The central part of the house is a large two-story volume topped with a four-pitched roof with high slopes. In front of the two main facades, facing the street and the forest, there is a two-tiered portico-loggia, carried deep forward and therefore very spacious; in summer it will become a shaded terrace full of fresh air, and in winter it will hide from the snow too. Wings branch off from the ends of the main house - passages leading to two houses-"wings", also two-storey, but with a smaller height and somewhat more chamber architecture: they have fewer walls and more windows, no porticoes, but semicircular exedras appear - forms capable of to give the space inside and outside the facades the lightness of classic elegance.
At the first glance at the main facade of the house with wings and passages, the ensemble seems to be symmetrical. But this is not the case. One of the two wings is stretched transversely to the main longitudinal axis, and for good reason: it houses a pool, a necessary attribute of any palace near Moscow. This is a "house for water", according to a modern spa, and a person interested in antiquity (which in such a classical setting would be logical) would call it a miniature version of Roman baths, especially since there are two pools here: a round warm one, under a dome and surrounded by eight columns - downright real antique caldarium, and a long rectangular with cold water, swimming pool. Above the round pool and at the end of the long one there are more niches (the same exedras mentioned earlier), which give the space a classic nobility and gloss, turning it from a banal “spa” or “bath” into a miniature semblance of a term. The effect is facilitated by the sculpture, which is planned to be installed in one of the niches.
There are several such classic "excursions" in the house; of these, the underground rotunda in the basement is especially noteworthy. It is surrounded by an arched colonnade, and the ground floor above it is cut by a large circular opening surrounded by a balustrade. Entering through the front portico, the guest discovers this opening on the right, and, leaning against the balustrade, can look into the semi-underground world, discover arches, columns and a statue there - an effect comparable to the discovery of a crypt in a cathedral or an ancient basement excavated and preserved by archaeologists in a museum. This is a theatrical technique designed to make the space of the front part of the palace interesting and captivating.
Above, just above the opening of the "rotunda", in the ceiling of the first (or, if viewed from above, in the floor of the second) floor, there is another, exactly the same round opening with a balustrade. Through it, you can also look down, seeing the underground columns in the perspective of two occulus already - this should be even more entertaining. Nearby in the floor of the second floor, right in the middle of the hall, there is another "well" - the window down. And finally, above, in the ceiling of the second floor, there is also an opening, this time large and extended, in the shape of a smoothed eight - in fact, the uppermost tier here has been turned into a balcony that goes around the main halls along the perimeter. Even higher is the glass ceiling, which turns this entire space into a kind of atrium, a glazed courtyard.
Thus, multiple vertical connections arise between the four tiers of the front part of the house. The space is literally "stitched" with air wells - the whole intrigue is based on this. Guests (and hosts) can not only wander back and forth, but also look up and down, meeting other gazes there. I remember the painting of the Baroque, Mannerism, but above all, of course, the oculus, drawn
Andrea Mantegnei in Delhi Sposi's cell. There is a circular hole on the ceiling, clouds above it, and curious faces peer down behind the fence. In a palace near Moscow, this scene is not drawn, but implied, played out by architectural means.
But the main impression is made by the staircase leading from the first floor to the second. One central march descends downward, two climbs upward. This is a real grand staircase, on such in modern cinema about the English aristocracy the beauties of Cinderella and the Queen descend.
The mention of the British is not accidental: the house is built in the English style. Over the past 10 years, England has somehow imperceptibly turned into a standard of good life, so it is not surprising that stylizations of its architecture are becoming more and more popular among Russian customers. However, making a recognizable Anglomanian home is not so easy. English architecture, although recognizable, is diverse. If we take, for example, English Palladianism (the earliest strict Palladianism in the world, which British historians are proud of), then it, in essence, is very similar to the later Russian Palladianism of the 18th century. Moreover, already at the end of the 18th century we had Anglomaniacs; Rector of the Moscow Architectural Institute Dmitry Olegovich Shvidkovsky wrote a whole book about this. Simply put, if we take a Russian manor house with columns, then in England a similar one may well be found. What is responsible for recognition?
In this case, two things are taken as a basis. The first is the very Palladianism: a portico, two (almost) symmetrical wings, Serlian windows from Renaissance treatises (vertically divided into three parts, the central of which ends with an arch). The second is the early English Renaissance of the time of the red-haired Queen Elizabeth and Jacob Stuart (in English this architecture is called Jacobean. It is characterized by: red-brick walls with white stone rustication at the corners, high roofs (but without attics, popular with the French), with large pipes (Similar to these pipes, decorative walls in this case crown the roof, masking the glass of the atrium roof.) Large windows with perpendicular white-stone bindings of characteristic vertical proportions, inherited from the Tudor Gothic.
Or here is such a decorative technique: two windows are "glued" into one, and get a common torn pediment with a small acroterium in the form of a classic obelisk in the gap. The twisted phials above the balustrade surrounding the roof are not gothic or quite classical. England has long and reluctantly studied Renaissance architecture, adopting it from third parties - from the Flemings and Germans. And then, with the same stubbornness with which she had previously resisted "pure" classical forms, she rushed to study the heritage of the High Renaissance and antiquity. Then, with the same fanaticism, she returned to her past (everyone knows how highly the British value their traditions), and in the 19th century created an architecture imitating the time of James I, which was called Jacobetan. However, the stylizations of the 19th century are not always easy to distinguish from the buildings of the 17th century.
Oleg Karlson's version of the English house is somewhere between the Jacobean architecture of the early 17th century, the Palladianism of its second half, and the Jacobetan of the 19th century. This oscillation between pure classics and national characteristics, probably, is the essence of the English architecture of the modern era. I must admit that the architect guessed right, it turned out quite accurately and recognizably.
Although the main effect of this architectural project, of course, is not outside, but inside - in the four-tiered ceremonial atrium hall, in its multi-layered and saturated space, "packed" inside the respectable British walls, as a surprise - in a box.
