The shopping center intended for the sale of local furniture from the Elegya factory - functionally a large furniture store - will be located on the outskirts of Novgorod, on Moskovskaya Street. Tourists and other lovers of Russian antiquities use it to enter the city. Now a person traveling from Moscow will first be surprised by the impressive size of the inscription “Veliky Novgorod 859”, and then, on the right side, by the glass-metal parallelepipeds of the Dirol chewing gum factory. Opposite this factory, to the left of the road, it is planned to build a building of a furniture center (later a shopping and public complex will appear nearby, the second phase of the project), which will meet tourists together with the Elegy store and will become their first impression when entering the city.
The factory building "Dirola" was built in a restrained and economical international style, adopted for structures of this kind. A furniture center is a completely different matter, furniture is one of the main subjects of modern design efforts, it requires a noticeable and even catchy architectural design. The project of the architectural bureau of Yuri Vissarionov provides it to the fullest.
Visually, when viewed from the outside, it is made up of five volumes that have grown tightly into each other and formed a plan with a complex broken outline, the general outlines of which are similar to a boomerang (or a human elbow, which has been bent, and many folds have formed on the sleeve at the fold).
Two central volumes, located on an imaginary "fold" and especially noticeable from the road, are made, one is made of glass like a large three-story showcase, and the second is like a white stone block cut through by many window rectangles of various configurations, horizontal, vertical, square, large and small scattered chaotically asymmetrically. A significant number of these windows are concentrated on the roof and serve to illuminate the atrium, which on a sunny day will be covered with large rectangles of light. Part of the windows cuts through the junction of the wall and the roof, deliberately deprived of the cornice, emphasizing the integrity of the perforated mass. Both blocks, glass and stone, expand upward, and in general there are strictly vertical and even strictly horizontal lines (in addition to the floor, of course), there is a minority here - each plane seeks to show character and at least slightly, but bend over. The two main volumes are supported by the third - the vertical staircase, narrow, prismatic, glass and the highest in the entire complex, it marks its most important point, like a flagpole or a captain's bridge (which is true, since next to it, above all, it is planned to place a conference hall and administration rooms).
To complete the effect, the sugar and glass core is enclosed in a pool frame (also with broken edges), and visitors will enter the shopping center via the bridge, entering the dark gray metal portal box embedded in the “sugar” volume of the atrium.
The allusions are obvious - the white block cut through by irregular windows is an "old Russian stone" (I am not deliberately saying that, a temple, dwelling or walls), taken in a very general manner and in the spirit of the scenery for the Diaghilev Seasons: windows, inclined walls, stucco simplicity. The water of the pool and the glass of the adjacent volume is the water of Lake Ilmen, and the vertical of the stairs, even if a little fantasy is connected, pretends to be a bell tower. That is, this is a generalized collective sketch of an ancient Russian city on the water, a fabulous theatrical and cinematic "lord of Novgorod", and maybe even the city of Kitezh.
The core is enclosed in a frame of two lower volumes, located on the right and left (they form the branches of the L-shaped plan). These volumes will be trimmed with brown wood panels (literally "wrapped" in wood), and, of course, represent the mass of city houses, which until the XX century in our forest country consisted, as you know, of wooden buildings.
The tree, however, is not limited to the background role and penetrates into the main façade itself in the form of deep decorative "box" frames around the windows. Two of these "boxes" (about the size of a decent living room, with the glass front and back walls removed) levitate directly above the pool water. These are large spectacular showcases - an attraction that is no longer designed for a motorist rushing by, but for people who have come to the shopping center.
There is one more volume, the fifth, it is lower than all the others and is located farthest; it is bluish, rectangular, and in the described scheme, most likely, it could denote forest distances around the city. It must be said that the division of volumes exists only outside; inside it is a solid space that can be partitioned off as you like. Everything, together with the pool, rests on a white base slab (one would like to compare, continuing allusions, this slab with a geological one), below which one underground floor is planned.
So, if we talk about the typical image of an ancient Russian city developed in books and theater, then this image is reflected here accurately and clearly. Although, of course, there is no Berendey's imagery, carved towels or domes there. The style of the project is akin to Daniel Libeskind's deconstructivism: bevels, cuts, slopes, spreads and contrasts of textures and volumes that hold the viewer's attention. Such a building certainly cannot go unnoticed.
