Ilya Utkin is generally an amazing person. He is a master at overcoming the difficulties associated with planting an object on a site. If in the Gorki-2 project the section was wildly narrow, in connection with which Ilya Utkin had to trample the canon and contrive so that the project, despite this, had a canonical look, here, due to the specifics of the relief, the difference there is more than four meters - he was forced to make the front entrance to the house from the side. But how can the front entrance to a country residence of this size - after all 1,500 square meters - be on the side? Especially if the style of this residence claims to be classic. And Ilya Utkin came up with the following trick: the central part of the house is decorated with a portico of four square rusticated columns on which the roof rests. Everything is symmetrical, as it should be in classical architecture, but only this central part has neither walls nor insides, it is, in essence, an open gallery and, by compatibility, a viewing platform. That is, the place that was supposed to accommodate the entrance group, the public area is hollow, the wind is walking in it.
And the residential part of the house turns out to be subordinate to this empty space, it is pushed back to the edge of the site, as well as the building with a garage and a security room. As in the Gorki-2 project there was an axis of non-existent symmetry around which the skeleton of the house was built, which determined its structure, so in this case we have a gallery-terrace that replaced the main facade, in relation to which the rest of the structure is secondary. The idea of a fake facade is, in principle, not new. For example, in the pavilion "Birch House" in Gatchina Park, the same technique is used. True, in the aforementioned pavilion, this is still not quite a facade-dummy, rather it is a facade-mask, because a real object is already hidden behind it, and Ilya Utkin has nothing hidden behind this gallery, this is such a chamber towards the cliff with which the site borders in the South-West.
In general, Ilya Utkin is an illusionist architect in all respects. Most of its objects seem to contain some kind of mockery of the fundamental and generally accepted laws of formation. Ilya Utkin often simply ignores these laws, however, not to the detriment of the quality of his products. In other words, the structure of many of its objects seems to be absolutely illogical, but on the whole, everything looks extremely rational and appropriate, as if it should be so. The described villa does not have a facade - by all the rules it is not a facade - but at the same time it does. And there is no getting away from it. There is some kind of magic in all this. Of course, this magic has a completely pragmatic nature - if it were not for the steep relief, there would not be a trace of the trompe l'oeil façade - but somehow you don’t notice this pragmatism. No deception is felt. Although this is definitely a hoax. Ilya Utkin is just some kind of Harry Houdini from architecture, honestly. None of the modern domestic architects can play tricks so exquisitely and witty.
His habit of making architecture without architecture as such could even be equated with the author's style, with his individual creative manner. Remember the famous paper project "Glass Castle", which he co-authored with Alexander Brodsky, who won first prize at the 1982 Shinkenchiku competition. This is a lock without a lock - instead of a lock, there are tall glass plates, placed parallel to each other, on which some squiggles are drawn - if you look at them frontally and from afar, the images on these plates overlap each other, and it seems that you are standing in front of you real castle. On closer examination, this optical effect seems to cease to work, the enchantment dissipates. And what do we end up with? Imitation of a castle. Just like in the project "Gorki-2" we have an imitation of symmetry, as well as here we have an imitation of the facade. Ilya Utkin incredibly skillfully combines what cannot be combined according to all the rules - traditionality with postmodern humor, pragmatism with fantasy.
He is still an amazing person.
