The site, inherited by the City-Arch workshop, has a complex configuration in plan. On the one hand, it adjoins the Moscow-Don highway, on the other, it borders on the existing private cottage development. In the direction from the city of Domodedovo to the airport of the same name, the plot is crossed by the route specified by the project. The proximity of the take-off field had a decisive importance on the appearance of the future residential area: the authors based the general plan on the image of man-made steel wings, and the Aviatorov Boulevard became the central street of the microdistrict: a pedestrian alley with a thematic monument in the center, the perspective of which is closed by a W-shaped office high-rise, silhouette resembling an airplane … The location of the high-rise was not chosen by chance: here the Moscow-Don highway makes a turn with the formation of a small hill. Thus, the building is clearly visible in any direction of movement.
“This building serves as a kind of entrance gate to the territory of the district and at the same time its main landmark,” explains the architect Valery Lukomsky. “It is important that this is the only high-rise volume here - when designing residential buildings, we deliberately moved away from high-rise buildings, believing that low-rise and low-density housing is more appropriate outside the city.” The height of residential buildings in "Yuzhny" is from 3 to 12 floors. In the first case, these are townhouses - the architects built up by them quarters are placed between the main residential area and the private residential development around them, in the second - multi-entrance residential buildings flanking a wide roadway. The main building block of the district is left by five- and nine-story buildings, united into quarters. The architects fundamentally refused to split the territory into separate microdistricts - they preferred a system of more intimate quarters with a landscaped courtyard, free of cars, to this classical technique of Soviet urban planning.
In the plan, each block is a square, but its perimeter is far from being closed everywhere. In some cases, the square has no corner, in others the whole side remains undeveloped. “Having set ourselves a rigid framework in terms of the shape and area of the quarter, we strove for maximum diversity within this morphotype and wanted to show that the layout and architecture of these“cells”that are practically identical in the master plan can be very diverse,” says Valery Lukomsky. “In our opinion, it is precisely such a consistent transformation that sets the maximum quality of the living environment, gives each of the quarters the necessary originality.” Inside each block, as already mentioned, there is a pedestrian courtyard with playgrounds and recreation areas for the elderly. Its diagonal is 100 meters - according to sociologists, this is the maximum distance at which people recognize each other at first sight and, accordingly, identify the space as safe, “theirs”. The main feature of the project is the separation of pedestrian and transport communications, the separation of these functions vertically, as well as the removal of highways outside residential areas. Thus, Aviatorov Boulevard with a small alley adjoining it and the square formed at their intersection are exclusively pedestrian zones. There are no and cannot be parking in the courtyards - entrances here are provided only for special equipment. Places for cars are located on the outside of residential areas, both at ground level and on the -1 floor. Covered three-level parking lots with flat roofs are also located behind the houses and, due to their shape, serve as visual jumpers between the neighborhoods and the adjacent territories of townhouses, schools and kindergartens. Their shallow roofs, falling down to the ground, will be partially exploited - as playgrounds, slides and tracks for children.
Note that the "aerodynamic" forms are given to most of the residential buildings. In some cases, the role of the "wing" is performed by the arched roofs of individual buildings, effectively flying apart from each other in different directions. The central pedestrian square is "embraced" by semicircular buildings of public institutions and shops, while high-rise buildings, curved by a wave, from certain angles are quite reminiscent of the fuselage. Kindergartens and schools reproduce the W-shape of the only skyscraper in the area at the level of the plan. From a bird's eye view, these letter-like buildings appear as special signs to help pilots navigate the terrain.
Thus, the project, on the one hand, has all the advantages of modern architecture (there are dynamic forms and images, the latest materials and technologies are used), and on the other hand, it develops the traditional principles of designing suburban settlements. In particular, the authors preserve the low number of storeys habitual for these places, a large number of pedestrian and green areas. All this makes the new area modern in style and at the same time organic and human-scale.
