Archi.ru has already written about the previous competition for the development of Bolotnaya Embankment. And if, as part of that competition, the architects were engaged in the possible future of sites under cadastral numbers 16E and 17F, now their attention was focused on sites 18-20G. As in the previous case, they had to design a residential complex of the highest class, providing the apartments with the best views of the water surface and the city center. In many ways, the technical tasks were also similar: for example, in both cases the architects were not supposed to design the underground part, since the entire development of the territory of the former "Red October" will have a single parking lot. But there was one fundamental difference in the initial data: the urban development concept of the island, developed in the early 2000s by Mosproekt-2, provided that in the first case, residential buildings should stand along the embankment, and in the second - perpendicular to it. The reason is very simple - the existing brick house on site 19G, standing in this way, needs to be preserved, and the city planners decided that the two new volumes would be easiest to place in the same way. The developer, in turn, was embarrassed by this, and in many respects it was from the desire to somehow change the imposed composition that this competition was born. Workshop "SK and P" also disagreed with the idea of perpendiculars and made proposals for the development of not only this territory, but also the adjacent one.
“Having carefully analyzed the situational plan and development prospects of the neighboring territory, we came to the conclusion that if we build three perpendiculars on this site, the building that will ever be erected next door will adjoin them closely,” says the chief architect of the project, Andrey Nikiforov. “However, not only this confused us: the border drawn between the sites, in general, seems very conditional and urban planning unreasonable, and the existing historical building is actually more suitable for marking a pause in the rhythm of development than for reproducing perpendiculars to the embankment.” So instead of three long buildings facing Bolotnaya with their ends, AM SK and P LLC proposed a complex composition of the complex, likening it to a quarter, the building density of which is thinning and melting as it approaches the arrow.
Between Bersenevsky lane and the preserved building, the architects inscribe a sectional residential building, in the plan resembling the letter N. Its right "stick", passing along the red line of the lane, is more elongated, due to which the house has its own green courtyard, and in the "lintel" there is a through lobby opened to the river. With its left side, this house faces the existing industrial space, which the architects are reconstructing for a loft-style housing. The preserved building, due to its location, does not have its own courtyard, and the architects compensate for this shortcoming with the help of a wide and bright gallery, built exactly between the existing residential building and the projected one.
Separately, it should be said about the architecture of these volumes. The preserved building has a recognizable factory look - massive red-brick walls, high windows, laconic decor of the facades - which the architects carefully preserve. The new volume is also supposed to be faced with brick: according to the authors of the project, the existing buildings on the island are so dominant that it is very difficult to resist this influence and, by and large, it is pointless. In addition, the unity of the material can turn the arrow into a complete ensemble, of which, frankly, there are not so many in modern Moscow … Another thing is that the brick in the hands of the architects of this century is not at all obliged to reproduce the masonry and the rhythm of industrial volumes of the past, therefore Nikiforov weaves white limestone in a red linen, and gives the house an emphatically contrasting shape: the walls in the plan are not at right angles, on the planes of the facades "folds" are clearly visible, and the eaves of the roofs are not horizontal. As a result, the house makes an amazing impression: it is a massive volume, assembled of stone and brick, but the windows, whose height noticeably increases towards the top floor, the "bent" walls and the roof, imperceptibly passing into the facade, make it visually almost weightless and very responsive to changes environment.
As already mentioned, the preserved building was interpreted by the architects as a harbinger of a small pause in the rhythm of the embankment development - a narrow brick end marks the border between a high-density urbanized environment and a sparse quarter of low-rise buildings. And if the new sectional house and the loft building, thanks to the attached gallery and the fully glazed “interlayer” of the lobby, seem, if not a single whole, then forever, a complex urban organism that has grown together, then low-rise buildings are more like a suburban or park. There are both club houses for several apartments and mansions for one family: two houses are located within the boundaries of the 20G plot, and four more architects have placed on the adjacent plot. The number of storeys of mansions decreases as you approach the arrow, they are separated from each other by small courtyards and a pedestrian street running parallel to the embankment. True, the project envisages that this will be a purely internal, "private" street for these six houses (it is from this street that the entrances to the mansions are organized). But the architects plan to make the "gap" between them and the sectional houses public: in their opinion, one more exit to the embankment in this part of the island is simply necessary.
According to its architectural design, the low-rise part of the residential complex has much in common with the corner sectional building. The roof here also functions as a full-fledged facade, its ridge in the plan is not parallel to the walls, and the width of the windows varies depending on the value of the views that open from them. The basement of all houses is lined with white stone, and then this material scatters along the facades in random order, diluting and shading the density of the red brick. Thanks to this solution, the new volumes, although instantly recognized as buildings of our time, are perceived as flesh and blood of the "Red October". And the different heights of the houses that are part of the residential complex, and the multiple "shifts" of their roofs give the embankment building a very dynamic silhouette, somewhat similar to the ECG diagram: the even and confident "pulse" of the created environment becomes more frequent as it approaches the Patriarchal Bridge and, on the contrary, it gradually dies down where the urban planning fabric gives way to landscaping and water.
