Electric lane leaves from the Gruzinsky Val in the direction of Tishinka, about 15 minutes walk from the Belorussky railway station. The environment in this area is colorful: the front of inexpensive apartment buildings was repeatedly broken by Soviet panel buildings, placed along or across the streets according to the whim of the town planning. But Elektricheskiy Lane somehow managed to preserve the line of houses of the XIX century both on the right and on the left side almost completely. Only on the left there is a small gap with a one-storey building - in its place, and it is planned to build a "hotel apartment" by the project of Alexei Bavykin.
The site is miniature, and the building neatly occupies it entirely, with its facade fitting into the red line of the street. In order to get useful meters, from the side of the yard in the place where it was impossible to dig a foundation pit, part of the volume was put on "legs". The house will be slightly taller than its neighbors (seven floors against three on the right and four on the left), but the architect uses the usual Moscow technique - he moves the upper floors of the penthouses inland from the red line, which makes them unobtrusive from the street side. Five lower floors are built into the front of the building, a forest of verticals rises above. They pierce a broken lattice visor and are crowned with various sculptures in the spirit of the iconic Bavykin dog, which has taken root in the workshop's logo since time immemorial.
This asymmetrical and irregular "crown" hiding behind itself the broken zigzag stained glass window of the penthouses is the most visible part of the facade. Although not for everyone. Everything is arranged in such a way that a casual passer-by, bustling past to his office, may not really notice the new house: oh, - he will say, another fitness center has opened (planned on the first floor) - and will pass by, appreciating, maybe only the texture of the brick and the cleanliness of the glass. In order to truly see the house and get to know it, you will need to cross the street and raise your head. Such an attentive viewer will be rewarded with a full-fledged spectacle: an exhibition of sculptures. So rare in Moscow, especially in modern times and especially on the facades of houses.
However, in order to catch the attention of "lazy" passers-by, the house has its main corner - the north-western one, looking towards the Georgian Wall at those who will walk from the metro. This corner is mostly glass (although it is "held" by a strict brick support), it is covered with lace forged balcony railing, and the lattice of the visor above it is somehow especially briskly bristling: it rises up and salutes us, casually casting a bizarre openwork shadow. Not a bit of this visor does not protect either from the sun or from the rain, its task is more artistic. It is made up of metal branches and looks like the cornice of a hut, and a little more like a prickly lace bib.
The sources and components of the image of this house are fairly obvious. Before us is the "younger brother" of the house in Bryusov Lane, which has become famous, with a facade made of tree trunks, dressed in a stone fur coat. The house in Elektrichesky Lane is farther from the center and smaller in size; there is no atrium inside, but only ordinary elevator halls; it is not that rich in decoration. Although it cannot be called a simplification either. Rather, he generalizes and popularizes the forms found in Bryusov, brings them to a somewhat more accessible denominator and makes the basis for an architectural language capable of developing further. A language of forms well suited to building in a historic city, but unlike the German-Dutch variety of modern respectability. Their own, special, individual forms.
What is so recognizable? First of all, of course, the trees. There is no stone here, everything will be faced with brick; no branching trunks. But the “branches” of different heights in the upper part definitely represent their paraphrase, only geometrized and “fused” with the facade, and not placed in front of a decorative wall. Even the color is similar: the brownish ocher of the main wall facing the street vividly resembles the Bryusov stone, and, as there, contrasts with the whiteness of the side walls.
The most notable quote from Bryusov is stylized forged branches. There they were on the railing inside the atrium, miniaturely depicting the "trees" of the facade. Here the motive took on a life of its own, characteristic of the openwork-ornamental fabric. A visor is made of it, ribbons of this "fabric" enclose the loggias and five small balconies of the "lonely smoker", the favorite balconies of Alexei Bavykin. Among them, the most remarkable is the lonely one, in the upper part of the side facade - this mini-captain's bridge wanders from one Bavykin building to another; there is also in Bryusov.
The house in Bryusov is the closest, but not the only relative of our hero from Elektricheskiy lane. In recent years, Bavykin has been enthusiastically developing the idea of a "crown-over-building", a forest of verticals that transforms the completion of any volume from a certain horizontal into a chaotically growing reed. In the project of the Gdańsk War Museum, this is a real Gothic crown with crosses; in the project of an office tower on the Avtozavodskaya vertical, the upper part looks more like stripes of bark, a sign of ruin.
Several more distant associations can be cited for this technique: chimneys over Paris and over English castles; gothic towers, pinnacles and even phials. Another, down-to-earth, but true association: now in Turkey, family houses are built in this way - they remove supports above the roof, where the next generation, as soon as they grow up, builds a new floor for themselves. Those who saw the wicker tower-cooling tower of Nikolai Polissky in Nikola-Lenivets will understand me: the ends of the branches, left there for several years in a row, clearly indicated that the weaving was not finished, that it had to be continued.
In essence, this theme is the opposite of the cornice. The cornice sums up the facade, which is why it is called “crowning”. Sticking out branches, trunks, or even supports - this is an unfinished topic, fraught with continuation. In this case, however, both met: the supports grow through the ephemeral cornice, he is indignant, breaks his horizontal. Incidentally, the clash of opposing principles is also one of Bavykin's favorite tricks. And yet this is an amazing ability of an architect: to turn any pragmatic task, "a residential building with apartments" - into a "picture from an exhibition".