The future customer met the architects at the 2007 Golden Section award ceremony - either he came there specifically to meet the architects, or he liked the works of Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy, exhibited among the nominees for the award. By the way, at that time Atrium received three diplomas from the “section” jury for the constructed buildings. It must be said that this is a rare case when the recognition of a professional award in an absolutely obvious way helped architects to get acquainted with future customers. However, then Atrium was only invited to participate in a closed competition, in which, however, their project was given preference over the works of other Russian and foreign bureaus.
The customers of this project are large entrepreneurs, and the basis of their business is not medicine at all, as one might think. However, building a health center is not only a way to “just” invest money. Subsequently, investors plan to manage it, and perhaps even improve their own health there. It is possible that this is why a new typology will be tested here: a medical clinic is merged with a spa resort. In Russia this is being done for the first time, although one can, of course, draw a distant analogy with the concept of a “sanatorium”. True, if this is a sanatorium, then it is of a completely different, "elite" quality.
The "five-star clinic" (as the architects jokingly call it) will be fully equipped: consultations with doctors, laboratory examinations, cycles of health procedures, if necessary, even operations and subsequent rehabilitation under the supervision of specialists. Accordingly, in the terms of reference received by the architects, the need to subordinate everything to the idea of healing and cleansing the body was specially stipulated. No discos, bars, internet cafes and conference rooms, as well as playgrounds and playrooms. According to the creators of the complex, its guests will need privacy and the opportunity to focus on treatment, and not temptations in the form of visits from friends and short trips to the office.
To achieve the desired tranquility and separation from the capital's affairs, they chose a site for construction further away - seven and a half hectares of a former pioneer camp in a picturesque forest on the border of Moscow and Vladimir regions. There is nothing left of typical Soviet buildings for a long time, but there is a picturesque ravine, a birch grove and a stream flowing from a small lake. The landscapes are completely idyllic and peaceful.
The lake is almost dry, but it is planned to restore it, clean it and make it a compositional center of the health complex, placing all the buildings around the reservoir. Namely: on the one hand - the main three-story building with doctors' offices, an operating room, laboratories, as well as hotel rooms and a public area. On the contrary - six blocked cottages for those who want to observe incognito or simply not meet too often with neighbors; for example, for high-ranking or well-known clients. In addition, a separate restaurant building and even a small greenhouse are planned. As conceived by the authors of the project, not only special gardeners, but also the guests themselves will be able to grow vegetables and fruits for the restaurant. Indeed, what could be more healthful than occupational therapy in a reasonable amount?
The flattened zigzag of the main three-story building of the clinic is cut perpendicularly into the surface of the slope (the height difference here is large, 15 meters, which makes playing with the relief quite justified). Massive layers of concrete floors - a favorite technique of Butko and Nadtochiy, worked out in country villas - wrap around floors, break at different angles, descend to the ground in long ramps. There is something geological in them, similar to the layers of unknown chalk rocks, weathered between the hills and copses of the Central Russian landscape. However, it will be impossible to doubt the man-made origin of the stone zigzag: the lines are quite straight for themselves, only now they are directed all the time somewhere obliquely, then retreating and leaning on thin round "legs", then - pushing out the consoles of the terraces, boldly hanging above the ground and each friend. Inside, due to the displacement of the plates, a three-light space of the atrium of a complex configuration is formed, around which social functions are grouped.
The terraces will be planted with green grass, along which the authors have laid pastoral paths, path stitches, which are in the summer in the meadow. This detail - an insignificant but very revealing part of the project graphics - has an amazing charm and brings something subtly pleasant to the idea of green architecture, in its classic version, I must admit, already pretty fed up with critics. Thanks to this path, the fan-shaped layers of terraces look like a part of the field - as if the nature near Moscow was presented to the guests of the miracle sanatorium “on a silver platter”, and placed near the door.
Six cottages, located, as already mentioned, on the opposite side of the lake, each consist of two interlocked "halves", two-story and one-story. Approximately the same in area, these parts are radically different in configuration and layout. This allowed the architects to solve a non-trivial utilitarian problem: if someone rents the entire cottage, he will receive a house with a mirrored layout, not divided into two parts, quite normal housing with a public area in the center, a small living room and several bedrooms. In addition, the found solution allows you to get away from the boring image of a "blocked building" - each house consists of two parts, but from the outside it is not striking.
According to Anton Nadtochy, the prototype of each "half" was a standard gable house, from which separate volumes were "taken out" (and cut off in places), which sometimes alters the traditional form beyond recognition. Indeed, the cottages seem to have frozen in the process of transformation. Roof slopes sometimes grow vertically into the ground, then become almost flat, then they are closed by deep peaks, similar to heavy concrete hoods. The walls, on the contrary, are thin and light - here glass alternates with wooden panels, and brutally rough stone pipes grow through these ephemeral transparent planes. The houses seemed to have hatched out of the ground and froze, not deciding what was closer to them - a Russian village plow (it is on the roofs), wooden balconies of an Alpine chalet or a classic of transparent modernism.
One of the wishes of the customers was to make the architecture modern, but not urban. This means natural - bucolic. Modern architecture loves natural forms, sometimes they even bend and "bend" too much, trying to imitate naturalness and miraculousness. Butko and Nadtochy's project is not like that. Curiously, for all its obvious naturalness, there is not a single curved surface in it. True, it is difficult to find right angles here - there are a lot of all kinds of bevels and inclinations, but the most familiar ones, at 90 degrees, are few. One gets the impression that the natural (rather geological) form has been limited here. Reduced to segments, either in order to simplify (and reduce the cost, which is important), or - also in order to demonstrate its handmade. It is a kind of agreement between "archi" and "tectonics", human and ecological; architecture here seems to be on the edge between the two. It is likely that the found "golden mean" will have a curative effect on visitors to this mini-resort near Moscow. It will be possible to check this in just a couple of years, because the construction of the health complex has already begun. In particular, cottages have been erected, and finishing work in them will begin next summer. The main building will most likely begin construction next year as well.
