Belorusskaya Square is known as one of the most prestigious office locations in modern Moscow. Since the 1990s, the surrounding neighborhoods have been actively built up, and the area has also gained fame as a place where a lot of good modern architecture could soon appear. Of the buildings already built, the most noticeable is the white and black parallelepiped of A. Skokan, the office of Capital Group. Now on one of the most advantageous sections, right in front of the metro exit, between Lesnaya Street and Butyrsky Val, the construction of a new commercial business center is starting. Upon completion, it should become one of the most noticeable architectural accents of Belorusskaya Square - in fact, a new city quarter will grow in its northern part.
The new quarter grows over the boring rectangular grid of Lesny lanes and, echoing the rays of the main streets, reconfigures its top with a fan, converging towards the main attraction - the Old Believer St. Nicholas Church of the early 20th century.
The architects keep the lines of the existing lanes, Zastavny and 3rd Lesnoy, making them pedestrianized and create new pedestrian streets inside the rectangular sections. One of them runs diagonally through between the triangular buildings "B" and "C", and the other imitates the same technique, interrupting in the middle. With the appearance of new streets, the quarter becomes permeable, open to citizens - a public space with shops, cafes and a restaurant appears in the lower tiers. Before leaving the metro, a new center of city life is being formed, and not simple, but stylish and respectable, corresponding to the business reputation of the area. Its quality will, apparently, be consonant with the marketing name of the complex "White Square" with all the meanings behind it, first of all - "clean", as opposed to the well-known vanity of "Belorussky Station Square".
"White Square", which should appear on the site of blocks 674 and 675, looks like a miniature city, primarily due to the different heights of buildings. Building "A" looks like two fused houses - one has ten, the other has fifteen floors. Therefore, the complex seems to consist not of three, but of four buildings, converging to the common center, to the square in front of the metro, in front of which, somehow unexpectedly in a Petersburg-style, not five, of course, but still four corners are lined up.
The rounded outlines of the buildings are the hallmark of the complex, which makes the silhouettes flexible and streamlined. In the original version, all the corners were sharp, the windows were meshed, the color of the cases was different, the height was much higher. There were supposed to be three thin towers soaring over the square, connected at different heights by four jumpers - a vertical labyrinth for a high city.
The final project is much calmer, its core is not flight, but the respectability of a comfortable space. The closest association is Art Deco, but with a minimum of details. There is almost as much stone on the facades as there is glass, the windows are arranged in rows, interspersed with the emphasized horizontals of the storey divisions, only at the top there are panoramic glazing strips with views of the city. The color is restrained, creamy sandstone. In the lower tiers there are galleries, colonnades made of pillars that make you remember Rivoli Street and many other similar western streets. In general, the quarter can easily be imagined built in any of the historic cities of the world - in Berlin, Paris or New York, it is so valuable in itself. These houses do not adjust to their surroundings and do not try to influence it too much; their relationship with variegated surroundings is limited to a precautionary self-reliance. Simply inside, as it is supposed, it will be comfortable - both for townspeople and clerks, and after leaving the border of the "zone of influence" of the new quarter - well, a passer-by will again get from "White" Square to "Belorusskaya" …
![EQUITONE [Natura] N164 White: Delicate White](https://i.architectureprof.com/images/004/image-9928-j.webp "EQUITONE [Natura] N164 White: Delicate White")