Multifunctional tourist complex "Lefkadia" is one of the ambitious development projects in the Krasnodar Territory. Here the management company plans to create a unique resort infrastructure with developed zones of hotels, an ethnic village, a golf club, horse riding, medical complexes and to revive the previously lost culture of winemaking. Various architectural companies and private architects from both Russia and abroad are involved in the implementation of the Lefkadia project.
The workshop "Sergei Kiselev & Partners" was first invited to participate in a closed competition for a project of a winery near the village of Moldavanskoye (we have already written about this project), and then she was ordered to develop a concept for a health-improving institution "Clinic of natural healing for 100 beds" located in an ecologically favorable area and intended for patients who need the final rehabilitation stage after a balneological course in the hospitals of Krasnodar and Krymsk.
The ten hectares allotted for the construction of the Clinic are located at some distance from other areas of the tourist complex, so that patients can fully relax in peace and quiet. The main attraction of the site is a small teardrop-shaped lake; on its bank, the architects proposed to place a clinic complex of 2-3-storey buildings linked by vertical communications.
The planning structure of the Clinic is dictated by the main connections between functional areas. The dominant volume - the diagnostic and treatment building - is adjoined to the left and right by dormitory buildings located in the "folds" of the area in such a way as to merge with the natural environment as much as possible, and the reception areas with a restaurant, SPA, conference hall and access to central pedestrian esplanade leading to the park and the beach. The planning of the Clinic inherits the best traditions of designing sanatoriums and health-improving complexes and completely satisfied the customer. But the stylistics of the facade solution, proposed at first by the authors - modern and functional, as is characteristic of the objects of the SKiP workshop - as it turned out, was not at all close to him. “The customer had his own wishes for the style of this object,” recalls the chief architect of the project, Faina Ibatullina. “They were both very persistent and, at the same time, paradoxically vague, and were formulated in the form of obscure“Crimean Tatar-Tuscan motives”. We honestly tried to realize these wishes and gave suggestions for the solution of the facades with elements of the classics in combination with the Tuscan patterns of the roofs of the buildings of the complex."
The wishes of the customer, expressed in the form of a rather exotic style definition from the point of view of art historians, actually turned out to be easy to interpret. The first part of the definition - "Crimean Tatar", refers us to the local context: in the 1990s, the Crimean Tatars were able to return to their homeland. The second one appeals to the peculiarities of resort architecture, which both in the Crimea and the Caucasus gravitated towards Italian prototypes, especially at the time of the construction of luxurious coastal Stalinist sanatoriums. Nostalgia for Italian beauty, especially in a similar climatic zone, is very strong even now: to be sure, southern luxury is a classic, and not only in the eyes of amateurs.
The most difficult thing is to say anything about the local context: the Crimean Tatars have not historically developed a specific architectural style of their own. The first thing that comes to mind is the Bakhchisarai Palace of the Crimean Khans; it consists of small, 1-2-storey buildings grouped around a wide courtyard surrounded by two-storey wooden galleries. The length of the Clinic's buildings, according to SKiP, - sloping tiled roofs of different heights, whiteness of walls, circular ends of the outlines of windows and two tiers of loggias from the side of the lake - just fall into this image. The central tower with an observation deck on the upper level, in turn, recalls, first of all, the well-known towers of the Caucasian mountain villages; although in the mountainous Crimea there are fortresses and towers. The tower of the diagnostic and treatment building is undoubtedly perceived as the central dominant of the complex, from which buildings of various lengths run up the hills in both directions. Following the changes in the relief, their roofs sink lower and lower, giving the whole composition additional dynamism and at the same time a distant resemblance to a mountain village grouped around a single fortification. But for the ennobling Italian ("Tuscan") component "is responsible", first of all, the snow-white arcade of the main building and uneven tiled roofs.
The facades are conceived to be smooth-stone; plinths, retaining walls and terraces should be covered with a rough stone "fur coat" resembling wild masonry. It is planned to arrange terraces on the roofs, and to cover some of the walls with a loach. Inside, the emphasis is on the respectability of the medical institution: marble, granite, wood, stucco, leather.
Note that, having received an order for the "Crimean Tatar-Tuscan style", the architects of SK&P remained true to themselves. They designed a complex that looks like a small southern town from the outside, merged with a sanatorium - they followed a path that can be defined more as fitting into the context than as stylization. There is no pretentious decor, and only the colonnade and vaulted windows can be attributed to the category of recognizable details. In other words, the architects made a calm and rather laconic contextual project, which does not particularly stylize anything, but is included in the southern tradition and has several recognizable elements.
