Inside the block between the second and third Frunzenskaya streets, two new residential buildings have appeared. Low for our times and absolutely identical towers are set at a short distance from each other and are connected by a wide one-story building of the sports complex. It is a simple, austere, symmetrical and extremely anti-classical composition. Vladimir Plotkin is very fond of just such compositions: the center is present, but pressed to the ground and is not accentuated in any way, rather, on the contrary, it is shaded as much as possible. The edges, which in the "classical" scheme are supposed to be secondary, here are the main ones, they are given all the mass and all the attention. Using the obtained advantage, they frankly split in two - typical twins.
The viewer, however, does not feel any hint of shock from such "unclassicality" - if only because symmetry with the lost center is one of the favorite motives of modernism, and in relation to the XX century he is just the same accustomed - the architect simply again, diligently and plays out a favorite episode in front of us in a perfected manner. In addition, the scale and proportions of the towers may seem familiar - they will remind a Muscovite of the famous series of nine-story buildings - note that, apart from the stylobate, Vladimir Plotkin's houses are also nine stories tall. So everything is to some extent traditional, and not vice versa. There is no challenge, we have before us the alphabet of modernism.
The geometry of the facades here is also quite modern, even fashionable, although several features can be discerned in it. At first glance, you think - well, here's another "rain-shaped facade" (aka Holland wall, a facade with windows scattered in an asymmetrical-picturesque way, as if "floating" on the wall). But no. Taking a closer look, it is easy to find that the rhythm is subject to a very strict grid. More precisely, several geometric schemes are superimposed on each other here: narrow and wide windows alternate, but strictly in turn, the floors are combined into strips of two, but not erased at all. There is a chess shift of the rectangles, but it is precisely that of a chess shift - rational and understandable, diagonally, and by no means free-picturesque. The effect is curious: at first glance, we find the flickering of windows, which soon "grasps" and freezes - as soon as the internal regularity of the facade construction begins to be read.
You might think that the duality set in the overall composition has penetrated the architecture of these houses deeper than it might seem at first glance: a couple of floors, a couple of windows (wide-narrow), even the coloring uses two primary colors.
The color must be said separately - because it is he who is represented here as the main character. The most obvious feature of the houses on 3-rd Frunzenskaya is not the compositional construction, and not the geometric play of facade planes. And the fact that these modernist twins managed to strangely naturally fit into the Stalinist environment of the area.
In order to achieve this effect, Vladimir Plotkin and Yuri Zhuravlev used color.
As you know, the main colors of Stalin's quarters are beige and yellow and brick red. The first denotes a white stone, and sometimes (rarely) it is, the second is a brick. However, it also happens the other way around: wide yellowish facing brick and dark red granite. The combination of reddish and yellowish, generally speaking, is a classic Versailles; but it differs in something so elusive in Moscow that the effect is obvious - we feel the Stalinist quarters in a special way, either with our backs, or with our "third eye", and we will never confuse them with anything. This is the feeling the authors managed to catch in the houses on Frunzenskaya. This is probably why they so directly cleared themselves inside the quarter, which should be stylistically alien to them in all respects.
This is done surprisingly simple and at the same time effective. The cladding used panels of two colors: terracotta-brick and pale pink. They are laid very neatly, and the joints form lines resembling the seams of the masonry of neighboring Stalinist buildings. These buildings are everywhere here, they line up around the block in an open, but obvious square. In a word, there is something to compare with.
Even the gray stripes marking the interfloor divisions and slightly cooling the warm pastel color of the facades - and they find a response for themselves in the surroundings - they fall in the tone of the standard paint of a metal fence and even yard garages-shells. In other words, you can find only three colors around: yellowish, brick and gray - and they all accurately reflected on the facades of new houses, endowing them with the means for successful mimicry in the environment.
Moreover, the neighboring red-brick ("Stalinist" typical) school enters into a very explicit dialogue with the new buildings. It was recently painted, and in some places the new color exactly matches the tone of the houses of Vladimir Plotkin. And from some points the school is even trying to make up for the "loss of the middle" noted above, claiming to take the place of the absent center - an effect to which Vladimir Plotkin, in his own words, did not in any way strive.
It turns out that the houses on Frunzenskaya so deeply and successfully plunged into the context that they began to "grow" into it completely independently - and what is most surprising, the quarter accepted them and began to adjust itself.
Supporters of strict contextuality (such special people who believe that a new building should be completely, that is, completely invisible in the city) should be satisfied. It's amazing what color alone can do! It should be noted that the houses not only merged with the quarter, but also acquired an unexpected lyrical watercolor painting, which is especially successful when surrounded by many trees.
All this is somewhat unexpected - over the past two years, we seem to have got used to the fact that Vladimir Plotkin with enviable constancy surprises everyone with more than noticeable buildings: the giant Airbus and Chertan's Kvartal 77 are generally easy to see from the neighboring district of the city, and being nearby it is simply impossible not to detect it. "Arbitration" on Seleznevskaya Street strives to delicately reflect in its windows all the nearest architectural monuments - but at the same time it is desperately white, metal-ribbed, so it is impossible not to notice either. "Tax" next to the Kursk railway station is large and white-striped, and although its front facade is aligned in height with the neighboring Stalinist house, it is still obvious that a whole (and not small!) Quarter has crystallized on Sadovoye.
Thus, each of these famous new buildings by Vladimir Plotkin is somehow inscribed into the context, but the gesture of embedding in it is secondary: somewhere it is a concession to approvals (on Kurskaya), somewhere respect for classical modernism (Chertanovo).
And on Frunzenskaya, we unexpectedly find an example of deep immersion in the environment - this is how a foreign language is taught by the “immersion method”. It turns out that this is quite possible, moreover, having drowned in the environment, the twin houses somehow at the same time managed "not to compromise their principles." Having received in return several imperceptible paradoxes and warm pastel colors instead of bright white.
