The site in question is adjacent to Valovaya Street and 3rd Monetchikovsky Lane. Motorists know this place well - it is here that the carriageway bifurcates, dividing the streams of those who continue their way along Sadovoye, and those who need to turn around or go to Pyatnitskaya Street. True, both drivers and pedestrians can hardly see anything other than a three-story high fence, which is covered with advertising posters. This fence is so many years old that according to its posters it is just right to write the history of the design of domestic advertising. The fact is that at the corner of Valovaya and 3rd Monetchikovsky, construction has been going on for almost a quarter of a century. In the late 1980s, according to the project of Mikhail Posokhin, the construction of a new building for the First Model Printing House began - the building frame was completely erected in concrete, and in this form it stood until the mid-2000s, when it was finally acquired by the MIAN company. The company ordered the reconstruction project from the architectural studio of Pavel Andreev.
The technical task, at first glance, was very simple: there is a building, and it needs to be turned into an office complex, and of the highest level, because the location required. “The pitfalls were discovered later,” recalls Pavel Andreev. - Firstly, the office complex needed a parking lot, and quite spacious, and there was no opportunity for an underground parking under an already constructed building. Secondly, I had to work in the already given dimensions and a certain style. Needless to say, the building, designed by Mikhail Posokhin in the mid-1980s, bore a clear stamp of both its time and the author's creative manner - it was a large and heavy volume that held the corner of Valovaya and Lane like a proprietor. Having taken up this volume almost thirty years later, Andreev did not radically change it - rather, he cut it off, acting as a sculptor, cutting off the excess.
First of all, a fundamental decision was made to organize the parking. It was decided to place places for cars of employees and visitors of the office center in the building itself. He turned the first floor of the unfinished printing house into a public area with shops and cafes - a completely transparent and friendly open city. Three subsequent floors, according to the new project, will be dismantled, their place will be taken by four parking levels. For the arrival of cars, a ramp is attached to the rear facade.
The second major intrusion into the complex's layout was the creation of the atrium. Carved to the full height of the building, it is oriented parallel to the Garden Ring, which is why giant loggias, five stories high and two deep, appear on the side facades. In them, at a height of about 15 meters above the pavements of the Garden Ring, it is planned to place summer cafes with trees in tubs and umbrellas. “At first it seemed to us that such a deep niche element would be more appropriate on the main facade, but visual analysis showed that when moving along the Garden Ring, the plastic of the side facades of this building is of greater importance,” explains Pavel Andreev. It is difficult to disagree with the architect: the "hollows", discerning behind the silhouettes of neighboring buildings, attract the eye and intrigue.
The architecture of the main facade, once designed by Mikhail Posokhin in the style of pseudo-classicism, has also undergone some changes. Andreev keeps pilasters as the main theme for the design of this plane, however, the space between them, as well as the corners of the building, is filled with glass.“On the one hand, I wanted to preserve the solemn rhythm of the building, organically developing the character of the Stalinist development of the Garden Ring, on the other, I felt the need to make this volume visually lighter. For the same purpose, we have lowered the mark and introduced a different, more modest conclusion."
Thus, stone art deco turned out to be against the background of glass-metal hi-tech. Gigantic light yellow pilasters (9 floors each) bear a neat bend of a simple "Golos" cornice (if it can be made the way it is drawn, it will look like the 1930s). Above the stone cornice from the glass attic grows another, ribbed metal, and above each pilaster a metal mesh appears, demonstrating to the attentive observer the technical basis of the classical decoration of a modern building. In a similar way, since the time of Meyerhold, it has become customary in the theater from time to time to demonstrate to the viewer parts of the stage structures. Moreover, there are obviously more high-tech constructions and glass, just in terms of area, and in such a combination it turns out not so much a continuation of the "Bofill" direction, as its exposure: the house seems to be trying to "wash away" the pilasters, flooding the facades with glass.
The flat roof of the complex will be operational. One of the project options provided that not only a landscaped veranda would appear on it, but also several elite townhouses, for whose residents the architects designed a special tower with a lift for cars. However, the economic crisis has adjusted these plans, and now the two-story glass superstructure is also planned to be used for offices. The veranda, however, has not been canceled, so this building will come out onto the Garden Ring not only with the solemn rhythm of the pylons, but also with green tops of trees planted along the perimeter of the roof.
