The second "house on the embankment" released by Sergei Skuratov this year is Barkli Plaza. This building stands almost opposite the famous Iofanovsky house, and it is perfectly visible from the Moscow Spit, from where the future "golden island" looks at the already existing "golden mile" of Ostozhenka. Unlike the specialized office "Danilovsky Fort", the building on Prechistenskaya is seriously multifunctional: underground parking, trade in the stylobate, higher offices, and even higher housing.
It is easy to find a whole list of similarities that make Danilovsky Fort and Barkley Plaza related. Both buildings are office buildings, both on the embankments, both are cut off from the river by a motorway. Both consist of several buildings, placed in two rows on a common stylobate - one row is pushed forward, towards the front facade, the other echoes it in the depths. The volumes are arranged, relatively speaking, in a checkerboard pattern: the front line turns out to be not continuous, but broken, the second row is visible in the gaps. A public garden is formed between the blocks, raised to the roof of the first tier. This inner space is almost invisible to those passing and passing below. But it is not closed on all sides, like a courtyard-well, but is fenced off by separate buildings. The building thus becomes lighter and, if I may say so, more airy - as if it is being ventilated from the inside. That allows you to avoid the heaviness of a single array and turn the entire structure into a kind of city block.
True, "Danilovsky Fort" consists of three such blocks, and only one of them appears in the second row. The Barkley Plaza buildings are smaller, but there are more of them, three on the first line and two on the second.
Another common feature of the two buildings is that their main facades face the embankment and the river; they are designed not only for a close look, but also from a distance, from the other side. For these facades, the river becomes a kind of “ceremonial square”, a space of disclosure. As a result, both buildings are not “closed” from the river by walls, but are looking at it with interest. In contrast to their older neighbors: there are fences on Novodanilovskaya circle, on Prechistenskaya cleaner, but all the same, the houses around are not very ceremonial, and their river facades are more like courtyard "backdrops". Thus, the houses of Sergei Skuratov are in solidarity in their openness to the river and in the fact that they perceive it not as a secondary, but as a ceremonial space.
And then the differences begin, due, among other things, to the nature of the areas in which these buildings are built. "Danilovsky Fort" - serf, factory, brick. "Barkley Plaza" on the "golden" Ostozhenka - glass, shiny white stone. Why white stone? One could recall that there was once a White City nearby (now the Boulevard Ring is in its place), but this is not the closest association. Closer - the modern construction of Ostozhenka, where limestone is at a premium: it is a beautiful, expensive and respectable finishing material.
This is how all five Barkli Plaza buildings are oriented - with stone planes towards Ostozhenka, glass planes towards the river. Therefore, when viewed from the opposite embankment, all five facades (three along the red line and two in the depth) merge into one glass row, dark, in the color of river water. It turns out two types of surroundings, and two types of facades, each corresponding to its own context: urban "Ostozhensky" white stone, "river" glass. Moreover, there is an intriguing space behind the glass, and the glass plane itself is heterogeneous, dark and light plates of varying degrees of opacity alternate here, forming an enlarged semblance of water ripples.
There is another regularity in the existence of glass facades: in skyscraper towers they are often external, cold and inaccessible, like a mirror or an iceberg. And in smaller buildings, and even in the historical center, glass usually appears in courtyards and plays an opposite role - almost interior, covering balconies and loggias, and forming not cold, but on the contrary, home and cozy space - according to the principle of the "Italian courtyard" … Not that this is a strict rule, but more often it happens that way. There is a glass wall, there is a glass loggia; one repels, the other attracts, hinting at the space behind it.
The glass facade of the building on Sergei Skuratov's Prechistenskaya Embankment is from the category of "loggias", it has a lot of interior design. It's like a courtyard open to the river. The same theme is supported by the only literary "speaking" detail here: loophole windows, vertical slits with deep white stone slopes, asymmetrically built into the surface of the glass facades of three "first row" blocks. Their shape is unambiguously associated with the slopes of the windows of medieval fortresses and temples. Moreover, it is internal, interior: the loophole, narrow from the outside, opens inward with a wide bell - scattering the light and making it possible to get closer. The disappeared White City is remembered again, although there was never a wall on this place. Nearby - yes, it was. But all the fortress walls look at the river with narrow loopholes, and not wide sockets, they fenced off the water and use it as a barrier, and not as a front square.
You might think that Sergei Skuratov's medieval plot is turned inside out: the white-stone wall suddenly turned to face the river, turned on the water and stopped pushing away from it. But a real fortress wall would never do that. This means that we must look for another prototype, especially since all the hints given here are more than abstract and allow different interpretations.
And then there is another medieval association - with a loggia, but palace and ceremonial. The façade facing the safe water, the water, which does not play the role of a moat, but, indeed, a ceremonial square. This can be found in only two places, in two trading cities for which water has always been a very important part of life: in Venice and Constantinople. Walking along the longest Istanbul walls and approaching the palace part of the city, you can find the remains of a strange at first glance, a perfect non-serf structure - large arches framed by marble. It is usually called the Bukoleon Palace, although in essence it is nothing more than the ceremonial pier of the Great Imperial Palace. In contrast to the powerful walls, this structure looks absurdly open to the sea, if you do not know how well it was protected by these very walls (the harbor around was fenced off by a fortress). It was the pier of the lord of the seas - she was not afraid of the sea. We observe something similar in Venetian palaces - loggias open to the canal streets and the lagoon square.
But back to Moscow. There are no direct quotes in the building on Prechistenskaya embankment (and it would be strange to expect them here), but the overall effect is inherited. Its entire river facade is a large open loggia, but not a cozy courtyard, but a solemn ceremonial one, open to the river, as to a square. In this it is similar to the Byzantine and Venetian palaces - using the principle of relationship to the water space. The river is on an artery, not a defensive ditch and not a sewerage … The river here is a square. And the building is a palace facing her, because having such a large area in front of you, it would be strange not to dignify like a palace.
And comparing two riverside buildings of Sergei Skuratov, one might think that one of them, located further away, looks like part of a city fortress (and not surprisingly, what is called a "fort"), and the other looks like a palace protected by a fortress. Almost like in Constantinople.
But just like in Constantinople, both buildings look like rare blotches amid the bustle of Moscow. Only there are the remnants of history, and here are signs of the beginning of a new relationship to the river. May be.
