Minskaya Street crosses Kutuzovsky Prospekt immediately behind Victory Park, separating the "cultivated" part of Poklonnaya Gora from the west. From the side of the park, at the crossroads, three bronze soldiers are standing and looking somewhere at the abstract West. Now they have a place to look - right on the diagonal, the construction of a spectacular shopping center designed by Vladimir Plotkin is being completed.
The building of the shopping center is inscribed in the heart of the transport interchange, a part of which is still under construction. One "long" side looks at Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the other - at its future "backup", a parallel highway to relieve traffic. From all sides of the car, but it is convenient to drive up. Accordingly, the scale and facades are designed for the view from a passing car and represent something in between a showcase and an advertising billboard.
The main façade, facing the avenue, is composed of staggered glass showcases and evenly perforated panels with square holes. In the holes there are LEDs controlled by a computer, which makes it possible to compose patterns from the dots-bulbs. The windows are slightly turned - the upper ones are for those driving from the city, the lower ones are in the direction of cars heading to the center - so they actively catch the viewer, trying to conveniently turn around and show more.
Everything is huge. Each rectangle on the façade is two stories high, 9 meters high and 7 meters wide. According to the latest version, the showcases and LED panels are planned to be combined into one giant advertising poster: behind the glass will be placed the triangular prismatrons, structures of rotating triangular sticks, usually used in billboards and allowing three different patterns to alternate. Each showcase will display its own fragment of a large “poster” covering the entire facade, and perforated panels will complement parts of the image with the help of light bulbs. If desired, the mega-billboard drawing can be divided into separate elements, then the stained glass windows will take on the more familiar look of "ordinary" showcases.
The showcase theme continues in a slightly different way on the adjacent part of the façade. Here the surface of the wall is cut by two transparent rectangular "rods", also large, one floor thick (more than 4 meters). Strongly protruding glass "aquariums" instead of exotic fish will show passers-by either goods, working as three-sided volumetric showcases, or - visitors of Internet cafes, hovering in the metropolis space at a height of 10 meters.
The end facing Poklonnaya Gora becomes a continuation of the show, but for those who are inside, more precisely, for the visitors of restaurants concentrated in this part of the shopping center. At the level of the upper fourth floor, a huge "nose" 25 meters long grows above the entrance, at the same time a visor and a balcony overlooking the Poklonnaya Gora park and with the opportunity to take pictures against its background, as many people like, taking "various famous buildings" in their palm.
The interior space is equally saturated with emotions: its core is made up of four atriums in the form of circular light "wells", expanding upward to capture more daylight coming from the truncated glass cones on the roof. Tiers of floors are effectively rounded, strung on top of each other, adding dynamics and complicating movement. Due to the expansion of the upper rings, when viewed from below, the space of the atrium seems wider and freer, and from above, the effect of perspective contraction is enhanced and the height visually increases. The number of atriums is no coincidence, there are four of them according to the number of seasons and it is possible that the courtyards will be decorated in different ways, without realism, but tangibly hinting at the simultaneous presence of all seasons inside a single passage.
The architecture of the Seasons is surprisingly accurate in its function. This is an incessant show, bright, impressive, qualitatively superior to ordinary advertising, if only simply because, as a rule, the poster is stuck to the building or stands next to it, and here the building itself turns into a billboard that differs from the usual not only in its gigantic dimensions, but also in that that you can enter it inside, like in the Looking Glass. Inside, as expected, a fairy tale - the city in the palm of your hand, the seasons change on a whim, you want December, you want - April, and you can also become an exhibit yourself, hanging in a glass cube of an Internet cafe.
There are already many shopping centers in Moscow with very different architecture, this genre has become the only type of public architecture that now has the opportunity to actively develop here, trying to taste different architecture. The peculiarity of Vladimir Plotkin's decision lies in the fact that in The Four Seasons, architecture is very actively involved in the process, becoming something half-media. Probably, in this sense, it is closest to the "infospace" - not only because it is computerized, but because here the walls and what they want to show us become an inseparable whole, and it is not always possible to understand where architecture creates an impression. and where the information builds the building.
