Sergei Tchoban's victorious return to Russia began with the Moscow project of the Federation high-rise complex, but later, however, more was heard about his work for his native St. Petersburg. One project does not have time to submit, as the architect wins the competition for another. However, now the capital can boast of new works from Sergei Tchoban. We have already talked about two projects - the complex on Mozhaisky Val and the Byzantine House in Granatnoye. Recently, on Ozerkovskaya embankment, the implementation of another concept has begun - an office and business multifunctional complex, made within the framework of the SPeeCH bureau.
This project was developed by order of the developer, who owns three adjacent plots at once along the Vodootvodny Canal. On one of them, the residential complex "Aquamarine", designed by another bureau, is already in the frame. At first, SPeeCH developed 2 sections at once, but then only the middle one remained. It will house 4 buildings of the new complex, gathered around the arc of the central pedestrian boulevard.
The architects attribute this arc to the desire to create interest for the pedestrian. Just a straight street, the same as the neighboring ones, leading from the embankment to the distant 3rd building, separated from the rest by a new passage that has not yet appeared, would risk being boring for a walk, even when all the first floors are filled with shops and boutiques. In this case, we have facades, which successively change "orders": round double columns, thin stone similarities of lamellas, concave pylons - create the required variety, and at the end you can see an acute-angled console of the five-story part of the 2nd building, which plays the role of a certain benchmark, so important for the end of any road, no matter how long.
At the same time, the curved inner street made it possible to reveal the closed structure of the complex to the neighboring residential area - and to respond to the sloping corner on the embankment. Thanks to the arc of the boulevard between the Aquamarine, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th buildings, a small area is formed, which is undoubtedly important for the urban structure. By the way, if you look at the situational plan of this area, you will find that all sorts of arcs have already become a characteristic component of the layout: behind the Aquamarine there is already an office building with an elliptical volume. The intra-quarter part of "Aquamarine" is also in the plan a half circle with a pair of ledges. Thus, the arc turns out to be a stuck theme of this quarter, and the complex of buildings of Sergei Tchoban picks up and supports it.
The style of the project can be traced very consistently - this is definitely a paraphrase of the Art Deco of the 1930s. The forest of verticals, rigidly, to the full height, structuring glass volumes, reminds of the most characteristic buildings of that time, both foreign and Moscow in equal measure. The double rods stretched to the full height of the giant columns' fusts vividly recall the buildings of Fomin and Langman, built at the turn of the twenties and thirties: the Dynamo society in Lubyanka or the building in the courtyard of the Mossovet. In the draft design, the columns of the first and second buildings even ended with bumps characteristic of Stalinist architecture - and it looked more like the thirties, but then the bumps were removed - and the project became more like their beginning. Or something Italian from Mussolini. One way or another, this is the first Russian building by Sergei Tchoban with such definite architectural reminiscences. Previously, allusions were more story-driven, woven into the pattern of an ornament, or reflected themselves in the texture of the material.
On the other hand, it is a very faithful reproduction of Art Deco, spiced of course with modern glass curves, but still authentic and recognizable. Especially if you look at the visualizations of the project, covered with a cinematic haze in the spirit of "Sky Captain". Despite the fact that the fashion for this style has been holding for some time, there are few qualitative variations of it in Moscow, except for the house in Levshinsky by Ilya Utkin. structures.
Majesty is probably the main theme of the architecture of the complex. A curved “courdoner” works for it - at some point one might think that the ensemble arose from some built-on and rebuilt palace. The forest of stone columns, the symmetrical composition, and the height of 11 floors itself operate in the same channel - there are no such buildings around, except for two shabby "panels" in the distance.
Therefore, although the layout of office buildings provides for the possibility of dividing each floor into 4 independent offices with a minimum area of 500 square meters, it can be assumed that some large corporation with a good vertical of power will move in here, whose employees will be able to increase pride in the company with the appearance of the place of work. … Moreover, in terms of infrastructure, it turned out to be a kind of mini business park with shops, two restaurants and even an apart-hotel, so important, for example, for Western companies that have to look for apartments for their foreign employees. And all this is inside the Garden Ring.
It is interesting to compare Sergei Tchoban's projects for St. Petersburg and for Moscow - the architect seems to be building his own special "myth" for each of these cities. Petersburg for him is an ephemeral city, mixed with graphics and literature. Either a mirage, or a book. Therefore, in St. Petersburg, Sergei Tchoban's houses are minimalistic, with drawings over glass surfaces.
Moscow - on the contrary, is stone, "and the houses are stone, and the land is stone", imperious, Byzantine, Stalinist. For her - and stone fantasies, more physical, but what can we say - more conservative. Tchoban definitely considers Stalin's classicism to be the main Moscow style - although he chooses the most beautiful from it, and as a rule "believes" the choice to the world art deco. The project for the Mozhaisky Val uses a grid of square windows characteristic of this style, the Byzantine House looks at Burov's openwork experiments. And here, on Ozerkovskaya - no less recognizable vertical columns of Fomin. It turns out a high-quality, stone version of Art Deco, a kind of "bridge" between the beginning of the XXI century and the end of the twenties of the XX-th. The bridge, in a sense, echoes the high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya, which can be seen quite well from here - from the canal.
