The fate of the second stage of the Zapadnye Vorota complex, three buildings of which have already been built at the intersection of Mozhaiskoye Highway and the Moscow Ring Road, cannot be called easy. First, in 2008 at the Public Council under the Mayor of Moscow, and then in April 2009 at the Architectural Council, the concept prepared by Boris Levyant's team was sent for revision. The main points that need to be corrected were: a consistent increase in the silhouette in order to create an architectural more expressive ensemble that forms the entrance to the city, linking the object with nearby buildings and changing the transport scheme taking into account the creation of pedestrian links.
Recall that the project of the multifunctional complex "Western Gate" provides for the development of two sites on opposite sides of the Mozhaisk highway. On the right side (from the center) it is planned to build several office buildings, but on the contrary, next to the already existing three buildings, a high-rise hotel is to be erected. In the new version presented to the Architectural Council, the number of office buildings on the first site was reduced from 4 to 3 (the total area decreased by 30 thousand square meters), and the shape of the buildings was changed from elliptical to rectangular. In the center of each of the parallelepipeds, the roof is "pressed through", and the buildings face the highway with their raised beveled ends. The office buildings are arranged in a fan and reproduce the step of the buildings of the first stage. The architects designed the facades in two versions - structural glazing and cladding with natural stone.
Instead of the previously planned high-rise at the end of the site, Boris Levyant proposed to build a small 2-storey volume of the restaurant. But the volume of the hotel on the second section has got a more intricate shape - now it is also a rectangle with the end part smoothly cut off to the Moscow Ring Road. The height of the building, after discussing the project with local residents, will be reduced to 55 meters. In fact, abandoning the high-rise dominant on the first site, the architects are giving this role to the neighboring residential cruciform high-rise buildings built in the 1980s. Such a decision cannot be denied as a good compromise: these buildings successfully flank the exit from the city, and together with the new tower of the hotel on the other side of the highway will function as a kind of "propylaea".
The members of the Architectural Council noted a certain improvement in the project, but drew the attention of its authors to the fact that by no means all the questions raised in the previous reviews were completely removed. The transport scheme and, in particular, the organization of entry and exit to the congested Mozhaisk highway, despite the received approvals, did not suit the experts. For the second time, Alexander Tsivyan proposed to solve this problem by including an intra-block passage, in fact, a backup for Mozhaiki, into the complex, but permission for its use has not yet been received, since this road passes next to residential buildings and past the traffic police post.
Remained with the members of the council and claims to the architectural composition of the complex. In particular, in their opinion, the project still does not create an ensemble commensurate with its surroundings, since the office buildings are too close to each other and from afar their silhouettes will inevitably merge into a single whole. Alexander Kudryavtsev, in turn, expressed the opinion that the version of the classical design of the entrance to the city a la "triumphal arch", which the council members so strongly recommend to the authors of the project, will be very difficult to implement, since in the first stage of the complex the architects went on principle a different path - the creation of a more "democratic" composition of entry in the aesthetics of modernism of the 1970s. Chairman of the Council Yuri Grigoriev agreed with the proposal of Svyatoslav Mindrul to improve the composition by increasing the "fan" of the buildings to the highway. In addition, they did not receive the approval of the council and both options for facing the facades - both the one and the other - seemed "typical" to the experts.
As a result, the project was supported, but the architects received a recommendation to "bring it to mind" before being presented at the Public Council. In particular, it is necessary to provide for pedestrian connections in the transport scheme, make the silhouette of office buildings more readable and gradually raise it towards the highway. The chief artist of Moscow, Igor Voskresensky, reminded of the need to think about more effective landscaping of this important area. In conclusion, Yuri Grigoriev, noting the professionalism of Boris Levyant's team in the design of multifunctional and office complexes, suggested that in many ways the reason for the long-suffering of this project lies in the absence of urban planning documentation for the development sites.
The second item on the agenda of the Architectural Council was the multifunctional complex at Nakhimovsky Prospekt, 36. This address belongs to the Research Institute of Oceanology. P. P. Shirshov, a spectacular square-shaped building on a developed stylobate, designed by Yuri Platonov in the late 1960s as part of the creation of a quarter of scientific institutes at the intersection of Profsoyuznaya Street and then Krasikova Street. The project, carried out by the workshop of Sergei Tkachenko "NATAL", is actually a reconstruction of the territory adjacent to the institute and offers the construction of an apart-hotel, office and shopping centers on it.
The architectural environment of the 6-storey building of the Research Institute of Oceanology is formed by the buildings of the Research Institute of the 1970s-80s, as well as modern multi-storey residential buildings. According to the project assistant Alexei Bavykin, the building of the CEMI RAS (Central Economics and Mathematics Institute), built according to the project of Leonid Pavlov and located opposite the Research Institute of Oceanology, on the other side of the avenue, is of particular value among the first. At the meeting of the council, much was said about the value of the heritage of the architecture of the 1970s, but for some reason the fact that CEMI has been built up with residential high-rises for several years, which radically distorted the perception of Pavlov's creation, remained in parentheses. The project of Sergei Tkachenko, presented at the council, makes you worry that a similar fate will not befall the Research Institute of Oceanology.
The planned reconstruction does not affect the building of the institute, but it is built on both sides with two high-rise blocks - a 19-storey office complex (total area 27 thousand sq. M.) And a 20-storey apart-hotel. The height of each building is 75 meters, and they are interconnected by a lowered shopping area (7,700 sq. M.), Which faces Nakhimovsky Prospekt, overlapping the main staircase and accentuating the entrance to the institute.
The authors of the project presented 4 variants of the volumetric-spatial organization of the new complex to the council. In the first, high-rise buildings are solved in different ways, and the rounded shapes of one are opposed to the geometrism of the vertical trapezoid of the other. In the second version, the skyscrapers, on the contrary, are identical vertical plates, the facades of which are decorated with squares, so beloved by Leonid Pavlov. In the same version, the authors play on the motive, which was so popular in the 1970s, that the building was detached from the ground. The third version, with towers similar to a stack of horizontal concrete plates, also refers to Pavlov's buildings, for example, the Computing Center of the State Planning Committee of the USSR on Sakharov Avenue. And finally, the fourth option does not correlate with the recent architectural past, but experiments with the shape of buildings, deciding the hotel in the form of a wave-like volume.
The main remarks of the council members concerned the technical parameters of the project, in particular, compliance with the updated technical regulations of the width of the fire bypass between the existing research institute and the new annexes. Andrey Bokov and Svyatoslav Mindrul also expressed doubts about the capacity of the parking lots included in the project. And according to Andrey Chernikhov and Alexander Loktev, the reconstruction of the existing stylobate would help to solve the issue of parking lots and entrances. As for the volumetric-spatial composition itself, Aleksey Bavykin spoke in favor of the 3rd option as the most appropriate to the aesthetics of the existing development in the area. However, the advice also named the first option as a basis for further elaboration. Summing up the whole discussion, Igor Voskresensky noted that, in general, the council reacted positively to the composition and altitude indicators of the project, but asks to take into account that the fulfillment of the mentioned technical requirements may entail a change in the TEPs, and with them the entire project. However, according to Igor Voskresensky, there are urban planning opportunities for this.
