Initially, Vladimir Plotkin planned to turn the main facade, stretching along the avenue, into a transparent window displaying the interior of the shops - approximately the way it was done in the nearby shopping center "Quadro", the entire front facade of which is glass. Such a building is especially spectacular at night - a luminous box filled with goods. But the customer, for some reason, rejected the version of the transparent "open" facade and then a more complex version of the showcase appeared - the mechanized "closed" one.
This facade consists of rectangles that alternate in a checkerboard pattern - half of them are glass showcases, behind which are posters on trinitrons, the other half are metallized panels with many square holes in which ice bulbs are placed. The color of the bulbs and the rotation of the trinitrons in the shop windows are controlled by a computer and, if desired, can be folded into one giant drawing the size of a shopping center.
So far, unfortunately, no one has been able to see the computerized mega-billboard, although all the mechanisms work - says the author of this idea, Vladimir Plotkin. Now the bulbs usually shine in one color - according to the season, in winter they were lilac, in spring they were green; sometimes simple drawings are collected from them - before the New Year there were snowflakes, and before the elections there were flags. It's not for me to judge the profitability of advertising, but somehow it seems that using this mechanism in such a simple way is tantamount to hammering nails with a microscope.
One way or another, mechanization has turned the shopping center building into a kind of house-car - and the facades pick up on this theme. Most of the outer surfaces, where there are no showcases, are covered with metallized gray plates, dotted with miniature, but rather frequent rivets. This makes the building look iron, and not like a modern car, but like some kind of engineering structure - a bridge, a warship or even an armored train.
You might think that before us is a gigantic mechanism, frozen in the process of transformation: towards the moving cars the end of the building opened up with glass planes, and from it, almost like a captain's bridge, a sharp and long balcony "shot out". At the same time, on the main facade - almost like cannons from the side of a ship, two glass bay windows protruded at a height of three meters. The armor of the gray panels on the facade evenly parted, revealing showcases with bright posters - but the showcases, too, seemed to have not fully opened, frozen at an angle.
All this, of course, is speculation. In fact, the windows are turned at an angle so that the posters are more visible - at the top to one side, at the bottom to the other. And the building does not make any significant movements. But the building has a plot that supports the transformation of an imaginary "miracle of robotics". This is done unobtrusively, with a subtle hint, but very consistently, by juxtaposing right angles, squares and rectangles (most of them) - and rare oblique lines. A slight bevel, which no one would have noticed in a different, less strict coordinate system, here, among right angles, becomes a sign of movement. That is why it seems that the nose is shot, and the windows are moved out. These are dynamic parts of the building mechanism.
When we go inside, the sensations change dramatically. Outside there was a hard outer world, from which the house-mechanism is fenced off by its glamorous armor, but inside there is the gloss of a Pacific liner, only without carpets. The floor is shinier than a polished deck, and everything from floor to ceiling is white. Right angles and lines give way to whirling - round pillars, "columns", round atriums and showcases. Spotlights are placed in circles on the ceiling and are reflected in the shiny plane of the floor and the shop windows of the passage, repeating themselves many times. Instead of the harsh definition of the "external" mechanism inside - shine and rotation, which slightly confuse the one who has entered into confusion - probably preparing for dizzying expenses (stores are expensive).
Enhancing the effect produced, the round "columns", growing through all the floors, diverge upward at a very weak angle. To be more precise, the supports alternate - they are tilted around the atriums, placed directly between them, and if you look along the passage, you get a very peculiar colonnade, vaguely reminiscent of an alley of trees that never grow all in a row strictly vertically. Although there is nothing in the literal sense biological here - and there is only a barely noticeable game with perspective - when viewed from below, the atriums seem wider, more spacious, but if you look downward, they quickly narrow. Round courtyards are crowned with cone-shaped domes that look like large pipes. The "pipes" are turned towards the southeast, trying to capture more sunlight for the atrium space. And their turn brings us back to the topic of the transformation of a gigantic mechanism.
So, the shopping center building has been transformed into a giant high-tech showcase. The showcase building, being conceived as a technically complex solution, acquired a resemblance to a mechanism, received a characteristic metal texture and was imbued with technogenic rigidity. It makes one suspect a hidden movement in itself - both something that has already happened and that might be taking place, although in fact it does not move a bit. When we go inside, one impression is replaced by another, not opposite, but contrasting. The white, transparent, circular space, strung on the four "air axes" of the atriums, provides an irrational lightness after the caustic mechanism of the facades - and, as a result, creates a suitable shopping mood for visitors.
