Tell us, what was your task when designing this house?
A. Ivanov: Make a quality but simple home. The challenge was to place the deluxe living space in a very small area between the existing 9 and 12-storey buildings. We were looking for a building plan for a very long time, which would take into account all the requirements of insolation, the distance from neighboring houses, the placement of communications. This is how a ten-story volume appeared, the facade of which consists of two volumes-books, facing forward. The bevels on the facades arose as a response to the adjacent volume - before the bevel, the surface of the building repeats the rhythm of the windows of the building on the right, and then gallery balconies run along the inclined plane. The house has two main facades - towards the park and towards the courtyards. The second is solved more uniformly - with a single stroke of simple linear elements with tempered glass fences using metal and tape glazing.
The house is very laconic. Is this a tribute to constructivism?
D. Alexandrov: Recently we have been classified as neoconstructivists. Undoubtedly, constructivism is most recognized in Russian architecture. However, in my opinion, there was no less worthy period, which began during the Khrushchev "thaw" and which the 60s. turned into the architecture of Soviet neo-modernism. It is presented in this quarter - the development area between the Moskva River embankment and Komsomolsky Prospekt is formed by two types of buildings - Stalin's post-war construction and simple geometric architecture of the 60s and early 70s. There are two well-known examples of such architecture - these are the works of L. N. Pavlova and early projects of A. Meerson - House on Begovaya and "Swan". Other interesting buildings - the hotel complex near the "Airport" was recently redesigned with a new facade made of modern materials, but it absolutely repeats the geometry of the building built in the 60s - the architecture is absolutely modernist, although it directly follows from the international style, which was adapted on our soil in 60s. A similar example is the so-called "Book" of the elder Posokhin on Arbat, which, without changing its architectural appearance, has been ennobled with a new ventilated facade - in general, a very dry modern house. In our case, we tried to find a certain compromise between this architectural geometry. This, one might say, is our over-the-shoulder glance at another worthy period of Russian architecture - the sixties.
And how did this affect architecture?
D. Alexandrov: The plan of the building is made in the shape of the letter "T", where the middle link is the staircase, and the two volumes - the larger and the smaller, resemble a couple, a man and a woman. That is, one partner, somewhat larger, comes forward to the red line and slightly hugs a thinner and more graceful girlfriend standing literally "on high heels" with a staircase block. This creates movement towards the park. The departure of the last four floors back, which Andrei mentioned, is caused by two reasons: on the one hand, we show the line of limitation of the existing development and go back into the depths of the block, and on the other hand, the best apartments are located here, the most interesting views are revealed from there.
The practice of operating modern residential buildings shows that when organizing balconies and any protruding elements, we have to deal with the fact that all this is glazed - sometimes according to projects agreed with us, but more often, unfortunately, without prior notice. As a result, the house is not quite the way it was intended. Therefore, the end facades, that is, facing towards the building, disappear under French balconies or loggias with recesses inward, which glaze completely painlessly. Gallery balconies combine mainly kitchens and living rooms, that is, large public areas and are oriented towards the most interesting points. Accordingly, there are two structures of the material - a light brick-like stone and a darker one, which ties up some correspondence with a more chromatic white lady.
Are the “hairpin” legs on which the house rests - is it just a nod to the luminaries of the 60s, or does the technique have a practical rationale?
A. Ivanov: Due to the fact that the plot is not too large, we had problems with the adjoining landscaping - there was not enough space, hence the following solution appeared: the lower part of the house from the side of the courtyard was compressed as much as possible, leaving space only for the lobbies. We raised everything else on the “feet” - the columns, thereby increasing the possible landscaping almost twice, the existing small garden will be preserved, the landscaping will be even under the columns. Underground there is an underground two-level parking lot, which almost completely occupies the building area.
Is the layout, as is customary now, free?
D. Alexandrov: Free. The fact is that the flexibility of planning is inherent in the very structure of the house. For a ten-storey building, the stylobate intercepting the technical floor is an uncharacteristic thing that does not follow in a natural engineering way. But she, firstly, largely determined the architecture of the building: it stands entirely on the platform, and this platform is raised up. Secondly, in this part of the building all engineering communications are brought together, which then go further to the central shaft and then underground. This made the plan flexible. All "wet" areas, toilets and bathrooms, are placed in the core of the house, and the rooms are located as much as possible along the perimeter of the building.
Another point that distinguishes this building from similar high-class mid-rise buildings: we used a fairly large grid of columns here. Proceeding from the fact that we have an "intercepting table" here, which the customer agreed to, although this is usually used in the construction of high-rise complexes, for example, our towers in the "Amber City", where 100-meter buildings are on the "table". In a small volume of a 10-storey building on Komsomolskoye, the "table" is combined with the technical floor, forming a "double shell", inside which all communications pass. Thanks to this, we were able to apply a coarse grid of supports with a step of eight hundred. Usually, there are no more than seven and a half steps for housing. This led to a decrease in the number of load-bearing elements, and the layout became flexible enough for possible transformations after the construction by the owners of the apartments. This also made it possible to transfer all living quarters to the outer contour and improve lighting. On the front facades we go to neighboring houses not by apartments, but by balconies and escape stairs. That is, we focus all public areas on free spaces and the most interesting vantage points - the Moskva River, Park Kultury and down Komsomolsky Prospekt, while with neighboring houses, on the contrary, we avoid the window-to-window effect.
How many apartments are there on the floor?
Five apartments. Average. There are options - 6 apartments, if you add a small apartment, studio. On the upper floors, if necessary, you can make one large apartment - a penthouse. The house turned out to be one and a half sections in size. Wide body measuring 36 by 30 meters (standard body - no more than 18 m). This is not a tower with one entrance, and at the same time it is not a sectional building. The tightness of the site led to such decisions. On the upper floors, five apartments can be freely converted into three.
