Leaving the Moscow center along Mira Avenue, bypassing the hustle and bustle centered around "Cosmos" and the entrance to the All-Russian Exhibition Center, we find ourselves in an unexpectedly calm urban space. After the departure of "Rabochy and Kolkhoz Woman" for the restoration, the eyes somehow have nothing to stay with and it becomes boring. Rather, it was - until the appearance of the new skyscraper of Alexei Bavykin, which is clearly visible right behind the Montreal pavilion. The house has already grown to its full height and begins to "paint".
Height is the main theme of this building, it is emphasized in every possible way and strengthened by all possible means, forcing, especially from certain angles, to recall the drawings of Ladovsky's skyscrapers. When viewed from the end, the house seems incredibly thin, almost taking off. Three facades are filled with a mirror of panoramic windows, from the glass background, like rectangular islands, bright red plates protrude, dividing the vertical into three unequal parts - reducing their size upwards, they enhance the effect of perspective reduction, visually extending the 35-storey vertical of the house even more. Stone and glass have reversed places: transparent around, dense and "hot", red in the middle, it seems suspended in a cold mirrored mass, shiny like water in a nearby, still clear Yauza river. Note that behind the glass stripes between the red rectangles are the best views of the most expensive apartments in the house; one wall of such apartments will be completely transparent, overlooking the entire city. This is from the side of the street.
From the side of the courtyard, the house is "fenced off" by a slight bend of the white "shield" - to its full height, with a visor hanging from above. And it becomes like a splinter of a giant egg, from which VDNKh hatched, with red flags not yet crumbling from it. In any case, the attitude of the house to the space of the exhibition and the avenue is quite obviously interested - the building is intently "looking" at this, the most curious part of its surroundings, turning most of the windows here. However, the appearance of the white "shell-shield" has a rational explanation: next to the building under construction, says Alexei Bavykin, there is a school - and the white color of the courtyard facade is intended to illuminate it with reflected sunlight and thus comply with the insolation standards.
Besides the height, another feature of the building is its bright, open color. Pure white and red, interspersed with the brilliance of glass, attract attention from afar. Open "primary" colors, once loved by the avant-garde, in modern Moscow architecture for the most part have been replaced by shades - pink-violet-salad and other "soft" or exotic colors. The color of Stalin's houses is restrained yellow, and the color of Khruzhevka and Brezhnev's is more often gray. In such a company, the new skyscraper is almost defiantly bright. And he himself, like a small luminary, scatters around himself splashes of color - red and white prisms of auxiliary structures.
