The hotel and business complex of Nikita Biryukov ("ABV Group") was considered at the project stage, close to the final one. At this place some time ago, a 3-storey building was demolished, which stood along Pushkarev Lane (which is curious, in the middle of the 19th century the lane was called Sumnikov, at the end Pushkarev, and in Soviet times Khmelev Street). The demolished house will be restored to its original forms. From the side of Sretenka, the site is occupied by a building with a typical Moscow-style appearance with a characteristic complex history - in 1854, the merchant I. M. Belogrudov built a two-story house here, stretching it out between two lanes; the house included a half-size structure from 1824. The merchant's house had an arcade (probably a trading one) on the first floor and a series of simple windows on the second. After 10 years, the house was set up, and the arcade was laid.
Nikita Biryukov's project involves the preservation of the house overlooking Sretenka, which becomes something in between the two construction periods - the arcade is returned and a pedestrian passage is made under it, thus expanding the narrow Sretenka sidewalk in this place. The passage was proposed as a replacement for the "puncture" that was supposed at the beginning of the design - a pedestrian path between the reconstructed old house and the new building under construction in the back of the courtyard. In the shown project, this very "puncture" exists in the form of an unoccupied distance between the two volumes, where, according to the architects, "not a single door leaves", but it is closed to casual passers-by. At the same time, as experts rightly noted, all such passages exist if they are inconvenient for the customer, only during the approval period, and then they are still closed with bars and guards. So the experts accepted the replacement of the "puncture" in the middle of the building with a full-fledged and convenient pedestrian walkway under the arcade.
The project was not accepted for other reasons, due to a slight excess of the prescribed height, mainly due to the glass pipe of the atrium on the side along B. Sergievsky lane. and a more significant excess of the percentage of building up of the site with "useful" areas. The fact is that the regulations contain a certain amount of undeveloped courtyard, under which a closed atrium inside the new building was taken. However, the atrium on the plans shown turned out to be more than half occupied by offices - strictly speaking, only the corridors remained of it. Therefore, it was decided to send the project "once again to the regulations to the chief architect, indicating that the areas do not correspond to the regulations of the protected zone, recorded by the ARI" and then once again look at the OERG.
To this the experts have added several notable things. First, Viktor Sheredega pointed out the excessive plasticity of the facade according to B. Sergievsky lane. Plasticity arises due to the strong removal of semi-glass bay windows (aside, you can add - also designed to slightly expand the office space). The second remark concerned the quality of the “historicized facades”. I must say that the authors brought two models for approval - one with pasted historical facades, which was shown by A. V. Kuzmin, and the second - which has now been directly proposed for coordination - with the facades much simpler and modernist (with the exception of the preserved house on Sretenka, of course). For all these mock tricks, the experts made an interesting remark that the quality of the "historicized" solutions would be nice to be different, or rather "like Utkin and Filippov", "… a la Prince Charles".
An office and business center on Bolshaya Molchanovka street, between Novy Arbat and Povarskaya, is supposed to be built instead of an outbuilding of 1910. This is a small green house with gable facades, heavily rebuilt during the Soviet era, so now there is no talk of its value and the house will be demolished. The new building, rather modest in size, is attached to the main house of the ensemble in 1910, which was built by the architect Germer for the doctor N. M. Kishkin, who set up a water and electric hospital here. And in the outbuilding he placed a mortuary room and a cowshed. Main house in the 1990s built on an attic - but now it is not touched, only a new complex will be added on three sides. The new building will come out to Mochanovka Street in the place of its bend - in this place the town-planning accent is conceived in the form of a semi-rotunda, slightly elevated, but very modest against the background of Novy Arbat books, which are visible here from almost everywhere.
On the tablets shown there were two options - a flat glass one, and a brighter and more curious one, with a chaotic alternation of yellowish and copper-green panels - the last one is 2-3 floors higher than the house of doctor Kishkin. Most experts, however, despite the brutal proximity of Posokhinsky Avenue, spoke out against raising the height and preferred the most modest of the options shown - on a par with the house of 1910. However, the project was rejected for many reasons: because of not fully resolved property and land relations, inconsistency with the city plan, functional preferences of the city. In addition, the commission for the demolition of the "glass" was not passed and the percentage of construction is too high in relation to the "restrained" greenery.
"Mosproekt-1" presented the project of M. M. Posokhin and I. M. Krymovaya is a 5-storey building on the Garden Ring, not far from the zoo. An unfinished track runs near the site - the remainder of an unfinished attempt to break through a passage to Krasnopresnensky Prospekt. Nearby, on the other side of the unfinished passage, a bank building is being designed, which was approved quite recently and with great difficulties, because the new bank is adjacent to the historic house and stands "at the back" of the Widow's House. Therefore, the House of M. M. Posokhin was considered together with the recently approved bank. There was even a proposal to move the still unbuilt bank to the other side of the driveway and build it next to the house in question, making both higher, taking this place out of the security zone, but removing the construction away from the Widow's House … However, those present quickly agreed that such a redistribution was unlikely whether it will take place - and returned to the problems of the site M. M. Posokhin. The shown project was recognized as very difficult, it revealed "a bunch of problems of a procedural nature" and the experts unanimously recognized that this object will have to suffer more than once.
