Nezalezhnosti Avenue is one of the main highways of Minsk, which is about 15 km long and crosses the city from the center to the north-east. It was designed in 1952, when Minsk was rebuilt after the Great Patriotic War, and at first it received the corresponding name - Stalin Avenue. This name eloquently testifies not only to the political system of that time, but also to the nature of the building: the street that existed here before was straightened and widened, and its massive representative houses, faced with natural stone, decorated it. The construction of the highway continued until the end of the 1970s, and the street was renamed Leninsky Prospekt, and the Stalinist Empire style, as it moved away from the city center, quite naturally gave way to modernism. For architects working on the appearance of a new object, this has become an important stylistic reference point.
The building site is bounded from the north by Nezalezhnosti Avenue, from the south by the Svisloch River and would have had a square shape if the river did not make a smooth bend in this place. The territory of the Belarusian State Circus adjoins the western border of the site, the technical zone of the metro is adjacent to the eastern border, and opposite, across the river, there is a picturesque park named after Yanka Kupala. On the site itself, there are now several industrial facilities that are subject to demolition. The formed development of the avenue (and in the immediate vicinity of the future hotel there are a number of architectural monuments included in the State List of Historical and Cultural Values of the Republic of Belarus) influenced not only the stylistic solution of the new complex, but also its height, which will not exceed 9 floors. And the proximity to the river was quite predictably reflected in the general plan of the projected object.
The complex consists of four phases - a hotel, two apartment buildings and an office block are placed on a single stylobate, in which the parking lot is located. The first three buildings are oriented towards the water and are located along the river, with the apartments echoing the bend of the riverbed, and the hotel, on the contrary, gently curving, recedes from the coast, which made it possible to place an extensive two-level terrace in front of it. You might think that the architects first drew one strongly elongated curving volume, and then cut it into three unequal parts and pushed them apart so that between them there were wide ceremonial slopes to the river. The improvement of the embankment and the organization of a pedestrian and trade zone here are dictated not only by the urban planning logic of the development of the site, but also by the instructions of the Minsk authorities, which in this case formulated the "encumbrance" for the investor. SPeeCH bureau designed the embankment as a logical continuation of the park located on the other side of the park and the pedestrian bridge thrown from it. Elements of vertical landscaping, which the architects used in the designed buildings, can also be considered a peculiar development of the theme of the park zone.
The architecture of the new complex is also interpreted as the development of the tonality and scale of the existing buildings. Minsk is a city rebuilt almost from scratch after the war, and therefore is distinguished by the well-known stylistic "monochrome", which is deservedly considered its visiting card, making it recognizable among many other megacities. With its project, SPeeCH pays tribute to the best examples of modernism of the 1960s, using large-scale glazing, brutal window sashes, inserts with laconic bas-reliefs. At the same time, the buildings face the Independence Avenue with rather lapidary facades in their appearance, and on the embankment, on the contrary, more elegant and ceremonial.
At first glance, the volumes that make up the embankment are very similar to each other, but this impression is deceiving. It seems that all three buildings really have the same height and cladding, as well as two fully glazed upper attic floors, adding a naughty hi-tech note to the strict slender look. However, upon closer examination, you realize that in detail they are completely different: the rhythm and pattern of windows, the plastic of the facade, the number of vertical flower beds. This subtle variability is not striking, but makes the complex diverse, while at the same time does not contradict the integrity of the solution.
The office block is located closer to Independence Avenue and is separated from the apartments by a fire passage and a small park. Due to the generous use of glass, the building, which is triangular in plan, is decided in a much more modern way and dilutes the "stone jungle" of the nearest neighbors. The internal layout of the office block is extremely functional: the central core of vertical communications is enclosed in the "embrace" of openspace, which future tenants can use as they please. The internal layout of the remaining blocks also does not conceal any special surprises: all apartments have a river view (the maximum number on a floor is five, the area varies from 65 to 150 square meters), a fitness club and a conference area are located on the first floor of the hotel.
It should be noted that for the SPeeCH bureau this project is not the first experience of cooperation with the Kempinski group. For this hotel operator, the architects under the leadership of Sergei Tchoban and Sergei Kuznetsov have already designed hotels for Nizhny Novgorod and Kiev, and they know the chain's standards very well. This in many ways allowed them to focus their main attention on the architecture of the multifunctional complex, to think over to the smallest detail its visual connections with the historical and natural environment and create a project that ideally meets the character and mood of the Belarusian capital.
