Like most large cities in Russia, Rostov-on-Don has been actively overgrowing with cottage settlements for more than fifteen years. Several years ago, the authorities realized that if this continues, the ring of private development will close, and there will be no reserves for the development of multi-apartment housing. That is why today the land near Rostov-on-Don is allocated mainly for mixed-type projects, a kind of mini-city, in which private, low-rise and multi-storey buildings alternate. One of these projects is a new residential area designed by the Architecturium workshop.
The site with a total area of 47.8 hectares is located between the projected federal highway and an elongated lake. The route runs along the entire southeastern border of the site, making a smooth turn towards the lake, due to which the future construction site in the plan acquires an obvious resemblance to an extended bird's wing. The relief gradually lowers towards the water surface, and on the northeastern shore of the lake, opposite the road, there is a poplar grove. Its scenic beauty and remoteness from the highway suggested a solution to the architects: the grove is fully preserved and turns into a recreation park that connects the town with a boat station, a restaurant and baths located on the shore.
“The urban planning situation dictated to us the compositional solution of the main development. Strictly speaking, when a noisy federal highway is projected along one border of the site, and a reservoir stretches along the other, there are not so many options for the placement of residential areas,”says Vladimir Bindeman. However, the architects refused to make a head-on decision, that is, to place apartment buildings along the road, which would have protected the town from the noise of the highway. Firstly, the width of the roadside lane provided for by the federal project is 75 meters, which is already quite a lot, and secondly, parallel to the future highway, Architecturium is designing an external bypass road, lined with tall trees on both sides, and due to this, it is even farther from it. retreats. The next link really becomes four-storey residential buildings, but in order to avoid the feeling of a “fence”, the architects organize the development in the form of separate open quarters, the courtyards of which are facing the village.
Probably, if these quarters were lined up along the entire roadside border of the site, it would not have been possible to get away from the monotony of perception of the development from the side of the highway. But the chain of four-storey clusters is suddenly interrupted at some point, and then social infrastructure facilities follow - a kindergarten and a school, a sports center, a football field and a tennis court, engineering structures and a car wash, and all these volumes are solved in a modern, emphatically dynamic style. Following the gradual decrease in the relief, the number of storeys and residential buildings is losing: four-storey buildings are followed by lines of townhouses, deployed perpendicular to the road, and cottages begin behind them. The latter are located on plots from 6 to 15 acres - the area of both the houses themselves and the territories adjacent to them gradually grows as they approach the reservoir.
At the same time, according to the TOR, the projected territory is divided into three quarters, and the idea of the construction order is reflected in the general plan with the help of wide green wedges, which, as Vladimir Bindeman explains, not only "visually facilitate the development, but also allow you to organize additional recreation sites."These alleys connect low-rise buildings with the main transport axis of the village - a two-way boulevard running parallel to the highway and dividing the lines of apartment buildings and townhouses. The boulevard is connected to the bypass road by a checkpoint, which, in turn, is connected by a passage to a shopping center intended both for residents of the village and for motorists traveling along the highway in transit. The unity of these volumes is emphasized by architectural means: both buildings, despite the significant difference in area, have a triangular shape and the same color scheme, and the gallery connecting them is visually perceived as a barrier indicating the entrance to the town.
The architecture of residential buildings is based on a combination of simple geometric elements - cantilevers, large square windows and parallelepipeds of glazed loggias that make buildings look like giant screens. This is a favorite technique of Vladimir Bindeman (it is enough to recall his "House-TV"), but in this case it is brought to the logical maximum. “We wanted to emphasize the southern character of the architecture, its location is practically in the steppe, so there are so many terraces covered with pergolas, large loggias and shallow roofs, and the slatted fences are more like blinds,” explains the architect. The main facade material was chosen by the customer for the designers: this is a facing brick of two colors - dark brown and milky beige. The simplicity of the palette set by the customer did not frighten Architecturium: the authors developed dozens of combinations of these tones, giving the volumes an individual character.
