The exposition of the Archcatalogue, dedicated this year to residential areas, consists of stands and models lined up in a row on a long podium. Some quarters in this "model row" are distinguished by the original, almost sculptural plasticity of the architectural solution. One of them is the project shown by the architects of A. Asadov's workshop.
The quarter consists of round and ring-shaped houses, freely spaced over a total area of almost 26 hectares. To some, this composition will remind the proliferated Roman amphitheaters, someone will think about photographs of lunar craters. The authors claim that they were inspired by the painting of circles diverging on water. This bucolic association: rare drops of summer rain, drawing circles on the smooth surface of a forest lake, is consonant with the environmental focus of the project.
Now the site allocated for the block is a field located south of the city of Domodedovo between the old and new highways of the Kashirskoye highway (here they diverge quite far from each other). To the west now there are forests, meadows and the village of Redkino, but soon they are going to be built up. To the east - solid summer cottages at the Vostryakovo platform.
The architects decided to turn the entire territory into a park area. Most of the parking spaces (the ratio of apartments and garages is 1: 1) will be concentrated in three-storey garages stretched along the western border of the site and protecting residential buildings from the noise of the Don highway - Kashirskoye highway, which runs next door. Additional parking spaces are located in the space under the courtyards.
An artificial rivulet with four "tributaries" flows through the block, bending. Its channel, drawn by the architects, defines the lines of the main transport axes - five boulevards act as such - one central and four branches. The pivot of each boulevard is a river, along its banks there are green squares, and already on the sides of the squares there are one-way roads. The structure is very branched, which makes the layout open and eliminates traffic jams at the entrance and exit. The meandering of the rivers becomes the rationale for the winding roads, and why the plan of the ensemble looks like a picturesque English park. The quarter's pedestrian paths, on the contrary, are absolutely straight, but there are many of them and they often intersect. That is practically due - the shorter the walking path, including to the garage to the car.
An overgrown natural pond in the northeastern part of the territory is supposed to be equipped and a landscape park will be created around it, preserving several private houses behind the pond. This park will be a continuation of the “river” boulevards within the quarter; it is conceived as the main resting place for the residents of the quarter.
The geometrically correct round shape of the buildings brings us back from the park bucolic to the classic urban planning. The round temple and round tower are classic themes, as is the round courtyard. But the ring-shaped house is a rather modernist theme. In Moscow, there are two famous ring houses with a diameter of 180 m, built in the early 1970s from typical 9-storey sections in Matveevskoye and on the banks of the Setun River. Recently, in 2006, the PIK company announced a grandiose multifunctional complex "Colosseum" by architect Andrey Chernikhov, 140 m in diameter in Dolgoprudny.
In the microdistrict of the architects of A. Asadov's workshop there are five round towers with a diameter of 26 m and a height of 50 m. And there are as many as ten ring-shaped houses (on average 30 meters in height), they are the main component of the project. The houses will differ in the color of the facades and the number of floors, the diameter and organization of the passages to the courtyard: somewhere there are arches, somewhere there are gaps along the entire height of the building. Instead of ordinary flat roofs, the inhabitants of the upper floors will receive open terraces with green lawns. The ground floors will house grocery stores, pharmacies, youth clubs and cafes.
However, the main feature of the ring-shaped houses is the closed courtyards. This is the way to create a community of “neighbors”, which was lost with the arrival of “dormitory-type” districts, where a person exists only “among strangers”. The architects have prepared a real gift for the future inhabitants of the quarter: they will have at their disposal spacious green courtyards with children's and sports grounds. All together, all near. Such a house will make the expression “your circle” sound in a new way, because inside “your circle” there will be a whole house.
The question remains - why are there still no such quarters? The answer is in the technical and economic indicators of the quarter: for 3,960 people there are 198,000 sq. M. m; the total population density is 154 people per hectare. Each resident has 50 sq. meters. On these 26 hectares, you can earn a lot more if you do not try to create a new world from round houses. Although - after all, townhouses have taken root in Russia, and not so long ago, few believed that this was possible. Hopefully, this project will not disappear like "circles in the water", but will be built and stand no less than "fort Bayard".
Notes.
In Russia, the average norm for the total area of housing per person is 18 square meters. m., in Moscow - about 20 sq. meters, in London - 30 sq. meters per person. According to the existing urban planning standards, the population density of residential neighborhoods is calculated by the number of people living on 1 hectare of territory: 420 people / ha - high density, 350 - medium, 200 - low.
