For fans of Moscow antiquity, there is one day a year - the day of museums, when they can get into the interiors of architectural monuments occupied by private and state organizations. Those who are interested in modern architecture are deprived of such a privilege - in some new office centers, not to mention residential buildings, not only are they not allowed inside, but they are not allowed to stand nearby either. The "Freedom of Access" project was created with the aim of giving everyone the opportunity to get into places where they might not be allowed to go in private, to see new details from the author's tip that you might not even notice on your own, hear backstage details that you cannot read in the press, and ask about what I have long wanted to learn from the architect himself.
Over the past two weeks, Freedom of Access has already conducted excursions to individual objects of the Sergei Kiselev & Partners workshop - the Krasnaya Roza business district under construction and the Hermitage-Plaza office center. Yesterday's excursion was not a “point” one, but a survey tour of the most important buildings that demonstrate the history of the development of the recognizable style of this famous Moscow workshop. This opportunity attracted more than fifty people, which the organizer of the action Alexander Zmeul did not expect, having got used to the experience of previous events to divide the number of registered by three. And then suddenly everyone came and on time - some even had to follow the bus in a kind of motorcade in their own cars.
It must be said that the architecture of the Sergei Kiselev & Partners workshop is exceptionally well suited for bus tours. This architectural company builds only in Moscow, saturating it with high-quality architecture for almost twenty years. In addition, the company is one of the first large private architectural workshops, in the 1990s and early 2000s several famous Moscow architects managed to work in it, who later "separated" and opened their own workshops: Vyacheslav Bogachkin, Sergey Skuratov, Konstantin Khodnev … And the workshop is growing and developing, now mastering a new scale of orders - 300-400 thousandths and more. Therefore, a tour of the buildings of the architectural company "Sergei Kiselev & Partners" is not only an overview of the work of one studio - it is in many ways a look at a significant part of the history of the formation of new Moscow architecture.
We started from the 5th Monetchikovsky lane, from the building on the top floor of which the office of the workshop "Sergey Kiselev and Partners" is located - it became the first object of the program. The building, erected in the mid-1990s on the roof of a Soviet bomb shelter, combines into one whole buildings that reproduce (with varying degrees of accuracy) the houses that once existed on this site - and a new volume adjacent to them from the courtyard side. It was one of the first Moscow experiments in architecture that accentuated the combination of "old and new" - thus imitating the natural development of the urban environment. In addition, it was a fundamental step for the workshop - to build for itself a permanent office space in the city center, its own "nest". It must be said that in Moscow still few architectural workshops live in buildings of their own construction - apart from "Sergei Kiselev and Partners", only the bureau of Alexei Vorontsov and Nikita Biryukov in Filippovsky Lane come to mind.
While the bus was moving from one object to another, Sergei Kiselev was constantly telling something, joking and sharing with those present all kinds of behind-the-scenes details from the history of his projects, which aroused the most lively and genuine interest among the listeners.
The second object of the excursion program, shown by Sergei Kiselev, is located next to the workshop on Bakhrushin Street. This is an office center currently occupied by Megafon and VTB - one of the projects in the early 2000s, led by Vyacheslav Bogachkin.
The next were two residential buildings belonging to the period when Sergei Skuratov was one of the CEOs of the company "Sergey Kiselev & Partners" - on Bolshaya Polyanka and in Zubovsky proezd. Both buildings are designed in a restrained style typical of the studio. The house in Zubovsky Proezd is one of the famous Moscow buildings of the late nineties - a time when the "Luzhkov style" was replaced by calm and delicate, especially in the city center, modernism. He is praised by critics for the almost Japanese lyricism of the architectural solution - the silhouette of a tree against the background of a striped wall and other subtleties.
However, for the workshop, other, more pragmatic solutions are also associated with the house in Zubovsky Proezd - here the architects for the first time tested the technologies of computer simulation of movement around the building, proving with the help of a video to the coordinating authorities the fact that a 6-storey building is possible in this place instead of the permitted in the order of "regeneration" 3-storey. The city received a house, nominated in 2001 for the "Golden Section" and treated kindly by critics, the customer purchased 5927 sq. m - almost seven times more than the originally allowed for this site 870 sq. m. And the workshop "Sergei Kiselev and Parners" has mastered a new, now actively used and very popular technology for modeling projects using computer animation. And also - the reputation of architects who almost own the legendary "fifth dimension" - able to significantly increase the volume of the designed building and provide the customer with the maximum desired areas. Without harming the city, let me tell you. Among other things, the house in Zubovsky turned out to be the first experience for the workshop of using porcelain stoneware on the facades with an expensive, hidden, invisible from the outside fastening.
The next point of the route was the Moskva River embankment in the area of Truzhenikov lanes and Savvinskaya embankment. Here, on watery and fragile ground, Sergei Kiselev & Partners recently erected a residential building - not very high, but compact tower, the facades of which are distinguished by a very diligent (which, alas, rarely occurs in Moscow) "layout" of porcelain stoneware plates. The workshop has been “developing” the block adjacent to this house for a long time: next to it, on Savvinskaya embankment, it was planned to reconstruct the old textile factory, preserving the existing buildings and building on top of them (but not relying on a weak foundation) a long “beam” with two new floors. During the existence of the project, the concept has changed - now on the site of the factory there will be residential buildings, the factory buildings will be demolished and in their place buildings will be built, similar in size and rhythm of windows on the facade. In one of the variants, an extended volume hangs over the houses - formerly forced, and now decorative.
