The quarter, designed by Sergei Skuratov, is intended for a site that could be defined as: with great prospects. It is not far from the city center, but not close either. This is a typical industrial area to be hatched on the banks of two large ponds, elongated like halves of a coffee bean, on the sides of a thin isthmus that was once a road. The ponds are desperately abandoned and densely overgrown with duckweed, and on the shore, from the city center, that is, from the east, there are factories. The plant closest to the water has already been taken out, the neighboring one is next in line. Then the ponds will be cleaned, and instead of the industrial zone next to the water there will be Sergei Skuratov's quarter noticeable from afar.
The quarter was supposed to become noticeable, it was conceived as a new urban dominant. But at the same time, at the request of the customer, the houses cannot be "high-rise" by definition - that is, no higher than the fire limit of 73.5 m, the maximum height to which the fire engine ladder opens. Sergey Skuratov solved this problem as follows - he lifted the entire complex on a 20-meter stylobate. The stylobate included parking lots, shops, partly offices, thus practically not digging into the wrong soil of the coastal zone. A full-fledged artificial soil will be poured on the roof of the stylobate, trees will be planted, squares will be laid out and playgrounds will be arranged - in a word, a park zone will be created for the cloisters of the quarter. At the same time, fire engines will be able to enter this stylobate along the ramps, if necessary. Special ceramic paths with large holes are provided for them, through which the grass will grow - so as not to disturb the green surroundings.
Thus, using the stylobate, Sergei Skuratov solved not even one question, but a whole bunch of problems: he achieved the desired monumentality - the total height of the complex from the ground is 95 meters. Fulfilled the requirements of fire regulations - a fire engine, driving into the courtyard on the roof of the stylobate, deals with houses no higher than 73.5 meters. Fits into the coastal elevation difference (about 10 m). He separated the private courtyard space belonging to the residents of the complex, without using concrete and other huge fences - just raising it above the city. Note that this courtyard should offer a good view of the ponds and their surroundings, of the park looming in the future.
I must say that Sergei Skuratov has been enthusiastically developing the theme of the levels of the urban landscape for - at least - the last two years. In the beginning there was a house in Tessinsky Lane, which seemed to be "dug out" from the ground like an architectural monument that archaeologists had worked on. Then - the project of the quarter next to the Donskoy Monastery, where the courtyards, raised to the level of several floors, were cut by the gorges of the streets. Then - a house dug into the ground on all three floors in Khilkov lane. Now - the Kiev quarter, which, if you connect your imagination, can be imagined as a group of familiar houses with a common "patch" of underground floors. Only as a whole, together with its lower part, dug out from under the ground.
If we talk about the figurative side of the issue, then the theme of "geological cataclysm", as a result of which the entire quarter was raised above the city, is played out in full. The outer walls of the stylobate will, according to Sergei Skuratov, imitate the "texture of corrugated cardboard" cut across. This means that most of the walls are glazed surfaces. Thin brick (or stone) stripes-ribs - the horizontal lines of the interfloor articulations and the verticals, which have replaced the inter-window piers and are evenly spaced in a checkerboard pattern - protrude from the even and shiny "mass". Again, according to the author, it also looks like a rectangular "honeycomb" - as if they were cut out of the ground with a sharp knife, and then pulled out of this ground - the way they really do with honeycombs.
They pulled it out along with everything that was on them. And there are five 20-storey towers with apartments on them. The towers are also staggered to block each other's view of the pond. The facades will be decorated in Skuratov's favorite style - terracotta tiles, smoothly changing their tone from dark at the bottom to light at the top. The architect has already used this motive in the house on Mosfilmovskaya and in Tessinsky lane.
The houses are almost the same in height and volume, but slightly different in shape. The form is "stucco", sculptural - the towers taper slightly downward, then widen approximately in the place where the columns have entasis, and again narrow at the top. You can compare them with hypertrophied great-columns, with the stones of distant Stonehenge or with "local" Polovtsian women. Most accurately, it will probably be stylish Celtic Stonehenge, albeit geographically further away. The architect seems to generalize the contextual associations of his form, unobtrusively hinting at the antiquity of the place.
One of the towers is "laid on its side and cut in half" - it is the farthest from the water and houses the office center. The "Lying Tower" supports the theme of megaliths - there are also fallen stones in Stonehenge, even the silhouette is similar.
The towers, however, do not all resemble the "standing stones" of megaliths. And it is not only a matter of scale and not only of a high degree of generalization, although this also takes place. The point is probably that, in addition to ancient stone associations, there are modern bionic ones here - the towers look like some kind of natural formations, like hornets' nests, growing on the honeycomb of bee larvae or cocoons, from which something is trying to hatch. The volumes are set at different angles and it seems that they hardly noticeably turn, tilt, creating the effect of stirring - either frozen, or awakening. The windows on the towers are pulled together into uneven "basins", and the same with the walls - as if a stone-brick crust is flying from the awakened giants. This latent movement can be understood in different ways. If the quarter has moved out of the ground, then we are dealing with a geological cataclysm. Stonehenge grew up in the middle of Kiev and began to come to life little by little, without losing its monumentality. Or autochthonous stone women are trying to free themselves from the shell of their cocoons.
