Yuri Vissarionov's workshop has already completed several projects for resort towns, we have already written about some of them (Mountains, sea and classical architecture; “Digitization” of a mountain landscape). The current one was created for the now rapidly developing city of Sochi, it is located next to the Volzhsky District and Anapskaya Street. Construction conditions are typical for coastal cities - rugged terrain, due to which the drop on the site is more than 10 m, picturesque mountain spurs, chaotic low-rise buildings. True, in the middle of the 2-5-storey houses, the "corncob" of the Stavropol Hotel, a notable work of Soviet modernism of the 1970s, suddenly grows. This is the main focus of the area, and the architecture of the future residential complex is mainly focused on it. A typical undersized view of the surrounding buildings has been dynamically changing lately - a high-rise residential building is already growing between the hotel and the projected object, in the distance, at the foot of the mountain, another high-rise block can be seen. The residential complex of Vissarionov is commensurate with these dominants, but does not exceed the height of "Stavropol".
The compositional solution, as the authors of the project explained, is inspired by the image of a “boomerang flying to the top of a mountain spur”. All three bodies “fix” its random positions. Twice the boomerang “fell” to practically the same place - here the 22-storey building “B” intersects with the 6-storey one, turning its “horns” in different directions, to the north and south, respectively. The second 22-storey building "A" separated from the others, turning perpendicular to them. The Boomerangs landed on a plateau, a multi-tiered stylobate parking lot, whose complex geometry echoes the intricate configuration of the site itself. In addition to three buildings, the ensemble also has an oval-shaped public block in the north-western part of the site. The picturesque contours of the plans, the broken lines of the stylobate site and rounded roofs, the complex plasticity of the buildings themselves are prompted by the natural environment - the bizarre shapes of the mountain ranges.
According to the architects, the image of the buildings is also inspired by the architecture of the Stavropol Hotel - in the new complex of Yuri Vissarionov, echoes of 1970s modernism can be clearly traced. Moreover, a whole visual associative array of veiled allusions to iconic works of this period is built here. The plasticity of the cases, smoothly bent in the middle, resembles book houses on Novy Arbat, only here this motif turns into a more picturesque and even somewhat playful one. One "book" (building "B") crashes into another lowered one, and the high-rise buildings themselves do not have two even halves, but are lowered in a cascade, following the whims of the relief. Another metaphor is related to the most important modernist principle of "house on legs". Here all three buildings are placed on supports reminiscent of the famous Moscow "centipede houses" by Andrei Meerson. Glazed staircase and elevator shafts and entrances descend to the ground, the number of which coincides with the number of internal sections and galleries.
Another level of association, caused by the characteristic cellular structure of the facades, is associated with Japanese modernism and specifically with metabolism. Round - square cells-loggias evoke in the memory the transforming houses of Japanese architects Kikutake, Kurokawa, etc., with the same dense and large-scale grid associated with the need for high density of settlement, which is also relevant for Sochi economy class housing.
But all these are just imaginary connections, in addition to which there is a very real dialogue between the Yuri Vissarionov complex and the Stavropol hotel, not as a sign of modernism, but as a concrete work that makes up the closest architectural context. You can see how a number of hotel motives are reflected in the residential complex. In addition to the cellular "clothes" of the sanatorium, its vast loggias in the width of the floors were rethought, which at Vissarionov turned into a grid of square and round holes 2 meters deep. In some places, the network breaks open, exposing the glazed surfaces of the same apartments, only without loggias or public premises "at the bend" of the buildings. In the appearance of the hotel and the residential complex, the tops are also similar, at Vissarionov they are functionally rethought - observation platforms are located under the "winged" canopies.
Looking at the side facade of the hotel, one can find similarities between the structure of its facades, formed by the diagonals of the external stairs, and the internal structure of the new complex. Its section is very similar to this façade. Each building consists of a gallery and sectional parts: a gallery wing facing the sea, a sectional wing on the opposite side. This allows you to achieve the most advantageous orientation of the apartments. If in the sectional layout, with which we meet quite often, the apartments are organized according to the principle of stairwells, then in the opposite wing through two floors from the side of the courtyard there are galleries. The apartments themselves are arranged with a drop of 1/2 floors, which makes it possible to reduce the length of the intra-apartment stairs. After 2-3 floors, the composition of the apartments changes - they are either 2 or 3-room, and there are several options for their layout, there are two-level apartments, there is a second light, etc.
The Sochi project of Vissarionov's workshop is attractive for its scrupulous approach to the context. This architecture does not appear "suddenly", it is deeply natural in this place. The history of the seaside resorts in the south of Russia is not only Stalin's sanatoriums, which Yuri Vissarionov "recalled" in the Yalta project and in the reconstruction of the Sochi Kamelia / Intourist hotel, but also more modern architecture, like Stavropol, and it is she who forms the image of this places, which the authors of the project did not dispute, but submitted to him. This "curtsey" towards modernism is also remarkable in that it is drawn to the legacy of the 1970s, the significance of which is still ignored.
