The new Aeroflot office resembles its logo - the emblem that has existed since 1923 - the "wings" known to many passengers. Thus, the headquarters of the company is built in the shape of its logo. This phenomenon is both relevant and, oddly enough, rare. Relevant because building an office logo is a correct marketing move, clear and logical; Aeroflot has been rebranding itself for the last seven years. And also because sculpture buildings that represent something by themselves are a favorite theme of modernist architecture, starting with five-pointed stars and avant-garde locomotives, and ending with the modern works of many "stars" of Western architecture.
However, it turns out that houses-sculptures are a hit, but at the same time, there are not so many logo-buildings, even in recent years. And more often than not, architects, wanting to include in their work a certain speaking sign (the emblem of a political party or a company logo), go the simplest way - they encrypt graphic information in the appropriate form, a plan. This removes the contradiction between the planar nature of a graphic sign and the inevitable three-dimensionality of any building, at the same time giving rise to a compromise: the necessary sign is present, but does not really affect the overall result. It is no secret that the signs encrypted in the plan are not particularly readable, in any case, it is difficult to recognize them at first glance.
Everything is different with the new Aeroflot office. It consists of two wings - buildings stretching along the International Highway, one almost close to the highway, the other a little further away. The word "wing" in this case is almost literal: each case ends with a sharp, upturned nose from one end - hence, in fact, there is a similarity with the wings from the Aeroflot emblem that have flown to us from the Art Deco era (by the way, similar badges were very common in the 1920s, during the Art Deco era it was kind of a common place to denote what flies).
However, here the flat emblem "stratified" into a three-dimensional volume: identical hulls are deployed at an angle of 180 degrees to each other, so that the nose-wing of one of them looks at Sheremetyevo, and the other - at Moscow. Like two opposite express trains on parallel tracks.
The hulls shine with glass and reflect everything around, mainly the sky. They seem to absorb the clouds and blue, demonstrating their involvement in the heavenly element, which is especially well felt in the beautiful photographs of Alexei Naroditsky. This is the case when glass fully and successfully fulfills its role - it makes the building light. In addition, the plates of the wing-housings are underlined by a contrasting white line at the bottom, and the black basement floor recedes from the edges into the depths and from a distance seems to be a shadow - hence the effect of almost authentic hovering above the ground. Sharp "noses" add dynamics, and slight fractures of the front surfaces hint at the "movement" of the wings. In other words, it not only soared and rushed, but also flaps its wings. All together, on the outskirts of Sheremetyevo, it looks like a rare, but modern aircraft, some kind of air catamaran - is about to rise and fly away. It turned out to be so purposeful.
The glass wings of the buildings are strung on the volume of the atrium between them. It "grows" into glass volumes and seems to launch white tentacle stripes into them; outside, his presence is indicated by a white square. At the same time, the own outer walls of the atrium are glass, and visually continue the perspective of the courtyards on the sides, turning them into similarities of streets. The interiors of the atrium were also designed by "Reserve"; they were finished recently. Inside, it is spacious, tall and filled with diffused light reflected by the light-colored wall cladding. A large and almost cubic volume around the perimeter is surrounded by narrow balconies, diagonal terraces with a mesmerizing shine of lamps under them, shiny aluminum lifts, and in the center there is a square pool with fountains. The inner space of the atrium looks like an antithesis - as opposed to the external flying dynamics: it is calm, balanced, protected in its light shell.
By the way, much here is built on the opposition of simple quantities: white and black, transparent and massive, dynamics and tranquility. This is Vladimir Plotkin's favorite approach: to create something fun out of simple repetition of simple things by playing on their interaction. In this building, a lot is given out by the author's handwriting of recent years, it is a "relative" of the Arbitration Court on Seleznevskaya; only among all the new works is it the most sculptural.
Which brings us back to the theme of the logo. Aeroflot's trademark in the building of its new office is not encrypted, but turned into an easy-to-read architectural image, as befits a building-sculpture. This is not a logo building painfully dependent on the graphics of a trademark imposed on it, but an image building that itself can become the face of a company. It is not burdened with dependence on the logo, but turns it into something new and noticeable, into an interesting speaking form - in which the obvious success of the idea must be recognized.
“But initially the logo was not a prototype, at one of the meetings with customers,” says Vladimir Plotkin, “at some point I just drew their attention to the obvious similarity of the facade with the logo and suggested: let's do this…”. Hence, the idea to use the wings theme came from the architect, not the client. Maybe that's why it came out so naturally. Or maybe the logo itself helped - the well-known and laconic form fit well into the task. It’s even surprising that in 2002, that is, three years before the design began, Aeroflot was going to get rid of its old emblem altogether (mainly because of the Soviet hammer and sickle in the middle). Then the invited famous foreign company suffered for a year and a half, after which an Internet competition was held among the options it proposed, as a result of which the option with the same wings, but with a globe instead of a hammer and sickle, won by a large margin. After that, the rebranding seemed to stutter, in any case, now on the company's website under the modest heading "Aeroflot logos" you can see a strange mixed version, consisting of three whole icons: old hammer and sickle wings; the waving flag that Aeroflot is now drawing on the tails of aircraft; and a round vignette 'sky team'.
On the facade of the new office, of the three listed icons, the last two are placed. The role of the "wings" appears to be taken over by the headquarters building itself. And rightly so, it could well serve as the updated emblem of Aeroflot.
