The project of a residential building on Staroalekseevskaya Street, possession 5, developed by ADM, fully complies with the stated principles. This object, as often happens in Moscow, with its own complicated history. Gazprombank OJSC and Vysota LLC acquired a relatively small plot, for which a town justification has already been made. The preliminary design significantly exceeded the size of the site: in order to increase the "capacity" of the future building, its depth was brought to an almost incredible 24 meters. The result was large, elongated apartments with low natural light. It is obvious that it would not be easy to sell such housing in the current conditions. And the customers turned to the ADM workshop, setting the task to improve the quality of the premises, while maintaining the number of storeys and the total footage. Obviously, this was not an easy task.
The architects retained the great thickness of the building, and even slightly increased it, but “cut through” giant niches in the long, broken facade, thus illuminating the interior spaces. They are staggered on both sides, so that almost every apartment has windows into such a niche. But paradoxical as it may sound, additional daylight is probably not the most important purpose of these grooves. “It is obvious that in low-rise buildings a person feels more comfortable, cozy and calm than in a high-rise. Trees, a small courtyard, pedestrians - everything is close and proportionate to a person. But many also appreciate the spectacular urban landscapes that open up from the upper floors. - says Andrei Romanov, head of the ADM workshop - So we tried to combine in different experiences of the environment. The niches, each four stories high, turned into cozy furnished courtyards with real trees, protected from wind, rain and snow by glass screens. In these courtyards you can sit, chat with guests or neighbors, and even leave the stroller with peace of mind or let the children out for a walk - after all, they will always be in front of your eyes and will not run away anywhere. They are mainly looked at by the kitchen windows, as well as by the elevator hall. The windows of the living rooms open up to the industrial landscapes of the surrounding area.
Each such courtyard has 16 apartments. And this common territory for a small group of people returns the already forgotten, much closer level of interaction with neighbors and the environment in general. People cease to feel themselves in a giant anthill, and new social communities are gradually being formed. And finally, as already mentioned, the plot is small, and the total area of the house with a three-level underground parking for 1346 cars is 112810 sq. M. There was practically no room left for the ennobled local area, so the niche courtyards helped to solve this problem as well.
The most surprising thing is that the architects managed not to lose a single square meter of the area - solely due to the competent planning and effective layout of the premises. Whereas in the original project the stairs faced the façade, further restricting the access of natural light to the apartments, now all the stairs, elevator halls and all technical rooms have been removed to the "dark" zone.
The long body of the house is bent in a zigzag manner to ensure optimal insolation in all apartments. “Built-in” niche-courtyards look like giant windows on this broken plane; so that their rectangular cutouts were not too boring and did not press with the scale, the architects proposed to cover the walls of the nearest apartments with green glass, slightly drowning them into the plane of the wall. At night, when the owners of the apartments turn on the light, the glass inserts will glow from the inside. During the day they will look like small houses in front of their courtyards - so in this case the architects did not “gnaw” the checkered mass of the house with holes (as Stephen Hall did in the famous Massachusetts dormitory), but “encrusted” the giant apartment building with pieces of the city with a human scale, borrowed from the ideals of "new urbanism".
Separately, it should be said about the green color: fresh spring, light green and bright, it sets a light, optimistic tone for the whole building. Not only will the inserts of glass "pseudo-houses" be green, but also the ends of the house, and the grilles for air conditioners, in many cases asymmetrically scattered along the facades (it is expensive and pointless to carry out central air conditioning in such a house).
But the main thing in this project is not the freshness of the color and the easy grace of the plastic. The main thing is that a type of residential building is completely unusual for the Russian mentality - a small social upheaval, if you like. After all, this is not even an elite house, there is no natural stone or other expensive materials and solutions here. And the apartments are not too large (one-room a little less than 50 sq.m, three-room apartments about 100 sq.m.) I must say that even 5 years ago, the customer would hardly have appreciated such a project, the priorities were completely different. And this object has already passed all the approvals, the project documentation is being carried out and construction should begin by the end of the year. It seems that gradually, by the method of compromises and inventions, Moscow apartment life begins to evolve in a direction that is pleasant for a person. In any case, this project must be recognized as not just elegant, but also probably a commercially profitable solution to the problem of investors - and done exclusively by architectural means. The project went beyond the proposed puzzle about square meters in the direction of changing the quality of life.
