The recently held "Moscow River in Moscow" competition has once again demonstrated that it takes a lot of effort to fall in love with this river. In Moscow, they do not like her very much - they go around, go around, do not notice. And the architecture, which happened to be near the water, also applies - it rises, fenced off, ignores. What's on the river? First power plant; as well as Iofanov's "House on the Embankment", which is only in name on the embankment, but in architecture it is hardly felt - it could be exactly the same, even if he did not stand on the river - neither on the water, nor on the embankment, he does not reacts. There were, of course, attempts to somehow reflect the Moscow water - one of the most famous is the building of the Central House of Artists, our local "Doge's Palace" … But it doesn't look like it. Few people, looking at him, would think about the similarity with Venice, unless they specifically know about it. So there seems to be no riverine architecture in Moscow, although there is a river.
However, it is not easy to reflect on the topic of water in our conditions: firstly, it is cold here most of the year, which is not conducive to boat trips, and secondly, the Moskva River is almost everywhere cut off from the city by a busy highway, which is difficult to cross. everywhere is easy. In addition, industrial zones - factories and factories - stretch along the river banks.
In recent years, however, a reverse trend has begun to emerge. Many European cities now open their streets - to the river or to the sea. Moscow does not yet have a consistent urban planning program in this regard, but they are beginning to talk about the river, and something is even being done within the framework of the same idea, which is popular in our time. Coastal industrial zones are gradually being turned into lofts, they are being built up with offices and housing - and the new architecture emerging by the river is no longer so indifferent to it. Among the first signs of this process are two office buildings of Sergei Skuratov. Both completed this year and both - coincidentally, of course - are located on the embankments. A comparison suggests itself.
Both buildings are office buildings, both are separated from the river by highways that run along the river almost everywhere and completely separate it from the city. But despite these difficulties, both new buildings are building relationships with water - not directly, because they do not erect any bridges, but artistically or even with a plot. The reason is clear - Sergei Skuratov's buildings are usually very context-sensitive. In this case, the river becomes part of the immediate vicinity, and the architect reacts to it in the same way as to other components of the environment.
Depending on the location and design, the buildings turned out to be different. One is named "Danilovsky Fort" and really resembles a fortification - three towers on the way to the city. I remember the definition from old Moscow guidebooks "watchman monasteries" - just in this part of Moscow there are several monasteries (Donskoy, Danilov, Simonov), about which it is known that they served (for a very long time) also as fortresses, protecting the capital from misfortunes from the south … Very distantly - with a cover of red brick and laconic forms - the office buildings of Sergei Skuratov resemble the massifs of fortress walls. Only the walls were growing out of the ground, and the Danilovsky Fort was raised in a constructivist way on the glass plane of the first floor and on concrete legs.
Fortresses are the most distant and abstract, historical part of the “fort” context. Much closer to him are the old, also brick factories of the 19th century, and especially the nearby Danilovskaya Manufactory, which is now gradually being transformed into an office loft. But factories and factories are the most extensive part of the development of the embankments - the river served for them both as a road and as a resource of water - industrial zones along the river are still the most. Paradoxically, two themes, an old factory and an ancient fortress, intersect: the architecture of factory buildings of the historicism period often turned to the motives of medieval castles. Here you can find mashikuli, loopholes, and decorative turrets - it is worth looking at at least the same Danilovskaya Manufactory. "Fort" by Sergei Skuratov, however, does not inherit medieval literalism, but it uses a theme.
The most obvious reflection of this theme is the brick texture of the facades, covering all the outer walls with even terracotta ripples. More was conceived - Sergei Skuratov intended to make the planes of the ceilings inside brick (he used this technique earlier in Butikovsky Lane) and the lining of the square on the roof of the first tier. If it did, the brick would really feel like part of the body of the building. But complex and unusual types of cladding fell victim to the reduction in the cost of the construction process and, figuratively speaking, only the "skin" remained from the idea. However, it is still quite impressive in itself, covered with an ornament imitating the natural color of old brick, kiln-fired with varying intensity. This is something between texture and decor, a picturesque part of the building. By the way, because of this, the building is difficult to photograph, its color becomes elusive and the camera gives out, for example, bright scarlet while the eyes see brown.
The other part of the design - sculptural - is more obvious. The front façade faces the embankment, and from this side the walls of the two buildings bend smoothly, and deep consoles with constructivist ribbon windows grow from the epicenter of the recesses. You might think that the two buildings parted to the side, saluting each other with giant ledges. The consoles contain meeting rooms, and the long windows provide panoramic views of the river. It turns out sculpturally, the walls of the buildings seemed to be slightly crushed, and in response, a stone hill appeared on the roof of the first tier. As if the house is a little alive, either inhaled or exhaled. Or caved in from the wind from the river, or weathered. Asymmetrically picturesque windows “flock” to the bends - the material of the walls here is thus thinned twice.
This is how the building differs from the fort - its front facade is not closed, but, on the contrary, parting, opening up towards the river space, which is unusual for the city. Unlike its two prototypes - factories and fortresses (which use the river, but at the same time fenced off from it and indifferently rise above it), "Danilovsky Fort" turns out to be more sensitive to the water space and makes it a full-fledged third component of its context. Hence, another association arises, already non-Moscow - with the towers of the Venetian Arsenal, between which you can swim. Sergei Skuratov's "Fort" looks like the gates of some (never existed) harbor, a water fortification on the way to the city; it seems to be a very generalized fantasy on the theme of ancient fortifications.
To be continued.
