We have already written about the concept of a residential complex on Pyatnitskoye Highway, designed for 20 thousand people, but since then the town-planning concept has undergone quite significant changes. In particular, initially the new city was divided into quarters, the architectural design of which, according to the authors' plan, reminded of different European countries: Germany, Spain, Holland, France, but later the developer decided to abandon such “multiculturalism”. The stake was made on the traditional orthogonal grid, consisting of built-up blocks along the perimeter with a completely car-free and landscaped courtyard. Parallel to Pyatnitskoe highway, a pedestrian boulevard runs through the center of the new city, on both sides of which it is proposed to build low-rise buildings, the first floors of which will be filled mainly with public and entertainment functions. The height of residential buildings increases with distance from this axis, reaching its maximum (12-14 floors) at the approaches to the highway. The first stage of the complex, on which the workshop is currently working, is just the houses located closest to the Pyatnitskoe highway and, accordingly, the highest. Two of them have 13 sections, the third - 4, all three houses will be separated from the main residential area by an internal road.
Thirteen sections - this is exactly as much as it takes to create a quarter with the help of one house. Thus, the first stage includes two full-fledged quarters and another relatively small residential building with an L-shaped plan. The "truncation" of the latter can be explained simply: it is being built closest to the border of the neighboring site, from which the architects wanted not only to retreat, but also to arrange the neighborhood as friendly as possible. Therefore, they did not close the third perimeter, but, on the contrary, sacrificed part of the quarter in the name of a hospitably open green courtyard.
Although at first glance it seems that the concept of a settlement has changed radically, in fact, the principles laid down in it have been preserved: the projected quarters no longer have a pronounced similarity with the design of buildings in European cities, but each of them is still individual. "Face", identity is formed according to the principle "from the particular to the general": each entrance and each courtyard has its own architectural character, the quarters, "recruited" from the houses of several specially designed standard sections, are noticeably different from each other, and the whole new district has a memorable appearance with buildings of different heights, cozy squares and shady parks, picturesque streets and a parade boulevard in the middle. Diversity in the appearance of buildings, in particular, is introduced with the help of variable number of storeys and widths of sections, as well as through an individual approach to the facades of each house. In order to achieve maximum effect, SPEECH has invited an international design team to develop the architectural appearance of the area. Thus, the facades of the first stage of construction were developed by the workshops AssmannSalomon AS and LANGHOF (Germany), TPO Reserve LLC and SPEECH themselves - they divided the existing 30 sections equally.
At the first acquaintance with the visualizations of the resulting residential buildings, it seems that the architects "broke away" in full, making each next facade different from the previous one - these buildings turned out to be so bright and different. However, upon closer examination, you realize that the designers are still in control: in total, each workshop has developed from two to four types of facade with several subtypes that differ in color or rhythm of architectural elements. There is also a considerable economic sense in this, because it is too expensive to make each segment of the facade according to an individual project.
Facades of the AssmannSalomon AS company are distinguished by the greatest variety: they have developed 4 different types, with their signature technique choosing square window-screens, in one case framed with bright metal frames (pink and light green on a white plastered background or brown on a cream-beige background), and in the other placed along the plane of the facade in horizontal groups, creating a pattern resembling brickwork. LANGHOF introduced triangular bay windows into the plane of the house and assembled one facade into an "accordion" style, and made the other calm and elegant, framing the windows with white concrete frames and decorating them with French balconies. Facades of TPO "Reserve" are easy to recognize by strict geometric elements that give the houses expressiveness and solidity. One of the facades is painted chocolate and decorated with snow-white balconies brackets, and in another version, sugar-white loggias are built with "ladders" on top of the same dark brown canvas. Perhaps, the SPEECH workshop achieved the smallest means of diversity of the facades' appearance - the architects “dressed” the sections that they inherited in aluminum panels differing in color and processing. Moreover, the smooth and grooved parts are so selected that even in the case of the predominance of one color, the surface does not seem monotonous.
The sections are distributed between the workshops in such a way that the facades of one author are repeated no more often than two others. An exception was made only in one case - the buildings flanking the entrance to the courtyard were solved in the same way. AssmannSalomon painted them in dark blue and decorated with white rectangular bay windows, and TPO Reserve, in this case, also offered a coffee and chocolate palette.
Due to the relief difference existing on the site, the courtyard of each of the quarters is located about two meters above the carriageway and is connected to it by a staircase. This frees the courtyard from the presence of transport, and the wide staircase leading to it, framed by elegant buildings, emphasizes its special status as a place far from the bustle and untidiness of a big city.
