The Kauchuk plant is located between the Frunzenskaya and Sportivnaya metro stations, next to the Trubetskoy estate park, which is now well maintained - even white swans swim in the pond. On the one side of the park is the Palace of Youth, a famous work of the 1970s, on the other, the Fusion Park of Vladimir Plotkin is being built, and on the third is the Rubber Plant, a poisonous industrial enterprise that settled here in 1915. True, from the beginning of the 20th century, only one building of the plant management remained, built by the then celebrity - Roman Klein, the author of the building of the Museum of Fine Arts on Volkhonka. But this old factory building is the only attraction, the rest of the area is filled with large, shabby 1970s buildings and looks depressing. The plant will be removed from the city and replaced by a new residential area.
In the short history of design, there are some curious features that distinguish it from a number of other similar urban planning undertakings in Moscow. The blocks were built before - but until the 1990s they were hotbeds of cheap panel buildings, and after that - groups of towers, usually pompous and almost anonymous. Architects "with names" more often designed individual houses, which turned out to be favorite subjects of the professional press, but were lost in the general mass. Now venerable architects are already designing entire neighborhoods.
First, a custom-made competition was held, to which Russian first-hand architects were invited to participate. Two workshops won - "Meganom" and the workshop of Sergei Skuratov. Then the customers arranged an interview and opted for Skuratov's workshop, which was asked to develop an urban planning concept and make projects for most of the houses. The rest, about 10% of the total, is divided between other famous architects - the already mentioned Meganom, as well as the AB group, Alexander Brodsky, Alexey Kurenniy, Vladimir Plotkin, Alexander Skokan and Sergei Choban.
Architect Sergei Skuratov is in charge of this urban planning process, strictly organizing it down to the smallest detail. A set of rules called the "design code" is being developed for the quarter. The concept is unusual, and the author accompanies it with a dictionary commentary, from which it follows that an “encoded object” is an artificial system capable of changing in accordance with conditions.
Reading through the comments, you are convinced that the design code is most similar to genetic code - everything is described and distributed in it to the smallest detail, but on its basis different individuals should arise.
At the heart of the block development rules developed by Sergey Skuratov's workshop for himself and for others, you can see the relatively familiar concept of the master plan. Quarter 473, which is now completely fenced off and closed, is planned to be returned to the urban space, it will be permeable and pass through. An artificial rectangular pond will appear in the center, on each side of which there will be four mini-quarters - buildings are grouped around courtyards, two are rectangular, two are asymmetric and resemble rectangles with one corner cut obliquely. Thus, five centers appear inside the quarter: four "private", these are courtyards intended for residents, and one public - the area around the pond. All together in the plan resembles a cross with branches slightly shifted clockwise. This shape is partly due to the fact that the three corner sections of block 473 are occupied by buildings that do not belong to the plant and will not be demolished - the southern corner is residential, the eastern banking corner, in the northern one is the building of the Medical Academy. THEM. Sechenov.
However, the design code is not limited to the layout of the block. The volumes of each house have been worked out in detail - while many of them are cut in the lower part and hang over the aisles and driveways in the form of giant consoles, making you recall other projects by Sergei Skuratov - a house in Tessinsky and a tender offer for a block near the Donskoy Monastery. The height and number of floors have been determined, as well as the lines for the location of the upper elevations of the windows. The latter, explains Sergey Skuratov, is done so that rhythmic discord does not arise between the houses.
The Kleinovsky building of the plant management will be preserved and restored, and next to it, its copy will be recreated - its “brother”, destroyed in Soviet times. Between the 19th century building and its repetition, a glass and metal modernist building will emerge with a façade set diagonally to the street line - designed to set off the historicism of the two houses - preserved and recreated.
R. Klein's building, on the one hand, and Sergey Skuratov's love for brick textures, on the other, determined the choice of material - brick (Dutch hand-made and German clinker) will prevail on the outer contour of the quarter, inside, around the pond - light stone, glass and metal. Thus, from the outside, this urban development will be more traditional than “inside”. The main material of the facades is also included in the "design code", in addition, there are recommendations - for example, in the brick texture, smooth transitions of tone are assumed from dark gray at the bottom to lighter brown at the top of the houses.
However, the listed things are rather material; in addition to them, there is also an equally important theory, which in Sergei Skuratov turns from the usual dryish calculations into a lyric-poetic essay. She combines the principles of contextualism with creative modernist impulses. For example, the pond inside reminds of the manor parks of the 18th century, while the brick outside appeals to both the Klein building and the memory of the brick factories of the 17th century. in the Khamovniki area; the pedestrian permeability of the quarter revives the memory of the alley that was lost after the appearance of the plant. This cultural motivation, which is customary for modern Moscow, is filled with an extremely loving and ambiguous character, which is characteristic of the work of Sergei Skuratov. However, more daring reasoning is superimposed on it - the Klein building, a strict and beautiful example of factory architecture, appears as a “Western” pole as opposed to the “eastern” landmark in the form of an example of “Moscow” architecture of the early 2000s, the “Camelot” residential complex from the northeastern sides. A semantic tension should arise between them - a kind of "stretch-gradient" - from the technological rational West to the man-made sensual East.
Thus, the “genetic code” of the quarter contains, as it should be, the heterogeneous information necessary for the “growth” of architectural works - a poetic multi-layered theoretical “leaven” and detailed recommendations concerning equally the “skeleton” - the plan and structure, “filling” - volumes and "skins" - textured facade solutions. Not that this is a completely new approach to Moscow urban planning, but it has a number of features that make it unusual - first of all, a very personal attitude to the task and texture, emotionality and poetry characteristic of Sergei Skuratov's architecture. Which thus go beyond one or two houses and spread over the whole block.
