in this part the building belongs to the city, in addition, its eastern facade, together with the long building of the former "Mirax Plaza", will form a pedestrian street inside the quarter - wait for it more for a long time, but I want to hope that she will turn out cute and lively. Floors three through sixteen are occupied by open-plan offices grouped around communications cores with staircases and eight lifts.
The column spacing inside is 8.4 m, this dimension, divided into six parts of 1.4 m each, became a module for the facade mesh. However, this is not the only way that the internal structure of the building manifests itself outside. The architects turned its only external facade on the side of Kulneva Street and the adjacent southern end wall into a movable array of glass bay windows - "TVs", framed by beveled frames made of silvery metal composite. Some of the bay windows protrude from the wall plane by 0.63, some - by 1.3 meters, and as a result, large and smaller protrusions are layered, intersect and grow from each other, folding into a large volumetric and somewhat irregular, asymmetric pattern. The facades seem to be movable, like a chest of drawers with drawers extended to different depths. This comparison is not arbitrary: in addition to plastic expressiveness, bay windows, again, add square meters to the building and thus work for the benefit of the customer. The area is increased a little more due to the removal of the first floor supported by thin triangles of metal consoles. The consoles are used only on the "front" facade from the side of Kulneva Street, they add a touch of glamor to its appearance: the polished metal of the cladding shines day and night, echoing the matt shine of the bay windows edging.
Two other facades: the northern one, facing the Mirax Plaza towers, and the eastern one, which faces the future inner pedestrian street, continue but reduce the theme. The beveled silver frames of the "TVs" close together, turning into strongly protruding ribs and folding into a large relief ornament, however, here its step becomes somewhat smaller. Metal planes catch light at different angles, sharp edges enhance the contrast of light and dark, a kind of sharp geometric grisaille, illuminated and revived by the glitter of the glass background. In most cases, the angle of inclination of the frames to the wall is 60 degrees, but in some places it changes to a flatter one - this is how wide vertical lines appear that break the strict grid; because of them, the drawing of the eastern facade looks a bit like sand dunes, subject to the wind from the river. One might think that the glass caesuras of the eastern façade were formed because some parts of the strict metal net were “blown away” from their places. Although the overall network remains rigid and regular, balancing the movement of the glass-metal surface of the southwestern part of the building.
In the explanatory note, the authors modestly write that "… it was not so much about the formation of an original architectural image, but about the development of a complex planning that meets the world criteria, claiming to be class" A ", as well as an original facade solution, harmoniously combined with the" Mirax-Plaza " and, at the same time, emphasizing the independence of the new object”. We managed to emphasize independence. Although, as we have already noted, architecture here is sensitive to the environment, and the main theme is not Kutuzovsky Prospect, but brutal futuristic searches for mature modernism, even the shades of the classics are read here through the architecture of the seventies. A silvery geometric network of metal frames, similar to an enlarged fragment of an electronic circuit, along the paths of which light signals scatter; bay windows - "TVs"; thin concrete cantilevers over the lower floors - something in it is from the time of the first satellite and the NIICHAVO institute, some casket from "Youths in the Universe". Which is logical: President Plaza replaced the building of the seventies, and the entire opposite side to Kulneva streets is built up, albeit shabby, but characteristic facades, on which tape windows alternate with thin vertical ribs. On the other hand, the shade of modern mobility and different facades helps it blend into the landscape: looking at the building from all sides, you are surprised how successfully here, for all the pragmatism, the line between diversity and integrity is caught. From a distance it fits into the structure of the avenue, near it it dazzles with the play of shiny surfaces, so different from the warm Stalinist terracotta.
