The first thing you ask yourself when looking at the project of the villa "Gorki-2" by Ilya Utkin: what is this style, actually? It seems like a classic, but if you look closely, it seems like not quite. Yes, the main and courtyard facades of the building are decorated with porticoes, yes, the house is surrounded by a cornice. But both porticoes are not crowned with either a pediment or an attic, and apart from the cornice and columns, no decorative elements can be found in the exterior. Moreover, the plan is deliberately asymmetrical, and the porticos are not only deprived of the "cap" they are entitled to according to the canon, but they are also shifted to the corners of the building instead of being located in the center of the facades.
Regarding the asymmetry of the plan, however, one can doubt that this, they say, crosses out all the classicism. Andrei Voronikhin made the Mining Institute asymmetrical in terms of plan, and nothing. All the same, the public recognized the classics in this. But the moment with the porticoes shifted to the side looks somehow too provocative - in my opinion, there is no analogue to such a solution in the classics, but rather something from Leon Krier.
However, if you look at the shape and size of the site, as well as the solution for its improvement, everything becomes clear in a moment. What at first seemed strange and a little out of place appears in a completely different light. The site has the shape of a strongly elongated rectangle, the aspect ratio of which is one to three offhand. That is, in terms of proportions, it is roughly like a keyhole. It is not an easy task to fit a classic villa on such a narrow territory, and even so that its array does not clog the space, so that this space breathes. And Ilya Utkin masterfully coped with it.
The thing is that at the entrance to the site, because of the cuts formed by the garage and the guard post, we do not see anything except the portico of the main facade - the outbuilding with the pool remains out of our field of vision. Thus, the aforementioned propylaea play the role of a kind of photo diaphragm, artificially narrowing the angle of view of the person looking at the house, a frame that cuts off everything unnecessary. It turns out that there is an axis of symmetry, even if it is purely visual. It goes from the entrance gate, through the block containing the entrance and public areas and in the plan is designed like an amphiprostyle temple, to the guest house at the far end of the site. There is no doubt that the plan of the main building is far from academic. But this was the sacrifice that the architect had to pay so that the house would not block the site like a wall. Thanks to the unusually skillful organization of the site space, the overall asymmetry of the plan was somehow shaded.
In general, if you look as a whole, in the Gorki-2 project everything is subordinated to this visual axis - including porticoes. Actually, Ilya Utkin could not have made them at all, or placed them in the center of the facades, but then the symmetry of the space would have been knocked down, the mansion, perhaps, would have turned out to be more integral compositionally, but at the same time it would not have such a ceremonial, presentable view. So the classicism of this project is not in the decor, and not in the layout, but, surprisingly, in the trajectory of movement along the site outlined by the architect. And this can be.
And to talk directly about the quality of the facades themselves, in my opinion, is pointless here, because they play a secondary role. In principle, in many respects they are quite successful: the proportions are neat, the materials are selected with taste - a thin pinkish-brown, almost Roman brick (in reality it will most likely be brick tiles) is quite harmoniously combined with beige, obviously made of gypsum, decor. The front entrance is quite ingeniously solved: due to the fact that the central columns of the portico are round, and those on the sides are square, when looking at the projection of the main facade it seems as if the portico is framed with antae. There is even a hint of originality in this: did anyone before Ilya Utkin make false antes?
The project "Gorki-2" is curious, first of all, in the following: despite the fact that as such there are minimal signs of classicism in it, it feels like a real classic. This is the paradox that catches you. Classics without classics, symmetry without symmetry. How can this be? How did the architect achieve this? But these are no longer questions for me, but for the author of the project.
