According to the general plan, approved by Catherine the Great, the territories adjacent to Severnaya Street are divided into squares in plan and approximately the same in area quarters, which today are built up with Khrushchevs mixed with private wooden houses, schools and all kinds of services. Most of all, this area resembles a patchwork quilt (both in terms of architecture and in terms of property issues), and it is clear that for its "redrawing" the iron will of either the city administration or even the regional administration is needed. So far, investors are buying out small plots of land from the owners, combining them and inviting well-known architects to develop projects.
So did the Swiss investor PHI Group, which acquired four plots at once along North Street. And he turned to the architects of the company "Sergey Kiselev & Partners", knowing about their experience of work for Krasnodar (recently SKiP completed the construction of a large shopping center "Gallery Krasnodar" at the intersection of Severnaya and Krasnaya streets). One of the motives for addressing Sergey Kiselev's team was, according to the investor, the confidence that these architects could make "facades of European quality" in Krasnodar.
The architects were tasked with designing four office towers on sites lined up along Severnaya Street near its intersection with the city's main street, Krasnaya. The difficulty lay in the fact that the plots were not located next to each other, but at a distance of one or two miniature blocks from each other. 16-storey buildings will inevitably look like "loners" among the squat one-two-storey buildings. Therefore, after analyzing the situation, Sergey Kiselev & Partners offered the customer, in addition to four separate projects, an urban development concept for the development of the district. Its essence is that, gradually buying out land plots from the owners, create a “linear urbanized center” along the North. In other words, to create on this site an even system of moderately high business centers along the street line, a kind of urban City. In addition, the comprehensive concept involves the design of front entrances to the street, the creation of a transport backup, new squares and a radical change in the functional program. However, it has not been possible to buy the plots yet; but the four-tower project on the North should be seen as the germ of future urbanization in this part of the city center.
The office typology of future facilities was predetermined - the city is sorely lacking modern business centers. Therefore, several business complexes, built a block away from each other, will not only confuse anyone, but will also be profitable. The only wish that the customer put forward for the architecture of future high-rise buildings was the stylistic unification of objects. It would seem that designers have incredible prospects for working in conditions of unlimited creative freedom, but in reality this is not the case. The main limiting factor was the Severnaya Street itself - until the concept of its development is approved, the architects are forced to reckon not only with the existing buildings, but also all hypothetically possible ones. So the free flight of imagination very quickly turned into skillful maneuvering between the reefs of the SNiP requirements.
What can be built on a site that is closely adjacent to a rickety wooden mansion, the demolition of which is most likely inevitable in the future? How much can you design when you face an unknown future context? Alas, the answer is no. Krasnodar is a city of architectural contrasts, it consists of spots or even stripes of very different buildings: a small fragment of a regular city of the period of historicism is suddenly replaced by a one-story village, behind which panel blocks grow. The village-stanitsa turned out to be inside the city, and even close to the central districts. Architects of the 19th century often dealt with such an environment, who urbanized many Russian cities, at that time more like villages. And the architects of SKiP decided to be guided by the principles of pre-revolutionary Russia. Which read: “if you want to go to the borderline - make a firewall; if you need windows in all facades, step back a few fathoms. The architects made the side walls of all buildings blank, with the expectation that in the future new buildings could be added to them, which will gradually complement the street line - just as it was done in the 19th century.
Thus, at least two facades of each of the four towers turned out to be deaf. And what is a blank facade at a high-rise? A huge empty plane, which, of course, needs to be somehow masked or skillfully decorated. In a word, here the question of a single facade design style for the four towers came to light. The architects had to find an image that would easily withstand both use on such large-scale planes, and multiplication by four.
The answer to the question "how?" was found quite quickly - it was decided to apply a decorative monochrome image on the outer surfaces of the glass units using the direct printing method, and on the concrete panels of the blind parts of the facades - the same pattern is displayed in relief. The building thus turns out to be “wrapped” in an ornament, the pattern of which is identical in different materials.
But the question "what?", Or on the basis of what general theme to make a drawing - for a long time remained open. In the archive of the workshop, dozens of different options for facade decor have been preserved, rejected by the authors in search of the image of buildings: all kinds of figures, abstract drawings, combinations of bright colors. Sergei Kiselev recalls: at the meetings with the customer devoted to this issue, the idea constantly appeared that in the design of high-rise buildings it is necessary to use some generally significant cultural symbol by which our country is recognized abroad and which causes only positive associations. By analogy with the famous Moscow complex "Avangard" by Erik Egeraat, the investor, head of PHI Group Peter Haenseler, suggested associating the towers with famous personalities. The choice fell on the composers. Great Russian composers, whose works are performed in all concert halls of the world - why not a wonderful continuation of the axiom about "frozen music"? This is how the marketing idea of the project was born: the scores of the most famous works of four of the most famous composers - Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich - will decorate the facades of new office centers. Indeed, the notes are moderately simple and unobtrusive, but at the same time very graphic, far from monotony and monotony. From afar, the facade, likened to a giant musical notebook, will be perceived as abstract textural, which will give it the desired visual lightness, and close up will become an intricate puzzle for passers-by.
Four towers will line up along North Street. Tchaikovsky Plaza, which stands a little further from the main group of buildings, is the tallest of the four projected objects, the future leader of the ensemble. It is located strictly along the line of the existing development (the buildings of the secondary school and the structures of the military school, overlooking the North) and has a very slender and graphic silhouette, designed to work as a new urban landmark. The volume of this tower consists of several plates of different heights (from 15 to 23 floors), "fused" with each other and covered from above with a concrete canopy on legs, under which an observation deck is conceived on the roof. The visor is a kind of pergola: a rectangular hole is cut from above, turning it into a large frame for viewing the sky. I must say that this form can be considered to some extent contextual for the southern city of Krasnodar - similar structures can be seen here, for example, on the roofs of residential buildings in the House of Books complex on Krasnaya Street. The building "SKiP", thus, picks up a theme characteristic of the modernist urban development of the 1970s.
The other three buildings of the complex are smaller in height - a maximum of 15 floors - and are not so directed upward, their volumes are more compact. In essence, they represent different options for the layout of glazed and blank surfaces, depending on the nature of the surrounding building. So, "Rachmaninov Plaza" is a volume with differences in height on the 6th and 13th floors, as a result of which three risalits of different height are formed. “Shostakovich-plaza”, due to the same objective town-planning reasons, faces North Street with a stepped facade. And "Prokofiev Plaza" is actually a composition of two separate multi-storey volumes, one of which is 16-storey and the second one-storey, occupies the southern part and forms a small courtyard with the former.
These small differences do not diminish the apparent similarities between buildings. The similarity, which is determined by the general simplicity and graphicality of the solution. All towers are made of simple rectangular shapes - restraint, in our times almost unthinkable (not a single bend!) And therefore not devoid of a touch of nobility. And all of them are completely covered with ornaments - because the notes in this case, of course, are not a score, but a kind of "speaking" decor, akin to facades covered with inscriptions or numbers. The carpet pattern hides the floors, accentuates the main planes and masses - but at the same time de-realizes the volumes, making them light and graphic. If this is the beginning of the Krasnodar City, then it can become quite sophisticated.
