Numerous lovers of seaside recreation today increasingly come to the idea that instead of an annual search for a suitable hotel or rented apartment, it is easier and more profitable to acquire your own housing on the coast. Usually, however, in this case they are limited to buying an apartment - there are many such offers in Sochi. But when friends and colleagues turn out to be potential buyers, the thought naturally suggests itself to unite efforts and build a separate residential complex “only for our own people”. So Vladimir Bindeman, head of the Architecturium workshop, received an order to design 6 apartments with an area of 200 square meters each.
The land plot purchased by the customer for the construction of the complex is located in the center of Sochi, not far from one of the city's most famous sanatoriums - Svetlana. From here it is a stone's throw to the sea, and to the famous Sochi circus, as well as to the "Winter Theater", the main seaside embankment of the resort and the Arboretum. On the southeast side, the site is bounded by the noisy Chernomorskaya street, and its northwestern border adjoins the architectural monument “Dacha of Dr. A. V. Jacobson "built in 1902 (now - one of the buildings of" Svetlana "). It is located on a rather steep slope and has long been considered part of the park area.
The customers had few requirements for future apartments: the orientation of the living rooms to the sea, the presence of 2-3 bedrooms in each apartment and the presence on the ground floor of a public area that combines a swimming pool, a gym, massage rooms and a living room with billiards. The main architectural and planning idea of the complex was suggested to the designers by the relief itself: it is possible to “compensate” the height difference of 17 meters only by creating several levels of terraces. According to Vladimir Bindeman, it was almost immediately decided to make a "house-staircase" - and from afar the complex really resembles several giant steps along which some Gulliver could run up from the sea to the concrete box of "Svetlana". True, the complex relief shape did not allow the architects to confine themselves to the banal placement of terraces one under the other - the two wings of the complex, as they descend to the sea, seem to slightly disperse in different directions, "bypassing" the inconvenient ridge. The connecting element between them and the main axis of the entire composition is the staircase, which takes a solemn ceremonial run from below and gradually tapers upwards. At first, the architects were going to cover the staircase with a translucent structure, but then they considered that open marches would further emphasize the southern character of the building, and in case of rain they limited themselves to placing water intake gratings on each site.
The greatest difficulty in the development of the project was caused by the foundation and the structural scheme of the building. The fact is that the site on which the boarding house is built, on the one hand, has a seismicity of 8.5 points (for comparison: on sites with a seismicity of 9 points, SNiPs often no longer allow building anything at all), and on the other, boasts landslide soils. Neither one nor the other is not uncommon for Sochi, but the paradox is that construction norms in each of these cases contradict each other. Seismic dictates to divide the building into independent blocks, and the threat of landslides, on the contrary, prescribes the erection of a monolithic volume, and it is almost impossible to link these requirements with each other. However, designers Galina Marova and Stella Melnikova found a solution: first, a pile foundation project was developed, and a special protective pile wall was made between the future apart-hotel and Svetlana, and only after that the authors of the project received permission to build a building with a monolithic frame.
The complex has two entrance lobbies - the lower one, from Chernomorskaya Street, and the upper one - from the Svetlana side, and this is also very traditional for Sochi with its steep slopes to the sea. The apartments have a standard layout for this genre: each of them has a living room, combined kitchen and dining room, 3 bedrooms, bathrooms. All living and dining rooms open onto a sea-facing terrace with panoramic windows. The wide parapets of the terraces make it difficult to view the apartments below, and the rooms are protected from the hot southern sun by shady pergolas. The building is entirely faced with natural stone: the basement is “dressed” in granite, the walls of residential and public premises are finished with white marble, and the terraces are accentuated with soft cream travertine and covered with larch. The decorative elements - pergolas, railings, chimney ends - as well as the pool roof are painted blue, and, of course, taking into account the “sea factor”, we can say that this decision is predictable and justified. Develops the theme of proximity to the sea and the vertical volume of the elevator shaft, designed as a lighthouse.
The pool attracts attention not only by the bright color of the roof, but also by its pointed volume, reminiscent of catamaran floats. The sports area of the apart-hotel is turned towards Chernomorskaya Street by a deaf rounded facade, which not only protects the complex from the noise of the highway, but also elegantly captures the turn that the highway makes just in this place. From high points, the apart-hotel, on the contrary, looks extremely open and free, and, perhaps most of all, it resembles a fast-moving private boat, which occupies the most advantageous position in the sea of the surrounding buildings: large ships envy its elegance, and sailing yachts - respectability …
