Vladislav Platonov was invited to participate in the project in order to increase the area of the cottage already on the site. The owners started its reconstruction after the children appeared in the family, and the former square became noticeably crowded. In order not to rebuild the cottage several times, the hostess immediately set a maximum task for the architect: to increase the area of the available volume by three times. Probably, in any other village, such an operation would have gone like clockwork, but strict urban planning regulations are in force on the territory of Sokol, so Platonov had to pretty much break his head over how to "increase" the desired meters as tactfully as possible in relation to the existing environment.
First of all, Vladislav Platonov immediately set two directions for the development of the existing volume: a garage with a living room on the second floor was attached to the house, and the gable roof was raised to high rafters. At the same time, the latter retained the same angle of inclination of the slopes - the architect deliberately did not "stretch" the rafters for the entire increased volume, so that the grown house retains its former silhouette and does not look like a giant among midgets in the village.
Thus, the reconstructed house is likened to a combination of several disparate elements: this is the main living space, which the architect tiled with black stone, the garage, which is painted white, and the high pyramid of the roof with acute-angled transparent gables. At first glance, this combination seems to have developed quite arbitrarily, by chance, and such a “non-binding” composition gives a rather large volume of visual lightness and dynamism. However, studying the house more closely, you quickly discover many small architectural details, which, like imperceptible stitches of a skilled tailor, tie the disparate elements into a single canvas. This is a pergola over the exploited roof of the white volume, and an elegant "constructivist" balcony, and a narrow glass "lintel" between two parallelepipeds, and a thin inclined support made of black metal.
The play of materials declared on the facades is fully realized in the interior of the house. In the entrance area, a light wooden floor is combined with black walls, laid with the same stone tiles as the outer walls, and the image of the living room is built on the interpenetration of black and white planes, revealing the traditional antithesis of "yin and yang" in completely unexpected from the point of view of plasticity and geometry combinations. The living space of the second floor is also divided into “white” (children's) and “black” (adult) halves, and the border between them is a narrow corridor with a dark ceiling and a light floor - it opens onto the facade with the very same glass vertical “lintel”.
However, the architect develops the theme of the interpenetration of external and internal not only with the help of a dialogue between white and black. For example, a platform-terrace is attached to the house: it is made in the Japanese style, and the interiors of the parents' bedroom are also decorated in it. And if below the architect limited himself to the use of characteristic lattice partitions, then on the second floor the atmosphere of a Japanese house was recreated by him with amazing accuracy and completeness. Particularly striking here are the mat covering the floor and partially merging with the walls, and the curved corrugated sheets that decorate the walls and ceiling. Vladislav Platonov himself admits that with the help of such plastic compositions he tried to emphasize the intimacy and isolation of the bedroom space, to turn it into a kind of cocoon, cozy and safe.
But perhaps the most interesting space in this house was the attic, the area of which doubled during the reconstruction. Highly raised rafters, glazed openings between them and large windows at the ends made this room more than bright and spacious, but it was necessary to find a place for a shower and a bathroom in it. The architect did not want to “split up” the resulting space, filled with light, with any partitions, so he suggested to the customers … to provide one more level. And in order to keep the attic floor as bright, the floor of the fourth floor was made of glass. The transparent panels were laid on massive cross-beams, the required plumbing cabins were surrounded by frosted glass walls, and the stairs leading upward were made as transparent and light as possible: black wooden blocks strung on thin metal rods seem to be suspended in the air.
The main distinguishing feature of this house is the highest quality of elaboration of the architectural image as a whole and of all details, down to the smallest, which make up both the interior and the facades. Let us emphasize that such a thoroughness of the architect begins long before the implementation of the project: Vladislav Platonov himself develops all the units and elements of the interior of his houses, manually makes all the drawings, and then strictly monitors the selection of materials and the course of construction and finishing work. Such "handmade houses" were something taken for granted for the era of craftsmen and artels, but today they are perceived as an exception to the rule, and it is all the more surprising that one of these happy exceptions is located practically in the very center of Moscow.
