Khodynskoe field, known for the tragic events of Russian history, “stood idle” for a long time, until some time ago investors reached it, and this vast emptiness began to be gradually built up with the wonders of modern architecture. As a result, now Khodynka resembles a kind of incubator or an experimental testing ground of architectural fantasies, built up unevenly and awaiting its logical conclusion. Meanwhile, new construction is taking over the neighborhood more and more. Thus, in the workshop of Pavel Andreev, an urban planning concept was developed for the restructuring of three quarters located between Khodynskoye Pole and Leningradsky Prospekt, in the area of the Air Terminal.
The tendency that has recently prevailed to order large architects not for individual buildings, but for entire neighborhoods, is undoubtedly productive in this case, since instead of scattered buildings Pavel Andreev proposes an urban planning solution for a 50 hectare site, subject to general architectural and planning principles. Objects with different functions are interconnected into a single "business activity zone", which will also receive an architecturally integral front line of facades overlooking Leningradka.
Work on the concept of block 37-39 began with the suggestion of the chief architect of Moscow, considering it as an integral part of the planning of Leningradsky Prospekt as a whole. The peculiarity of the resulting project was its contextuality, expressed, in particular, in the perimeter planning scheme, according to which the entire avenue is built up. Inside the new quarter, although it lies next to the Khodyn "records", radical forms like the Ice Palace or the "house-ear" have not been noticed, the plans are quite traditional, maintaining continuity with the historical buildings of Leningradka. The scale of the quarter designed by Pavel Andreev's workshop, however, is larger than Soviet-era buildings, which in turn is explained by the unwillingness to get lost against the background of buildings existing in the depths of Khodynskoye Pole, like the already mentioned "longest residential building."
In order to smooth out this multilevelness, the new quarter increases its number of storeys from the avenue deeper into the building. The tallest buildings-plates are moved closer to the "giants" existing on Khodynka. And towards Leningradka, the heights decrease, approaching the scale of the historical monument - the Petrovsky traveling palace, located directly on the opposite side of the avenue. The vast territory of the palace park plays the role of a spatial pause, this accentuates the palace and draws attention to it. Maintaining a visual connection between the new quarter and the Petrovsky Castle, the architects placed an open courdoner inside the first building line, just along the axis of the palace. The “front yard” of the new quarter reflects the palace one in a mirror. But he also has a pragmatic task - to add greenery to the future business district. The “branches” of boulevards form the “skeleton” of the whole composition from the green “Courdoner”. Two main, wider boulevards intersect at right angles: one runs parallel to Leningradsky Prospekt behind the front line of buildings, the second cuts through the territory in the middle. These boulevards are the inner streets of the quarter, free of car traffic and should be transformed into a recreation with cafes and shops.
The current sketch project is at the initial stage of work and operates with the most general architectural categories without detailed elaboration. According to his chief executive officer Andrei Pakhomov, there were a lot of development options, and the one that is in front of us as a result is a kind of final project made by Pavel Andreev in collaboration with the territorial workshop. In general, the urban planning proposal was met favorably by the Moskomarkhitektura, but the territorial workshop itself encountered the interests of the owners of the buildings already existing here in the course of work on the development concept. The layout shows how the new quarter includes some of them, but the problem is complicated by the fact that a number of private land allocations also fall on the roadway, as a result of which it is now impossible to resolve the issue of punching new roads and it is too early to talk about the implementation of the plan.
