Recall that TPO "Reserve" was one of the participants in a closed architectural competition for a project for the reconstruction of a former factory area located between Bolshoy Savvinsky lane and Savvinskaya embankment. The site, located on the slope of the river bank with a 12-meter drop in relief from the lane to the embankment, has long been planned to be freed from the factory and built on this site an elite residential complex with public functions that are actively "working" for the city.
As Vladimir Plotkin recalls, work on the project began with an analysis of possible options for the layout of residential buildings on the site. One of the requirements of the technical task was to provide as many apartments as possible with a view of the Moscow River, so the authors had to work hard to find the optimal composition. In particular, it was precisely because of the imperfect species characteristics that the options for the classical quarter development and the arrangement of houses in a checkerboard pattern were rejected, the idea of frontal development seemed not the best solution to Plotkin, because in this case the new house would tightly cut off the site from the embankment. The best antithesis to such rigid geometric solutions was a smooth arc opening to the river - a form that is both expressive and roomy, that is, giving the necessary outlet for the squares. The plan of the complex turned out to be similar to the outlines of a protractor (a drawing tool that most people know from school; it is often found on the architect's desk). As a result of this simple and clear move, the entire quarter magically submitted to the holistic image of the classical palace circumference. Incidentally, this technique is popular in the construction of the embankments of large cities - both in Moscow (suffice it to recall the nearby “House of Architects” by Alexei Shchusev on Rostovskaya Embankment), and in other European capitals (for example, Norman Foster's Albion Riverside in London).
The concept of the residential complex, developed by TPO "Reserve", provides for the demolition of almost all factory buildings. However, the architects nevertheless decided to keep one building: this workshop building, attached to the main complex at the beginning of the 20th century and having the characteristic features of the architecture of that time - luxurious internal structures, huge window openings in "tight" brick edging, tall ceilings. In general, lofts so fashionable now asked for here, which Vladimir Plotkin, taking advantage of the height of the existing floors, made two-level.
In addition to the preserved workshops building, the complex includes three more buildings: a 4-storey residential building that closes the development front on Bolshoy Savvinsky Lane, the main 8-storey volume with a semicircular shape, and a one-storey building “D” supporting the development line of Savvinskaya embankment. The latter actually represents an "insert" into the hemisphere, to which, however, it does not adjoin closely, but throws several transitions at the level of the green roof. A public garden is also being broken up on the back side of the house, and green courtyards "flow" into each other at the level of the first aboveground floor of the "arc". Vladimir Plotkin proudly notes that both courtyards were completely freed from cars. For this, by the way, the architects needed to separate the residential semicircle from the public block - a driveway to the entrances was organized between the buildings, and the absence of a solid roof above it makes the house accessible to fire fighting equipment.
During the conversion, the facades of the historic building will be cleaned of paint, which today masks the original texture and color of the brick. But as for the facades of the main volume, their architects, after much thought, decided to make them light, revealing them with natural stone. “I have been thinking for many hours about the embankment patterns - in its architecture, white and brick colors alternate, set in the churches of the Novodevichy Convent,” admits Vladimir Plotkin. - Probably, if we did not preserve the historical building, our residential complex would have turned out to be brick, and so we limited ourselves to introducing the theme of brick into the design of the first public floor. We are talking about the columns supporting the front yard of the house: massive square pillars are faced with bricks and alternate with thin light plates that look more like lamellas of vertical blinds than load-bearing structures.
The theme of thin white ribs, set at street level, becomes key in the design of facades: the concave plane is all as if recruited from such "slats", and in order to prevent the drawing of the windows from getting too rigid, the architects interrupt the white verticals with horizontal glass inserts of different lengths and width. As a result, the façade is very varied and dynamic. The ends of the semicircular house are also solved differently: one adjacent to the brick building is almost completely glazed, the second, on the contrary, has an almost regular grid of window openings, commensurate with the neighboring office complex. This volume is also supported by a system of terraces, the lower of which begins at the level of the attic floor of the office center.
The architects named their residential complex “Oasis”. This well conveys the meaning of the concept of a house, developed by TPO "Reserve", surrounded by greenery and opened to the embankment by a huge front yard.
