The building is called a multifunctional center, which is somewhat true, but strictly speaking, even 5 years ago it would have been called simply "office". It is being built for class “A” offices, but in addition to the actual work premises, there will be a cafe, a shop, a fitness center, a recreation area and, of course, parking. Everything is for employees, of whom there are few and many - 512 people. In a word, a local office paradise where everything is there for comfortable work and relaxation, but as if without excess luxury. Generally speaking, I have seen a few Moscow projects that would fit this name so well - "class" A ".
This is a simple 12-storey parallelepiped measuring approximately 40 x 40 x 25 meters, set in the middle of a green area indented from the red line of two streets, at the intersection of which there is a site - the tense highway of Leninsky Prospekt and Udaltsova Street. More than half of the land plot was allocated for landscaping, lawns, bushes and trees, including "buffer" ones, separating the building from the residential building. That is, the building does not grow beyond measure either above or below the ground.
After all, what are the many Moscow projects that have already become customary? Many of them seek to occupy the entire territory completely, planting trees to "compensate" on the roof. Others, a little more modest, behave decently above the surface, but they occupy the entire area of buildings under the ground - like stone trees, they put their concrete roots far out to the sides. There is neither one nor the other, nor the third - the roof is unexploited, without hanging gardens. The underground parking is only a few meters wider than the visible part.
The interior also looks simple and natural. In the middle there are elevators and stairs, around, to the windows - office premises. The pillars are thin, pushed back to the walls, they do not hinder anything - the workspace remains free, and it can be organized as you like. It would seem like an ordinary office box. Direct, strict, modest. Without unnecessary greed up to square meters and without "frills". At the same time, there is enough everything that is necessary for comfortable work, including parking and recreational areas. What is a hint of, let's say, moderate wealth under the motto - everything that is needed for life is here, but nothing more. Not luxury, but restrained such solidity.
The same attitude towards life can be seen - almost at first glance - on the facades of the building. They combine the neat cladding of noble yellowish limestone with floor-to-ceiling glass. Stone and glass alternate in a calm vertical rhythm, forming "windows" and "piers" of the same width and elongated proportions. But the interfloor rods are finished with stone not on every tier, but through one floor. This is a well-known optical technique - the visual perception of scale changes, and simultaneously in two directions: the house seems somewhat smaller (6 floors instead of 12), but more monumental (the floors are larger). Only here it is combined with a very strict division of the facades - which makes it completely unobvious: there is an effect, but where it comes from, you don't guess right away.
The second method - all verticals, both stone and glass, are set at a slight angle. The surface of the facade becomes jagged, sawtooth, and, in fact, ceases to be a plane. The slight angle of rotation is reminiscent of a half-open window sash - or shutters. Moreover, both are true, because the stone walls are covered with a simple relief of horizontal stripes, in this case, sharply reminiscent of the shutters of traditional European shutters. What saves us from complete imitation is that all the planes - both glass and striped stone - are turned in the same direction. So everything together looks more like a system of giant blinds built between stone "rails" - you might think that this is such a mechanical facade system and that inside there is a kind of lever that can turn all planes, opening and opening the facade. In fact, there is no lever, the facade is absolutely static, it is double and there are not even vents on the outer surface. The façade is double, energy efficient, and its outer glass is 6 meters high without a seam. Before us is an image of a mechanical system, or even a moderately generalized allusion to it.
And finally, the third and most noticeable technique. It has to do not only with the surface, but also with the volume. The box is not really simple. One corner of it - and not facing the intersection, but towards the cars driving along Leninsky Prospekt (which is logical) - has a stepped ledge. Moreover, it is difficult to call it a bay window, although the bay window, of course, is listed among the distant relatives of this form. As well as the console.
In the second tier (uniting the 3rd and 4th floors), we see a corner ledge hanging over the lower floors. In its central part, there are no stone walls between the glass panes, and from the outside there is an enlarged semblance of the classic avant-garde corner window, beloved by architecture. Inside there is a panoramic stained-glass window from floor to ceiling, a bright ceremonial room. This works well for directors' offices and meeting rooms. Further, where the console protrudes from the main volume, stone "shutters" appear, and the surface bends. The ledge is not hard, but smooth, turns the stone interfloor "rail", it is echoed by the zigzag of the "inlaid" facade. If we talk about imitation of a mechanical surface, everything is logical. I just want to see that the window-doors will follow the guides, like clothes in an automatic wardrobe.
Above, with each tier, the ledge becomes wider and at the very top it already occupies most of the length of the facade. As if a wave passed over a strict, mechanical surface and the house began to "move apart." The latter - about sliding - has every reason, since the technique, in addition to the plastic effect, also has a practical meaning - it wins a little extra square meters, hanging over the basement with consoles.
Looking at this building, it is easy to draw parallels with other SPeeCH works, as well as with St. Petersburg projects, in the creation of which Sergei Tchoban participated. Striped white and stone imitation shutters can be found in the recently completed House by the Sea. Zigzag walls, similar to a frozen mechanism - in the house on Odessa (although there they look completely different). The predominance of stone combined with proportions dating back to Art Deco - in the complex on Ozerkovskaya embankment. The rows of vertical windows are in the Byzantine House. The considered building fits well into this row and represents another branch in the formation of the "Moscow style" of SPeeCH.
In fact, it is very interesting to observe how, even in a relatively modest building, at least in scale, the process of forming a recognizable architectural language is reflected. The process, which, apparently, takes place quite meaningfully, purposefully and is associated with the desire to develop a stylist that is appropriate for each city. In other words, in each project there is a search not only for an image that is appropriate in this case, but also for the style of the workshop that is suitable for a given city. The search for form occurs at several levels at once - private and general. The degree of novelty of each motive fades into the background - more important is how it fits into the overall picture, as well as what this picture is able to tell us. It turns out that all the parts seem to be known, and the whole is new. Quite a classic approach to architecture.
What arises here, in the building on Leninsky Prospekt? The building looks like a petrified mechanism, like belts of conveyors stacked on top of each other, "carrying" windows in themselves. The image of the mechanism is, as you know, a theme loved by the constructivists, but never expressed in this way by them. That is, it is one of the favorite themes of radical modernism. At the same time, stone, pseudo-shutters and proportional construction make the house almost conservative. It turns out an alloy in which supporters of technical radicalism and stone traditionalism - both of them, will find something for themselves. This is if you look closely, of course. And at the highest, superficial level of perception we have before us a calm, delicate and respectable architecture. But what is there - the project shows European consistency and accuracy. The employees of the nearby German Embassy would surely have liked it.
