All three houses were built in the Moscow region. They are relatively small: a little more, or a little less than 200 square meters - for an average country house of our time, this is the most common size; in such a house, one family is accommodated comfortably, but without excess space. They are built with both stone and wood - recently a lot of various log and log houses of a similar scale have appeared on the market. True, for the most part they resemble a hybrid of a Russian hut from a book of children's fairy tales, an Alpine chalet and a Finnish house. Oleg Karlson acted differently: he made houses with similar (although not the same) plans, but he decided them in very different styles.
Imagine a square divided into 9 equal cells, each with a side of 5 meters. All three plans are drawn within this simple and clear grid, only occasionally going beyond the main square. Five cells, including the central one, form an equilateral cross, which becomes the nucleus of the composition of each house, making it strictly centric and grouping all the squares around the central one. This is an eternal and very classic theme, before Palladio built the villa "Rotonda", it was exclusively a temple, and then rightfully moved to housing, giving it a bit of strict representativeness. It is all the more interesting to consider the variety of solutions that Oleg Karlson came up with.
In the "modernist" house in Khlyupin, the centripetal layout of the outside is not emphasized, but rather leveled out. Several ways at once. Firstly, one square out of nine is taken out of the general outline, which makes the composition asymmetrical. Secondly, not all three squares are filled - two corner squares are given to the terrace: the main, living volume of the house thus recedes from the line of the main facade inward. And finally, although the cross is very distinctly expressed on the plan, from the outside the emphasis is not on raising its center, but on the intersection of two volumes.
Imagine a Finnish house with a sloping gable roof. Only in the middle, where a traditional house would have a ridge, the volume is torn apart - and instead of the "usual" ridge, another two-slope volume is placed, only narrow and turned 90 degrees relative to the main one. One slope of the perpendicular volume is longer than the other, its short ridge is shifted towards the forest, and the long slope is glazed. In the center, instead of a village porch or a manor portico, there is a long glass "slide" that illuminates the light, extended space inside, the pivot of the whole house, similar to an atrium. We are used to atriums in shopping malls; to the high, illuminated galleries. And here his miniature version directs the light in a very unusual way: not from the ceiling, as in ordinary atriums, and not from the side, as he would walk from the windows, but along the slant - the walls part, and the inhabitants of the house are no longer under the roof, but right under sky. What is required from a country house.
On the other hand, the glass "slide" can be understood as a bold and unusual, but recognizable type of veranda. Most country houses consist of two parts: half of the house is ordinary, with walls and windows, these are bedrooms. The other half is covered with large latticed glasses; this is a veranda, where they drink tea and admire nature. Here the house is not a dacha, it is more serious, but all the same - in nature. His veranda has become more imposing, double-height, spectacularly sloping. But this has not ceased to be herself: the glass "nose" ends in the center of the open terrace and people sitting in armchairs overlooking the forest find themselves both at home under the roof and partly on the terrace. This space between "inside" and "outside", in the sense - a typical veranda, but only it is impossible to close it with lace curtains for greater comfort (as most summer residents do).
In a word, it is easy to understand why this house is modernist, although it has a flat roof, which is important for recognizing this trend. Belonging to modernism in this case is indicated deeper - through the architectural play with volumes and space. A house, the main façade of which has ceased to be a wall, but consists of terraces, balconies and sloping glass; a house that catches light "along an oblique plane"; a house that admits the surrounding nature and was designed as a "lookout" for contemplating the nearby fir trees - this is definitely a modernist house. More precisely, a modernist reflection on the theme of a traditional wooden house. And Oleg Karlson does not like flat roofs, and quite rightly: for our climate, this technique (spied on by Le Corbusier while traveling in the Middle East) is not suitable, and making the right drainage system for him, especially if the house is small, is quite difficult.
The second house of the three described was built shortly after the first and not far from it; between the villages of Khlyupino and Zakharovo only some 10 kilometers in a straight line. Zakharovo is a famous place, here is the house of Pushkin's grandmother Maria Alekseevna Hannibal. Pushkin visited there as a child, which is why now several tourist routes pass through the former estate. The house, however, is not the same: in 1991 it was completely rebuilt. However, an old house or a new one, and Pushkin's house is the main attraction of Zakharov. So, when building a house for a customer in a village north-west of the Hannibal estate, Oleg Karlson used the same planning scheme, but stylized the house in the spirit of classicism.
