The area between Ostozhenka and the river, nicknamed by developers "the golden mile", is now one of the hottest hotbeds of new construction in the center of Moscow. Elite housing is sold for big money, lovers of modern architecture go on excursions here, and fans of disappearing Moscow antiquity sigh about the lost charm of quiet streets. What's true is true - there are almost no outstanding architectural monuments here, most of the churches were demolished back in the 1930s, but the color of the area was and now it has radically changed, or rather, it is in the process of being transformed into a chic area of the city center.
The project of Pavel Andreev's workshop is intended for a triangular section between Zachatyevskiye lanes and Ostozhenka, facing the street with a sharp "cape" of the square. And it is very different from what we are accustomed to now consider the development of this area. Firstly, there will be no housing here, but a monastery hotel (three stars), offices and a public garden. And secondly, the architects got an extremely “burdensome” plot - a difficult task, the answer to which turned out to be a curious ensemble that combines very different things - downright “bush” of different architectural works on the theme of the historic city.
So, on the one hand, Ostozhenka Street, on the other, the Conception Monastery. The monastery owns the building of the 17th century chambers in the southwestern part of the site, known for the fact that the famous collector of Russian folklore Pavel Kireevsky lived here at the beginning of the 19th century. The wards are high, two-story on the basement, and they have been in a terrible state for quite some time. Actually, the restoration of the chambers is the main plot of the project. The monastery found an investor who finances this restoration with the transformation of the building into a monastery hotel, the investor is building several medium-sized office buildings in the neighborhood "in regeneration mode", which means something like this: once there was something on this place (a wooden house), now the place is empty, and it is possible to build within the existing height restrictions, thus restoring the building density.
In the regeneration mode, a building appears, which in fact is one, but from the outside (from the street) it seems that there are four of them. Three houses will be built along the line of the Zachatyevsky lanes - two small one-story houses, similar to the outbuildings of an average urban manor house of the 18th century - covered with plaster, without columns, with baroque "eared" platbands. These "wings" flank the garden in front of the Kireevskys' house (hotel) and the meaning of their façade solution is quite obvious - the Moscow pre-fire buildings could look similar, which could be found by the famous inhabitant of the chambers. Only functionally, the "wings" turn out to be "technical rooms", inside they hide the elevator shafts leading to the underground garage. Which, as it usually happens now, occupies the entire area of the building, bypassing the 17th century monument at the prescribed distance. The third volume, overlooking the side streets, is larger, its above-ground part is two-storey, and the decor of the facades is the same - yellow-white, stucco. All together, which is quite obvious, is intended to depict a medium-large Moscow estate of the second half of the 18th century; or its imitation of the mid-19th century. In a word, one can argue about whether or not it is necessary to build such "tricks" in the center of the city - this is already a political question, but it must be admitted that three houses perfectly fit the concept of "regeneration" - almost like a standard. After some years, it will be possible to pass by and not notice that the houses are new - if, of course, the details can be done well.
The fourth volume of this building-ensemble is resolved in contrast. It is entirely glass, high-tech and is literally cut into the "body" of plaster imitation-regeneration at an angle of 90 degrees. This building is parallel to Ostozhenka, and to the Zachatyevsky Lanes it shows its glass corner, towering above the plaster wall of the pseudo-estate, and thus adds intrigue to the ensemble. It openly contradicts the historicism of the rest of the volumes, abruptly moving from imitation to the frankness of modernist glass and iron. The fact that the building is boldly deployed, and not just placed in parallel behind the "historical" facade, pretends to be a fraction of the internal plot - as if a modern building had been cut into an "old" house. In fact, if you think about it, it turns out the other way around: the stucco-stylized volume surrounds a glass parallelepiped, as if it had already been here before, and then the era of historicism came and it was rebuilt. It is quite obvious that the complex is deliberately designed for such a reflection, and its ambiguity in the series of changes in Moscow's priorities over the past 20 years turns out to be quite appropriate.
The next part of the architects' plan seems to be especially interesting - this is a project for the improvement of a city park adjacent to the monastery site at the corner between Ostozhenka and Zachatyevskiy lanes. Here stood the Church of the New Resurrection, a small five-domed church of the late 17th century. with a sharp Empire-style bell tower and a refectory, which acted directly on the Ostozhenka highway, approximately the way that the Vladimir Church of the same time fills the sidewalk on Sretenka now. The church was blown up in the 1930s, in the early 2000s. there was talk of its restoration in a number of destroyed churches - but it didn’t come to that, and now it’s difficult to say whether this is good or bad. In this case, the restoration and construction in general within the framework of a small square is legally impeded by the fact that it has the official status of a natural complex. The park belongs to the city, but the monastic authorities expressed a desire to install a memorial sign in the park in honor of the destroyed church.
Architects - Pavel Andreev and the head of the project Sergei Pavlov found, as it seems to me, a beautiful solution to this problem - they proposed to open and museumize the foundations of the church, having previously carried out excavations in them. Most of the walls of the temple fall on the territory of the park - their contours will be marked by masonry, ideally hiding the real remains of the foundation. In a similar way, in Pskov, the remains of churches dismantled by order of Peter I for the construction of earthworks in their place are exhibited - the temples of the Dovmont city: their foundations are covered with modern restoration masonry and are available for inspection in this form. In Moscow, such methods have not yet been used, probably, if the plan is realized, it will be the first initiative of this kind.
On the site of the church bell tower - where there was an entrance to the temple, now it is planned to make the main entrance to the square, placing a glass arch over the remains of the foundations, approximately in the place of the bell tower walls. The glass should serve as a showcase - behind them will be displayed materials on the history of the destroyed church, monastery, Ostozhenka in general. Further, in the middle of the former refectory there will be a straight path that imitates the temple floor, leading to the place of the church naos (quadrangle), the "floor" of which will be lowered by several steps, and in the middle there will be a "church monument" in the form of a small stele-chapel. The entire square will be surrounded by a fence, similar to the one that was at the church, and inside, in addition to the ruins, curved paths will be laid leading to two other entrances to the square. It turns out a park named after the temple, albeit small, but distinguished by a great degree of delicacy in relation to the destroyed heritage. Frankly speaking, the figures of the 1930s created many of these squares - if they could apply this technique - excavations followed, relatively speaking, by "park" museification, at least to some of these squares, this would bring a lot of benefits to Russian culture.
