The site allocated for the construction of a residential complex has the address "Savvinskaya, 17". Today, a four-storey house is located at this place, facing the embankment with a shabby end. When looking at the map, it seems that this is actually a side wing of the nearby Stalinist house, oriented along the Moskva River, but in reality there is a modest gap between them. In addition, building No. 17 is noticeably lower than its closest neighbors, so when moving along the embankment or, say, from the water, while walking on a motor ship, this place is visually perceived as a failure, an indistinct patch on the river facade of the city. Another thing is that the Savvinskaya embankment, in principle, cannot boast of its existing architectural appearance: historically, it was built up with factories and factories, which now, for the most part, no longer function and are tightened with a construction grid. The city and investors are jointly trying to rectify the situation: several sites are being prepared for reconstruction at once, and architectural competitions are being held for their development projects. About one of them - for the project of a residential complex on the site of the former spinning and weaving production "Gardtex" Archi.ru already told Archi.ru (however, the results of this competition were never summed up, and the order went to the bureau, which did not participate in it), the second, in which the proposal of TPO "Reserve" was recognized as the best, will be discussed now.
So, the participants of the competition had to enter a residential complex with a larger area and number of storeys in place of the existing house, while providing the apartments with views of the river and not spoiling the insolation of neighboring buildings (office and residential). However, this, of course, is not all: the main architectural task was to solve the "facade problem" - the existing dull end had to be replaced by an equally narrow in width, but much more expressive in appearance, making the facade overlooking the river the hallmark of the new complex.
First, the architects of TPO "Reserve" drew a dense rectangular volume on the site of the demolished house. It is clear that it is this form that is capable of giving the maximum output of areas, which always impresses customers so much. However, the parallelepiped also had dark sides, and in the most literal sense: most of the apartments in such a building would not receive enough sunlight and would not even dream of views of the river. Therefore, the architects divided the original "block" into four equal parts and began to shift them relative to each other in such a way that each next one would be slightly to the right of the previous one. The existing rather strong relief difference turned out to be very handy: moving each next "cube" to the right, Plotkin simultaneously raises it one floor higher, so that in the end the complex is a kind of diagonally oriented staircase.
In such a situation, the idea of two-level apartments on the upper floors with exits to landscaped terraces on the roofs of lower buildings, of course, suggested itself. However, the architects did not limit themselves to the green "steps" of the roofs, but included plantings in the complex and on the ground floor level. In fact, the house is “embraced” from all sides by new squares, and in order to increase their area, the authors narrow the building area as much as possible: on the first floor of the complex there are only the entrance lobby, two elevator halls and a gallery corridor connecting them, and the residential floors hang over him like a console.
Since each of the four blocks has one apartment per floor, two elevators for the entire complex are more than enough: they inevitably “eat up” some area, and due to this, several types of apartments appear in the house - a smaller three-ruble note (183 sq. M.) And a larger three-ruble note (almost 200 sq.m.), as well as 4 duplex apartments. Under the house there is an underground parking, which also has two levels and inherited its practical rectangular shape from the original parallelepiped, thanks to which it can accommodate 62 cars (by the way, this turns out to be an almost fantastic coefficient for the center of Moscow of 2.5 cars per apartment).
The building directly overlooking the embankment has only six floors. True, these are high floors that fully meet modern requirements for elite housing, therefore, with the seven-story "Stalinist" building located next to it, there is a new volume of the same growth. The projected complex responds to the close proximity with a wide strip of cornice: in the higher blocks shifted into the depth of the site, it is also present, playing the role of a canopy over the terrace for two-level apartments.
The diagonal, which determined the composition of the entire complex, plays a key role in the design of its facades. The one that faces the river seems to be shaded with windows of different widths, and from this, on the one hand, the laconic, and on the other, completely self-sufficient pattern, other buildings do not distract - the places of displacement are simply glazed, as they are "traps" of views and light. Side facades are a completely different matter. By definition, they are long and from many angles even more noticeable than the one that goes directly to the embankment, they are resolved as textured as possible. Since there are four blocks in total, Vladimir Plotkin uses the principle of "pay for the first, second," in their design, creating a cheerful roll call on Savvinskaya. The first and third houses are wooden, the second and fourth are stone, and each pair has a light volume and a dark one. At the same time, the stone facades are decorated with through ornamental reliefs, in all their glory, demonstrating the sophistication and nobility of this material, and the wooden ones, on the contrary, are assembled from overlapping slabs, whose active tectonics perfectly matches the responsive nature of the tree. Together, the facades create an extremely colorful and memorable architectural appearance that enlivens the development of the embankment and at the same time does not conflict with their so different neighbors.