Comparing this house with its predecessor from Khlyupin, it is easy to see that much has been done here exactly the opposite. The main façade does not recede or hide behind terraces; here it is a wall with a distinct center, firmly marked by a four-column portico with a triangular pediment. There is a terrace, but, as befits a classic manor house, it is located at the back and forms a park facade. There is also a veranda, but it is built into the opposite portico (all of its intercolumnia are glazed over the dacha "mesh").
Thus, if a modernist house moves away from the viewer into the courtyard, covering its retreat with balconies and terraces, then a classic one, on the contrary, moves forward, like a real Alexander general, greets everyone proudly and confidently. On the other hand, the plan of the house is not so centered: the cross is not readable in it and the squares are not so clearly visible; the plan is calm and simple, stretched longitudinally, as (again) and is supposed to be a manor house.
I must say that this stylization does not refer us directly to Pushkin's time. The house is not very much like the house of Hannibal, with its thick round columns and blind shutters; although there are quotes - for example, windows adjoining the upper sandriks directly to the cornices. In the house of Oleg Karlson you can see the "Pushkin" classics, and neoclassicism, and dachas of the early XX century, and in some ways even Stalin's sanatoriums. Plus quite a bit of Anglicism, which is inevitable in our time; fireplace and stairs in the living room, for example. The house does not have a rigid style attachment; it is rather a collective image of a Russian manor house. Relatively small and cozy. What is probably the main thing in it: peaceful calmness, a grid of sun glare inside the porch-veranda, which makes you remember something either about the Turgenev young ladies, or about the old cinema.
The third house was built even later in the park of the Modern Estate. This is a "Chinese house" for the daughter of the owners. Here, the centric theme of the plan is played out in full: five squares are folded on the plan into an equilateral cross, in the center there is a high two-height living room with an open hearth in the middle. A good place to sit by the fire, but under a roof (remember the house in Khlyupin, there was a similar solution, a place to sit on the terrace, but under glass). The house turns out to be built around the hearth - the theme is classic to archetypal. It is necessary, however, to make a reservation that the living room is somewhat wider than the central square, i.e. the outline of the plan is not too hard on the volume.
The fact that this is a Chinese house can be guessed at first glance: bright, surrounded by balconies with openwork wooden grids, with a massive roof curved at the corners; surrounded by a red Chinese bridge, gates and gazebo (all three have authentic prototypes) - the house from afar can be easily identified as "Chinese". However, the stylization "like China" in this case also does not strive for literalism: the author himself admits that they did not reproduce specific Chinese consoles, they made similar ones. Rather, we are dealing here with a kind of "Chinoiserie" or "Chinese". The fascination with oriental motives flourished in Europe in the 18th century, and in Russia at the end of this century it was also fashionable. The interiors were decorated in the Chinese style, park pavilions were built - and at the end of the 19th century on Myasnitskaya the architect Roman Klein (the one who built the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) built a tea shop with a very Chinese facade. The Chinese house in the Art Nouveau estate, built by Oleg Karlson - a typical manor chinoiserie, bright, recognizable, but deliberately inaccurate in details - after all, this is a "park idea", not a scholarly treatise. Therefore, it is especially appropriate in a "manor": the presence of a Chinese house makes her park complete.
Strictly speaking, looking at these houses from the outside, it is difficult to assume that their layouts are based on one module: one house merges with nature, another with provincial pride carries porticoes and pediments, the third is strung on the hearth and outside is all fiery red: fire-color, fire ornament. Houses are different not only stylistically (otherwise it would be possible to build the same houses and decorate them in different ways), stylistic differences penetrate deeply, change the essence of each house, leaving only the basics of a planned designer unchanged. And, what is important, the sensations of people entering these houses will be completely different. All of this is very much like an architectural study; but the houses are quite real, built and inhabited, although they are not alien to architectural reflections. In our time, which has given itself to the "concepts of multifunctional complexes", such an architectural practice seems to be some kind of very primordial, old-regime. And humanly correct, because no one's imagination in this case is divorced from reality: the architect will have to build, and the customer will have to live in the built house. It is even pleasant that in this process there is a place for architectural reflection on the essence of each of the reproduced styles.