We considered the pre-project proposal, but the architect showed the finished facades, which almost everyone present liked very much - at least two of the experts said directly about this. The building is almost cubic, with a flat roof and a small ledge on the side of the courtyard. All of its facades are designed in the following way: inside they are entirely glass, and outside the entire height and width are supposed to be decorative walls with a very ornamental stylized image of trees. This technique - trees in front of the facade - was tested by A. Bavykin in Bryusov Lane. However, if there were trunks-columns, either from poplars, or (by the author's own admission) of palm trees, but here it is more likely a bush of broken lines, tearing off various figures close to a rhombus for illumination, on top of a geometric pattern of circles and squares; and there is no more talk of columns. A similar ornament, only on a smaller scale, can be found in the house of M. M. Posokhin on Ostozhenka - only there it is more local, more decorative and only occasionally exceeds the size of decorative inserts. And then it expanded to the entire facade to the delight of the amazed spectators. And all would be fine if the form did not have such a distinct "jewelry" flavor, which enters into a dispute on the scale of the whole house. On the other hand, the hypertrophied ornamentation of this project bears the memory of the popular in the 1980s. the theme of "synthesis of arts", giant mosaics and generalized reliefs several stories high, turning houses into bearers of monumental art - for example, the upper part of the cinema "October".
So, I liked the facade, but many other questions arose. A long and lively discussion led to approximately the following result: those present agreed that although there was once a park of the Widow's House and there were never any buildings on this site, now the urban planning situation has radically changed. After laying the initial part of the avenue, which may well be continued, a noticeable turn from the Garden Ring formed here - and the houses built along this turn should be considered not in the context of the historical situation, but in relation to new, changed circumstances - as a framing of a large highway. And therefore, it is necessary not to enter objects into the regulations, but to revise the security zones, deriving from them the environment of the future avenue, and then build along it - and especially at the beginning, urban planning guidelines. The draft was rejected, recognizing the consideration as preliminary and making many recommendations. The main one is “without an administrative document of the level of the Moscow government, it is impossible to build an initiative project on such a place” In addition, there is a glass cafe on this site, which must pass a demolition commission. And after changing the security zones, the author was offered to make the project higher, rounder - so that at the beginning of the avenue a "hinge" accent was formed. So the square "bush" will probably change its shape now.
The meeting also reviewed two projects from the "small hotels" program initiated by the Moscow government. One hotel (21 rooms) will be built on M. Yakimanka near the embankment, on the site of the demolished in the 1930s. the churches of Cosmas and Damian in Kadash. When the church stood here, its apses faced B. Polyanka, and the volume was oriented transversely to the street. After the temple was demolished, a Soviet dwelling house-plate was built in its place, along the Polyanka. The hotel is going to be built in the courtyard of this house. It will be adjacent to the end of the existing building there. The facades are designed in a magnificent variation of apartment buildings of the early XX century, with two bay windows, balconies, balustrades and loggias. They caused a quiet amazement of the experts, catching which, the author casually admitted that yes, indeed, "they hung a lot of candy wrappers and bows." Although, in my opinion, if we made "bows" as eclecticism and modernity, the house would not be so bad at all and would pass for a good full-fledged stylization. However, a lot here depends on the quality of the details, which cannot be identified from the renders shown. Experts have agreed on the location of the hotel (it captures a very small piece of the security zone of one of the neighboring monuments) - but not the "spreading" architecture.
The second hotel of the same authors from the same program will be built between the new building of the French embassy and Igumnov's house, from which its volume recedes by 9 meters - the distance of the fire passage. There were no candy wrappers or bows, and everything together resembled a cheap residential building of the 1950s, but stepped, with a painfully curving courtyard and floors painted with different paints lightening upward. This project was approved in part - "as part of the program of small hotels", but the final approval can be recognized "only after a positive decision of the Moscow Heritage Committee." To this, the presiding officer Viktor Sheredega added that this is not a very good place for a hotel, because many different problems can be foreseen here, ranging from transport to the indignation of residents of neighboring houses.
In addition, at the meeting "from the fourth time" the project for the completion of the house on Tverskaya, 24/2 was approved. The last time it was rejected due to a lack of parking spaces. Although in the discussion it sounded that the most pity is the courtyard space of the house, which will lose the aura of the old city courtyard, acquiring in return some, let us note from ourselves, “plasticity”. However, the aura of the courtyard and the number of parking spaces are opposite things. In order to bring the space to the required 92, another low-value extension was broken, and an additional garage was designed in its place.
