Architect Mikhail Khazanov began working on the project for a museum of contemporary art in the mid-1980s, that is, very long before the idea of creating such a cultural institution began to be discussed at the level of the city and the federal center. Recall that the National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) was established in 1992, and acquired its first building of its own only in 2004. For the needs of a cultural institution, according to the project of Mikhail Khazanov, the premises of the electric lighting equipment plant on Zoological Street were reconstructed, and the resulting object with a frame brought out to the outside, a transparent elevator shaft and scarlet inserts on the facade earned the unanimous approval of critics and the professional community. The building was proudly called the "Russian Center Pompidou", and in 2005 it was awarded the "Crystal Daedalus". Around the same time, it became clear that the charming hybrid of factory architecture and hi-tech would soon become small for the NCCA, so the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation came up with a proposal to create a federal museum of contemporary art on the basis of the Center, which has not yet existed in Russia. At first, it was planned to place it on practically the same site as the NCCA - the project developed by Mikhail Khazanov (exhibited, for example, Arch Moscow-2006) envisaged the expansion of the building and its superstructure with a 17-storey round tower, pierced through in several places parallelepipeds of consoles - but later it was decided that the center and the museum would be located in two different buildings.
The site allocated for the construction of the museum is located at 13 Zoologicheskaya Street. On one side it is close to the building of the NCCA, on the other it borders on the territory of the Moscow Zoo, from the side of the yard it borders on residential buildings. The site is not empty - here is the so-called house of Vasily Polenov, a building built at the expense of the famous painter in 1915 and intended to house the Section for promoting folk theaters. The author of the building is considered to be the architect O. O. Shishkovsky, however, many historians are inclined to believe that the project was based on the sketches of Polenov himself. In the 1930s, the house survived a serious fire, after which it was reconstructed; in the 1940s, the workshops of a mine factory were located within its walls. And although the unique interiors of the theater were irrevocably lost, the exterior of the Polenov house partially retained its original appearance, for example, a spectacular corner tower, an arcade on the facade and some other elements of the original design survived. At the same time, the house is not an architectural monument and a few years ago was recognized as emergency, therefore, according to the project of Mikhail Khazanov, it is supposed to demolish it, and its most valuable fragments - a tower and a piece of a wall with three arched openings - to be included in the new building. The rest of the existing structures on the site - three former factory workshops - will be demolished without rebuilding.
Since the area of the site is very small, the new museum building is forced to develop vertically. According to Mikhail Khazanov, this is not a problem - the vertical structure is quite consistent with the main function of this object, that is, the placement of private collections (one floor for each), which will become the basis of the museum's exposition. At the same time, the architect partially removes the frame of the building outside, which not only makes the new volume related to the existing building of the NCCA, but also makes the interior space of the halls as spacious and free as possible. According to Khazanov's concept, the museum building is a rectangular "container" open to be filled with various art objects. The constantly changing "content" will directly affect the architectural appearance of the building - its facades are actually giant screens that can radically change their color, outlines and decor using video installations. The second most important element of the facade design will be two dynamic diagonals of escalators, along which visitors will be able to climb all 17 floors of the 65-meter tower. By the way, in addition to the actual exhibition halls, lecture halls and a depository, the new building will house the chamber premises of the contemporary art collectors club and the children's art studio.
The main idea of Khazanov's project - to turn the museum building itself into an object of contemporary art - made the audience split up. Project referent, architect Andrei Chernikhov, highly appreciated his colleague's idea, or: for Alexander Kudryavtsev, on the contrary, it came as a surprise. According to the latter, Khazanov's project is unjustifiably expensive and "does not interact with the environment, but blows it up." Many other members of the Architectural Council agreed with the opinion that the dynamic light installation on the facades of the new museum could interfere with neighboring residential buildings. In particular, Svyatoslav Mindrul proposed to focus on a neutral version of a glass volume, behind the transparent facade of which you can exhibit something, and Yuri Platonov noted that "such architectural organisms live only in pictures."
In the course of the discussion, other serious problems of the project were revealed. The first is the actual demolition of Polenov's house. As already mentioned, the building is not a monument, however, according to the chief architect of the Center for Historical and Urban Planning Research Boris Pasternak, it has not only historical value (after all, both Repin and Chaliapin have visited it), but also architectural, because “genetically close "To the famous Polenov estate" Borok "on the Oka. “The house deserves to be preserved at least in volume, and not“in the form of a blotch on a new building,”Boris Pasternak is sure. On the other hand, Andrei Bokov called the idea of re-creation in the previous volumes even more dubious than the preservation of an impromptu "memory" of the house on the facade of the new museum.
The second controversial issue is the transport scheme of the site. Zoologicheskaya is a one-way street with an acute shortage of parking spaces, while there is a whole network of social and cultural institutions on it, where hundreds of people come every day. Svyatoslav Mindrul, who lives nearby, suggested that the designers arrange a pedestrian gallery in the lower floors of the tower; however, as Mikhail Posokhin noted, this proposal conflicts with the requirement to preserve fragments of the historic building. As for the parking spaces necessary for the new museum, they can be provided by two adjacent underground parking lots (now their construction is frozen).
In general, most of the council members did not doubt the possibility of building a museum at 13 Zoologicheskaya Street. Only Alexander Kudryavtsev noticed that it is preferable to place such objects in free spaces, where there is no environment. However, experts considered it inexpedient to move the museum to another place and separate it from the NCCA building, which is very popular among Muscovites. The Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Alexander Avdeev, who was present at the meeting of the Architectural Council, thanked the architects for supporting the very idea of organizing the first federal museum of contemporary art on the basis of the NCCA. As for architecture, the Minister of Culture only noted that the museum, in his opinion, should not become a "remake of the Pompidou Center." Mikhail Khazanov's project was adopted by the Architectural Council at the concept level.
The second object considered on March 31 by the Architectural Council of St. Moscow, became a hotel designed by Alexander Asadov's workshop on the Garden Ring, opposite the Kursk railway station. The architects began to design an office building on this site several years ago, but in 2007 the Public Council decided to change the functional purpose of the site, and the office building gave way to a hotel. After discussions of the project with local residents, the volume of the hotel decreased significantly, the architects made a larger indent from the neighboring residential building, complied with the requirement for a 10-meter fire passage and reduced the underground parking by one floor. In November 2009, the project was again submitted to the Public Council and approved.
Recall that the seven-story hotel building is built into the red line of the Garden Ring between the dwelling house built in 1955 of the same height and the two-story one built in 1915. The architecture of the building, according to Alexander Asadov, "absorbs the surrounding styles" - the constructivist house opposite and the Stalinist buildings in the neighborhood. Thus, the hotel combines quite a classic powerful base and a light glass "attic" with a constructivist glass cylinder on the corner. The building tactfully maintains the red line of the street - it protrudes somewhat forward with a two-story plinth, which extends to the neighboring high-rise residential building, forming a pylon. There is a small park behind it - its experts of the Architectural Council unanimously recognized one of the main advantages of the project.
The authors of the project were recommended to lower the height of the ceilings to the corresponding three-star level of 3.30 m, and due to the space won, it is better to accentuate the upper part of the building. The council also invited the architects to consider the option of connecting the basement "arcade" of the hotel with the neighboring building. Experts recognized the inconvenient approach to the hotel as a vulnerability of the project - in order to get to the front entrance, motorists will have to drive around an entire block. The Council approved the project, inviting the authors to think about another variant of the transport scheme.