Residential building of 2002 in the 1st Truzhenikov lane, located nearby - calm, but stylish and very neat. Over the past years, its tenants have not spoiled the facade or damaged the architecture of the house. The house is also remarkable because, once built, it sold out almost instantly.
Getting to the next point of the program - the Hermitage-Plaza office center, the tourists drove past the famous house in Levshinsky Lane - designed by Ilya Utkin with the support of Sergei Kiselev's workshop, and looked at the reconstruction of a house in Chisty Lane, located directly opposite the Patriarch's residence. The facade of this house, an example of Art Nouveau from the beginning of the 20th century, was restored, and the house itself was reconstructed, and its internal area almost doubled - from 1300 sq. meters up to 2375 - due to the added underground garage and additional volume from the side of the yard. The area has become larger, and the apartments (sic!) Are smaller - only two apartments for the whole house. The house, of course, turned out to be luxurious. It is also unique in the quality of the materials used, the level of engineering equipment and security - in some respects comparable to the security level of the Kremlin Senate building, which Sergei Kiselev & Partners converted into the residence of the President of the Russian Federation several years earlier.
Near the Hermitage Plaza, despite the sudden cold snap, the sightseers decided to get out of the bus - those who were not afraid of the bad weather had the opportunity to enter the courtyard, usually vigilantly guarded from strangers, and take pictures of the inner pedestrian street of the complex. Sergei Kiselev told in detail the history of this project, which was the result of a custom-made competition and carefully integrated into the urban environment. This building turned out to be really successful - it quickly and successfully found its tenant (Beeline became it), and was awarded many professional awards. The house is really good: from the side of "Mayakovka" its long and austere stone facade is majestic, from the side of Samoteka - the flexible glass bow is energetic and very modern, although it perfectly adjoins the amir wing.
The next stop was supposed to be at the gigantic construction site of the Mirax Plaza complex, the largest currently being implemented by the Sergey Kiselev & Partners workshop. This complex is now well known - it has become the second architectural brand of Mirax Group after the Federation Tower - and it seems that they are building it even faster. However, it is less known that a few years ago they were not going to build a business center with two towers on this site, but a large Moscow IKEA - Sergey Kiselev & Partners even made a version of the project. Also, not everyone knows that the project of the complex under construction was originally created not for Mirax, but for another developer, who then sold the site to Mirax-Group together with the architectural project. The latter made only a few changes - in particular, he "cut" the volumes of the towers along an oblique plane.
Further, the excursionists saw two car dealerships designed by the workshop of Sergei Kiselev - one, distorted by the later restructuring, for the Subaru company on the Aminevskoye highway, the other with a more successful fate - Infinity on Leninsky Prospekt. This latter was originally designed with the name "Trade House Goods from St. Petersburg". The project of a coldish, austere and at the same time light building was nominated for the 2000 Golden Section. Then the project was resold to Audi car dealers, who soon became the exclusive distributors of Infiniti - as a result, the building was enriched with a branded pumpkin-like volume.
Not far from the Cheryomushkinsky market in the middle of a 12-15-storey building rises a slender residential building, somewhat similar to the "Central" houses of the eighties. Its volume seems to be composed of red and pink brick parallelepipeds of different heights, fused together to form a stepped tower. Now the house is disfigured by loggias, it is difficult to recognize and almost impossible to photograph. The house was conceived back in 1994, it is one of the earliest buildings shown on the tour. In those years, the building managed to be built so high, proving, upon agreement, that the volume, placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the surrounding houses, rising up, would unite the surrounding buildings around itself and complete the composition of the quarter.
A few minutes later the bus was already at the "Avangard", which, by the way, stands against the background of the "Tsarskoe Selo" quarter of pink-brick "tsek" houses. The comparison allows one to imagine how dramatically the perception of housing has changed over the past ten years. True, not everyone likes this juxtaposition - in terms of the number of protests by residents, Avangard broke, according to Sergei Kiselev, all records. This is not surprising - the houses around are from the Central Committee, their residents are not particularly accustomed to building nearby. Incidentally, Avangard is a low-budget project, its facades are made of minerite, a relatively new finishing material for Russia, which is manufactured using Finnish technology. Of all the known ventilated facades, these are the cheapest. However, the facade panels used to decorate Avangard have one feature - they are self-cleaning, so the house will not fade - but will retain its variegated colors, which makes it an attractive spot in a series of monotonous buildings.
During a three-hour excursion, Sergei Kiselev managed to show the most important "events" of the creative biography of the workshop. The listeners had a clear idea of the history of the development of the architecture of the workshop of Sergei Kiselev, how the scale of orders grew, ranging from a small area of residential buildings to giant "plazas", and how the style was transformed. Only the basic principles of Sergei Kiselev remained unchanged, which he noted in his interview - to always be appropriate and skillful, to seek a reasonable compromise simultaneously with the city and the customer.
