The house is being built in the depths of the courtyard between Yakovoapostolsky and Bolshoy Kazenny lane. In the 1970s, two elite pink-brick towers were already built here, rigidly wedged into the fabric of the historical quarter built along the old streets - the twin towers playfully stood diagonally, despising the layout: the guardians of those times also called such houses "false teeth." With the emergence of two Soviet towers, the urban space around them lost all the qualities of the historical environment - for its time it was one small steps of the expansion of modern buildings into the center, a kind of mini-new-arbat, a patch, of which there are many both within the Garden Ring line. Therefore, we can agree with the authors of the project in the statement that "the historical morphotype of the building is completely destroyed." Therefore, despite the location of the site in the historical center, not far from the reserved Pokrovka street, the main context for the new house was not the surrounding 19th century, but those very residential towers of the Brezhnev era. The new tower is guided by them - both by its height (13 floors) and by the squareness of its volume.
Further, however, transformations take place with it, which develop in two directions. First, and this is the most understandable thing - the new tower is far from aggressive modernism, it is a child of the era of contextualism, which gives rise to some contradictions. The fact is that the house is serious about both the neighboring “Brezhnev” environment and the distant, older one. It seems to echo the contours of the neighboring towers, but at the same time does not borrow their rigid and impudent arrangement, ignoring everything around, but on the contrary, it turns slightly, lining up parallel to the line of B. Kazenny Lane - the only one from which it will be completely visible, as if hinting - yes, I am also a tower, but polite, I am not a sign of the future redevelopment of the city, on the contrary, I am for reconciliation and consent.
The second feature is more noticeable - after all, almost forty years have passed, and the new tower seeks to combine modern techniques and materials with the diligent "contextuality" of the entire look. This is not surprising and is no longer new - everything that is being built in the center is striving in our time towards this goal - there is no other way. However, in this case, the usual process of combining the old and the new has taken on very visible forms.
From the side it seems that the house consists of a square glass rod - the base, covered with four shields of a very "brick" look, but curved by a weak wave. These "shields" are pushed forward on the projections, the side walls of which are also glazed and thus seem to belong to the "base" material. If you think in this direction further, then you can imagine such a story - here, relatively speaking, a square brick tower, similar to the "Brezhnev" one. For some reason, it begins to be reborn: first, the "skin" changes - the texture of the cladding, it becomes neater and begins to look more expensive. Then the volume moves apart from the inside and from this movement the brick planes part and bend, as if “under internal pressure” - approximately the same way as the facade in the “Matrix” does, that is, in a wave-like manner. Moving apart, the house reveals its inner "essence" - glass planes, of which it "actually consists". Of course, this story is a figment of the imagination, houses do not grow or transform, but there is some truth in it. It lies in the fact that the architectural imagery of the tower, new, but echoing the context, contains the described plot, moreover, it is presented so clearly that the house seems to be a plastic sketch on the theme “a modern building in a dilapidated historical center”. The contradictory desire of such buildings is especially accurately captured here, which consists in hiding behind a screen of brick texture and at the same time - tearing, pushing, breaking your shell "from the inside".
