In the summer, Mirax-group decided on the winner in the competition for the project of reconstruction of the embankment opposite the Moscow International Business Center - it was the Mirax-Garden by A. Asadov's workshop, an inhabited bridge connected to the largest lawn in Europe, the project is spectacular, solid and bright. At the public council, the embankment and the bridge were shown in conjunction with a project for the opposite bank of the river - a place once occupied by the "Aptekarsky Ogorod", and now - a green quarter near the Third Ring, reserved by the city as the "green lungs" of Moscow City. There are two sections, number 24 and number 25.
Initially, Mirax-group invited A. Asadov's workshop to take part in the competition for the construction of 24 land plots. The architects proposed a design for the towers, whose shape repeated the flying movement of the bridge. They grow out of the ground like a glass wave, twist in a spiral and grow together somewhere in the middle, forming a narrow but high atrium-gorge - all akin to a natural formation. Its surface echoes the architectural design of the bridge, picks up the theme of diagonal weaves, but only they are green, not rainbow. According to A. Asadov, "from the very beginning it was clear that this area should not have pure skyscrapers, there will be a different, more geological formation of a different nature." Indeed, the movable sculptural plastic and the green covering the towers make them unlike the skyscrapers of the “main” City, more traditional. Greenery - says Andrei Asadov, it is also a tribute to the history of the place, a memory of the "Pharmaceutical garden".
Then A. Asadov's workshop was asked to work for the neighboring, 25th section of the Moscow International Business Center. Reflecting on the neighboring sites, the architects came to the realization that it would be wrong to attach two more skyscrapers of the same kind to the City's glass forest. In search of other options, the idea was born to combine the plots and create a semblance of a triumphal arch - the gate of Moscow City. This is how a tower-arc emerged, growing together at a height of 280 meters. Significantly more symmetrical and austere than the original volume of the 24 site. The architects of A. Asadov's studio worked on the structural scheme of the house-arch together with the chief designer of the City, Vladimir Travush. This version was recently shown at the Manege at the Zodchestvo festival.
The next, third stage of the search was a tall, if not to download a tall structure, the silhouette of which resembles the Eiffel Tower. Two straight glass "legs" grow together at a height of 410 meters and continue above with a vertical volume, crowned with a spire - all together could surpass Foster's tower "Russia" by about 100 meters. Between the "legs" were supposed to be several "plates of rigidity" - horizontal floors with hanging gardens
This, the highest, option was a response to a spontaneously arising proposal from customers - to create a high-rise dominant of the future City on the site of the Aptekarsky Ogorod, even ahead of Foster. For the authors, the giant tower evoked associations with the medieval dominant of old Moscow - the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, under this “code” name this version of the project became known in the workshop.
After bold searches and sometimes fantastic options, it's time to go down to earth and make a more realistic project, lower and with simpler constructive schemes. This is how two pairs of buildings of a calm streamlined shape arose, in plan resembling the outlines of the wings of a butterfly. Their heights are 160 and 200 meters, and both pairs mirror each other. They are similar to the first version, doubled and somewhat pacified its sculptural flight. Instead - restraint, accuracy of drawing, but sculpturality is not lost. Associations with the bridge and Mirax Garden are also strong: the facades are covered with a diagonal mesh, which even received rainbow stripes.
As if the colored energy of a residential bridge, thrown to the other side of the river, scattered in a spray, forming four buildings covered with mesh patterns. But the main thing that, according to the architects, they managed to preserve in their search until the final version is the dissimilarity with the glass forest of the City towers.
This set of similar / dissimilar projects for the site next to the City is interesting primarily as an illustration of the process of the birth of the project. Here the project went through several logical stages: from an impressionistic stucco "blank" that absorbed the energy of a neighboring project by the same authors, to a capacious and ancient shape of an arch, then - to a rise, to an absolutely fantastic in terms of height "Ivan", similar to the "Eiffel", and finally, through all this - to the restrained and rational, divided into parts, interconnected by a rigid geometry of lines. Not that every project is not a complete concept, but all of them are different. They are united, perhaps, by two things: the desire to do something different from the already known City and echoing the Garden Bridge. And also - the legacy of the "Apothecary Garden" in the form of ubiquitous greenery, which, perhaps, is not very connected with the garden, but rather goes back to the ecological search for modern architecture, planting trees wherever it finds possible …
