In recent years, the process of embedding the ultra-modern architecture of glass skyscrapers in the context of provincial cities (in some places still Soviet) has been brisk. So the city authorities of Ufa, apparently even before the start of the crisis, planned to build a huge multifunctional complex, similar to a flying island from the future, which landed on the banks of the Belaya River, wedging into the boring development of the embankment, which was "stuck" for the most part in the 1980s-1990s. years. The project, named "Towers of the Commonwealth" in honor of the friendship between the peoples of Bashkiria and Russia, is being developed by AM Vissarionov.
It is attractive in that it forms a new type of comfortable urban space, which is so far unusual for Ufa, but has been repeatedly tested abroad, which is only taking root even in Moscow. Inside the business district, there are multi-level pedestrian routes, artificial nature and an abundance of recreational areas, between which a person can move without leaving buildings, along the streets of this oasis, whose "microclimate" is diligently maintained all year round. In addition, the project covers a significant section of the embankment, which is supposed to be included in the vast "cultivated" area around the center.
The complex appears on a kind of "island" formed by three streets - Frunze, October Revolution and Salavat Yulaev Avenue. The surrounding development of the coastline is devoid of any dominants, except for the memorial stele erected on the 400th anniversary of the annexation of Bashkiria to Russia. In the absence of a silhouette of the embankment in any way shaped, this most important part of the urban landscape, which can be seen from the highway along the way from the airport, lacks a distinct image. All around there are panel buildings, the most valuable fragment of the entire environment - old industrial houses on October Revolution Street, in the eastern part of the site, which are supposed to be partially restored, partially renewed. The projected complex should take on the role of the missing high-rise accent. Possessing a complex silhouette, it breaks the usual horizon and draws everything together compositionally, being a kind of sign of the modern, status, new in the city, placed on one of the main highways.
The complex grows out of the shore like a large organic formation. Its lower tiers bend, repeating the lines of the coast and form folds, similar to layers of geological rocks. It is firmly planted in the hollow of the relief, has taken root in it, has grown. This natural depression is at the same time the bed of a pedestrian street, which, literally plowing the soil, like a tree root, comes out to the very shore from under the ground, as if from a burrow. The street is the axis of the master plan, and leads from one side to the historic center, and from the other to the embankment. Its multi-level space gradually descends with escalators and travelators to the river, opening everywhere to different levels of the glass stylobate, saturated with all kinds of recreational and business functions. The presence of the second walking route determined the value of the old buildings along Oktyabrskaya Street, along which it passes.
The two towers rising from the concrete waves of the stylobate are 36-storey. They look like an hourglass, inside which mercury has been poured, due to which there are mirror "overflows" in the center. Outside, the volumes are entangled in rings of a metal mesh-web, which makes them look like springs. From this it seems that they are alive and mobile.
The functional content of the complex is very heterogeneous. Construction is planned in two phases: the first includes the southeastern tower with a hotel, apartments and a restaurant, as well as the adjoining stylobate wing, where a fitness club, conference center, swimming pool and shopping arcade are located on the upper and middle levels. Among the curved forms of the "stylobate", the volume of the conference room stands out, slightly elevated above the main level. It is made up of two "halves", the space between which is filled with glass. In view of the complexity of the volumes, the layout is also very original: in the oval hall in the center there is a stage, on both sides of which the seats for spectators rise as amphitheatres. In the glazed ends of this volume, like the doors of a giant oyster, observation platforms are arranged.
The idea seems grandiose - it is a whole enclave of expensive offices, shops, recreation, entwined with ribbons of inner streets with lawns on roof-terraces, reflected in the abundant glass of the facades. With such mega-complexes, a new scale and a different understanding of public space comes to the city. Although it must be admitted that for all its gigantism, it is inscribed in the environment quite organically (as far as in general a structure of this size can be successfully entered anywhere). Nearby, as can be seen in the panorama, the contours of another high-rise neighbor have already been outlined, so if the crisis does not finally stop all construction activity, glass modernism, following the metropolitan model, will soon overshadow the undersized private houses, panel boxes and the bizarre lack of style of the 1990s, which so far prevail in the development of the Ufa embankment.
