Danilovskaya Manufactura is located at the Third Ring Road between Varshavskoye Shosse and Novodanilovskaya Embankment. The textile empire was founded in 1867 by the merchant of the 1st guild, Vasily Meshcherin, and by the beginning of the 20th century it had grown so much that it occupied an area with a total area of about 8 hectares. In Soviet times, the factory was named after Mikhail Frunze and remained “the largest advanced enterprise in Moscow,” but the free competition of the 1990s, alas, put an end to the success of this production. In the 1990s, the premises of the factory were gradually converted into retail space - in particular, it was here that the so-called. "Fair on Tulskaya", where buyers from all over the capital came to buy school textbooks and children's clothes. Over the past few years, Danilovskaya Manufactory has been gradually transforming into an office loft - its entire territory is being reconstructed into business centers, commercial spaces and apartments, the projects of which have been developed by different bureaus. The main task that the project developer KR Properties set for the architects of the City-Arch workshop was to preserve the historical appearance of industrial buildings and that special factory flavor that perfectly conveys the loft style.
The creative team of the City-Arch architectural and design studio under the leadership of Valery Lukomsky developed a project for the reconstruction of four central buildings of the former production workshops of the Danilovskaya Manufactory. The buildings are located in the depths of the development and are not visible either from the side of the embankment or from the side of the highway, but this did not in any way facilitate the task facing the architects. As Anton Lukomsky, the project's architect, admits: “While recreating the historical facades of industrial architecture objects, we constantly thought about how they are perceived from nearby viewpoints, what kind of atmosphere they create around us, and this made us very carefully study the architecture of buildings to the smallest detail”.
The business complex being created between Varshavskoye Shosse and Novodanilovskaya Embankment is called the "loft-quarter", and the main point of the technical task was to preserve the brutal aesthetics of red brick. “It should be emphasized that usually the redevelopment of old industrial sites is carried out if the building is in good condition and its structures do not require major changes, but the buildings with which we had to work are exactly the opposite case. Bricks could be easily removed from many walls. Therefore, where it was possible, we strengthened the structures, but some of the buildings were actually rebuilt - keeping the original "workshop" layout, the size and shape of the window openings and the pattern of the facades,”says Anton Lukomsky.
However, the first thing that the architects had to start with was scrupulous clearing of the original architecture of buildings from later "layers" - Soviet-era buildings and numerous "birdhouses" that arose during the existence of the market here. The formation of the buildings itself was in favor of the emergence of additional volumes: three of them are attached to each other close to each other and in the plan form an inverted letter P, the fourth building is located parallel to the horizontal "crossbar", with a slight indentation from it - and in the first years of new commerce and the courtyard, and the passage between the "short" buildings were almost completely built up with temporary huts. After they were dismantled, all paint and plaster were removed from the buildings, and broken bricks were removed from the exposed masonry. By the way, all the new bricks used here were specially "aged" - they were cleaned and sandblasted, which made it possible to achieve similarities in texture and color with the brick of the late 19th century. The buildings are interconnected by covered galleries-passages thrown between the buildings at the level of the first and second floors, but the courtyard, which in the last 20 years served as a spontaneous warehouse, has now been landscaped and turned into a space for relaxation and informal communication.
Initially, two- and three-storey buildings designed by the architects of the City-Arch workshop are being built on with an attic floor. “While working on the object, the function of the premises changed several times. At first it was planned that all buildings would have only offices, then one of them had apartments, and now they are in all buildings, and they occupy the upper floors, including the attic,”explains Anton Lukomsky. Almost all staircases are placed on the facades - enclosed in spectacular boxes made of glass and metal, they not only save the usable area of buildings, but also favorably emphasize the brutality of the dominant material - brick. The architects also develop the aesthetics of the style set by the developer with the help of such elements as open metal structures (in particular, wide channels) and a massive glass canopy. The belts of figured masonry have also been recreated anew, revitalizing an extended array of unplastered walls.
The interiors of future offices and apartments also fully correspond to the loft style. All rooms are dominated by high vaulted ceilings and walls made of treated bricks, columns are made of cast iron and concrete, mezzanines are finished with natural wood and black metal. The industrial past of the workshops, turned into comfortable offices and apartments, is also reminiscent of the open wiring of utilities and impressive fireplaces.
