In the studio "Architectural Dialogue with Megapolis" they are not too willing to take on redevelopment projects, preferring objects "from scratch". But the work on the Atmosphere business quarter made the architects change their views on such projects. “When you start redevelopment, you always face a huge number of problems and limitations: difficulties with engineering, poor quality measurements, etc. - says Andrey Romanov - But in Moscow there are quite a few quarters designed at the beginning of the 20th century by architects with an excellent "school". We tried to renovate one such cluster, revealing all its advantages. The task turned out to be fantastically interesting."
The project envisaged the redevelopment of the former Salyut weaving factory and the Reklamfilm association on Palikha Street into a small modern business quarter (total area of about 21,000 sq.m.). The architects inherited several multi-style buildings of the early twentieth century with a height of 2-3 floors and a five-story building from about the 1970s. However, despite the fact that none of the buildings is of absolutely no historical value, the architects treated them with utmost care.
“We immediately noticed the curious courtyard system that connects all the buildings. However, due to the numerous late additions, it was practically not readable,”continues Andrei Romanov. It was around these courtyards that the concept of the future complex was built.
The architects insisted on banning the entry of cars into the territory (a parking lot for 144 cars was organized outside the courtyards). And all this interior space was decided according to chamber, almost interior laws. Indeed, the three courtyards in the ADM project resemble cozy squares in historic European cities. Firstly, because they are completely covered with a neat stone pavement of red and white granite tiles. Secondly - because of the elements of greenery: lawns and trees, framed like jewels in the neat frames of benches in the form of white polished concrete disks - they will look very impressive even in winter. The program was continued by living trees and benches made according to the author's sketches.
It is a stone urban world, inside of which, like in a museum, small inclusions of nature are carefully maintained. Not simple, of which there are many in Moscow: shaggy, sick and trampled, but thoroughbred and well-groomed; decorative grass, stem to stem, plus a little thoughtful negligence, a ring of selected rubble and a ring of a bench around. Leaving the office to "breathe", the computer-irradiated white collars will sit on round benches and thus find themselves right next to the oxygen source.
The design, proposed by the architects of ADM, is in every possible way determined to overcome the boredom of the angular rectangular spaces of each courtyard. The pavement pattern is cut with several diagonals, which slightly confuse the sense of perspective and create the illusion of a slight relief. All other shapes - from lawns within benches to sewer hatches - are round. The shape of a circle, as everyone knows, is streamlined and sculptural, since it has no corners - it "dwells" in space, without dividing it or delimiting it. So, round lawns-benches with their ecological content are immediately perceived by the viewer as art objects. And the space of the courtyards turns out to be solid, but not boring. And somehow it (very distantly, of course) resembles Venetian courtyards with the capitals of San Marco in the middle of a solid stone pavement.
Buildings of the 19th century, as a rule, had a basement floor; it also exists here, and over the past one and a half years, the lower tier has thoroughly grown into the ground, and the surface of the courtyards will be located flush with the first floor. The entire "cultural layer" in front of the basement floor will be completely cleaned out, and then - covered with a layer of stone tiles, into which the architects have built in strips of evening illumination of the facades. The dotted line of the backlight will form something like a "wall of light" around the perimeter in front of the facades; individual spots of light will fall in the center on round lawns, which will also receive additional illumination rings at the bottom. The picture of evening comfort will be complemented by small, star-like (or firefly) lanterns among the grass lawns. Both in the afternoon and in the evening, a friendly and comfortable atmosphere will be formed here, strikingly different from the Moscow street one, which surprisingly coincides with the official name of the office center.
This, the first layer of design and improvement could be called spatial and plastic. The second layer is color. It was decided not to hide the internal facades of buildings of the 19th century behind modern cladding, but to keep them in their original form, covering them with light gray, almost white plaster. On this neutral backdrop, the architects applied bright spots of silk-screened stained glass. Thus, the entrances to different parts of the business quarter will be marked with huge, 3.5 x 2 meters, backlit glass panels of different colors, on which giant numbers will be applied - the numbers of the entrances. Each block is marked with its own color and, together with the numbers, this "coding system" should help the visitors of the office center to find their way. When inviting visitors, employees will be able to say that their entrance is, for example, "fourth green" or "fifth orange". The arches of the aisles between the courtyards will also be trimmed with silk-screened glass and illuminated.
The most problematic for the architects was the 5-storey building of the Soviet era, which, moreover, should become the main facade of the complex. First of all, it was decided to pay special attention to the windows, each of them was divided into two parts with a thin light lintel. Instead of heavy squat squares, thin glass verticals turned out, in the lower part covered with striped glass inserts. Pieces of glass, suspended outside the frames on point mountings, look especially impressive, and their striped pattern echoes the ribbed ceramics of the walls. It is almost impossible to recognize the former building: its facades from inert-massive turned into a light, albeit strict grid with a very thin black-and-white cut.
It is quite obvious that the main character of the architecture of this business quarter has become - in unison with the official name - the atmosphere. The design of the urban mini-landscape here becomes part of the architecture, creating a kind of transition zone between the main entrance and the office door, a space endowed with contemplative properties and allowing you to enjoy the nuances without delving into the mechanics of their construction. By the way, the architects have preserved here, inside a string of courtyards, the old walls, but in no way the historical environment. On the contrary, the buildings will be immersed in a completely different environment, very modern, albeit imperceptible, like a weak wind that will stir the stalks of selected blades of grass on the lawns of Atmosfera. This is by no means a Moscow courtyard. Rather, it is a European recipe, quite obvious in the context of Western experience, but for Russia so far it is extremely rare.
