The topic of reorganization of the territories of old factories in the Moscow center is now one of the most resounding. And the Krasnaya Roza factory is one of the earliest, largest and most famous projects of this kind. She started to draw it back in the 1990s. the investment company "Nerl", and in 2003 the architectural studio of Sergei Kiselev developed an urban planning concept for the reorganization of the territory, designed for nine years - all work should be completed in 2012. The investor was ZAO Krasnaya Roza 1875, and the customer was StroyProekt.
The urban development concept, completed and approved in 2004, is a plan to transform the six hectares of the factory site into a new business center with many tenants and open to the city - it is assumed that any passer-by can cross it on foot. In total, the complex will include 10 buildings - buildings of different sizes and with different destinies.
In the center of the factory quarter, two architectural monuments have survived, which will be restored according to the projects of Lyudmila Barshch (GIPRONII RAS): the first is the house of the Vsevolozhsky estate, on the territory of which a factory was built after 1875, One-story wooden manor house that survived the fire of 1812 in Soviet times was turned into a gymnasium, and the logs of its walls were almost rotted away. The log house will be relocated according to the technology of restoration of wooden buildings, the old tiled stoves will be preserved, and the interior will be filled with antique furniture and a reception house for important guests will be made in it. The second architectural monument is also located inside the quarter - this is the building of the gallery for the collection of paintings by the founder of the silk manufactory Claude Giraud, built by Roman Klein, a celebrity of the late 19th century who was equally successful in designing museums and factory buildings.
In addition to two "official" monuments, "Krasnaya Roza" owns a number of medium-sized factory buildings, modest but sufficiently high-quality representatives of industrial architecture of the late 19th century. Some time ago the preservation of some of these buildings caused a positive reaction from critics - it was a rare example of the careful preservation of houses that did not have the status of monuments of anything. Thanks to the reconstruction of building 9, where the building of the RBR Bank is now located, in which the Rozhdestvenka bureau took part in 2004, adding a multi-tiered glass gallery to the courtyard facade, it became obvious that old walls can be so harmoniously combined with the latest design. The second building to be preserved, number 7, has also already been renovated. Both the one and the other will remain in the form they have now.
So, the monuments are being restored - however, the wooden manor will have to be practically reassembled, two brick buildings have been repaired, received modern inclusions and will be preserved authentic. And on the two poles of the factory area there will be two large new office buildings inaccessible to historic buildings of class "A", No. 1 and No. 2. They are also designed by "Sergey Kiselev and Partners".
Building No. 1 is the most famous building of the "Red Rose" now, because since 2003 it houses the ArtPlay gallery, which has sheltered a whole series of artistic offices and has already become well known. ArtPlay has become one of the sonorous examples of the development of loft spaces by artists, one might even say that this example is almost elementary for Moscow. However, most likely, it will not be possible to preserve the original corpus - this has already been repeatedly written in the press - however, the authors did not particularly mention that this was intended from the very beginning. Sergei Kiselev was ordered a project involving the disassembly and restoration in restoration mode (that is, exactly according to the drawings) of the part of the building overlooking Timur Frunze Street. The architects call it a "shed building" because of the peculiarities of the ceiling, which is a large concrete accordion, in the edges of which windows are made in order to obtain maximum overhead illumination for the wide single-tier space of the workshop. Sheds are one of the characteristic techniques for overlapping large workshops, and in this case they have already become a symbol of the building. Thus, not only the facade will be recreated, as in other cases, but also the floors - the entire volume to a depth of about 20 meters from the street.
I must say that some time ago, perhaps reacting to the press and the opinions of the defenders of Moscow antiquity, the customer expressed a desire not to demolish the "shed" building of the Art Play, but to preserve it by adding a new building in the depths. A special meeting was even held on this topic. However, it turned out that in order to preserve the hull, it is necessary to abandon about one third of the underground parking. Or dig it up somewhere else - in a word, make a completely new project of building No. 1, proceeding from the changed conditions. And postpone the completion of all work for at least one more year.
So, the "shed" building is demolished and will be restored with an underground garage. Let us repeat that this was assumed from the very beginning, from 2003. "Behind him" there is a large glass volume with an internal atrium, one third less than the 8th building discussed above, but still very, very impressive. It will accommodate offices and a fitness center. This building, quite restrained and calm, has one idea, which makes its "highlight". The fact is that on the eastern facade, which grows directly behind the triangular rows of the shed roof, triangular projections are conceived, similar to the sheds, but mirror-glass. They will reflect the ribbed "factory" roof, showing passers-by a "top view" that is completely inaccessible to them. It must be said that the theme of reflections, for modern glass architecture, is actually quite frequent and natural, here it turns out to be interpreted in a special way - the facade not only coldly accepts and shows everything that is available to it, but as if it makes a "leap" forward, grows itself what some new pieces, just needed to show more. This makes the architecture more spectacular, and the status of the reflection seems to become clearer - in this case it is impossible to consider it accidental, it is definitely calculated and included in the fabric of the facade decor as one of the important components. Reflection turns out to be on a par with material decorations, and I must say that this is at least remarkable.
In addition to playing with reflections, the building has one more little secret - the degree of "modernity" of its architecture is growing very noticeably from the edge (the restored shed building) overlooking Timur Frunze Street to the center. In the middle there is a completely glass atrium, flanked at the edges by two simple light gray parallelepipeds - the local version of Scylla and Charybdis, parted to make room for a glass "iceberg". The roof of the atrium is covered with a giant glass resemblance of sheds - they are so large that only three protrusions fit in, clearly hinting at the continuity with the old factory part.
So, "Krasnaya Roza" is a large block in the center of the city, which began to be reconstructed earlier than other similar ones. Over the past four years, he managed to become both a kind of standard and the subject of many controversies. His example shows how expensive and difficult it is to preserve the historical environment while simultaneously transforming it into luxurious Class A offices (by the way, office spaces located inside old factories will never rise above the cheaper Class B). At the same time, it cannot be called a compromise. Rather, something else is an example of the proximity and interpenetration of two extremes, the first of which is a noble attempt to preserve absolutely everything that is possible, and the second is a rather natural desire to make the final product of high quality and successfully sold. It must be said that in Moscow the latter is more often unconditionally victorious. And in the "Red Rose", it seems that a delicate balance has arisen.
