The residential complex with a small office part, a restaurant and a parking lot will be built on Beregovaya Street, between Voroshilovsky Prospect and Gazetny Lane. This is the very center of Rostov-on-Don, however, despite this location, there are not many attractions here. The steep bank of the Don, lined with three levels of streets, is built up quite chaotically - today its panorama is dominated by large red-brick houses of the 1990s-2000s, hardly capable of forming a high-quality and visually prosperous living environment. For many years on Beregovaya itself, outbuildings of the hangar type predominated, giving the embankment a frankly untidy look. To solve the problem of urban planning attractiveness of this part of the city, the new general plan of Rostov-on-Don is called upon, which, in particular, provides that on both sides of Voroshilovsky Avenue, starting from Beregovaya, dominant buildings should be built - a kind of propylaea, which will mark the entrance to the center and will set a new scale for the development of the embankment. The role of one of these complexes will be played by the Five Seas business center by the SPEECH Choban & Kuznetsov workshop, and a residential complex designed by Sergei Skuratov will grow on the other side of the avenue.
The architect recalls that the first acquaintance with the future building site and its immediate surroundings made a very depressing impression on him: “In fact, there was nothing to catch on to: in front of me I saw a steep, uncomfortable slope, into which multi-storey heaps of bricks were stuck here and there and private mansions of very rich people. " By the way, one of these cottages is located directly behind the proposed construction site of a new residential complex, and the authors of the project were politely warned from the very beginning that it should not lose the view of the river. The only "cultural" landmark was the monument to Maxim Gorky installed on the embankment - located opposite Gazetny Lane, descending to the Coastal staircase, it somehow organizes the space, and it was this antonymous pair - the monument and the cottage - that largely predetermined the composition of the residential complex.
The house consists of two towers mounted on a single stylobate. One skyscraper is located perpendicular to the embankment, the other seems to be half-turned to it - it is facing the mentioned monument and the square in front of it, and the gap between these volumes is just enough so that the private mansion does not feel cut off from the Don. At the same time, the tower, facing the embankment with a narrow end, is about a third higher than its neighbor - both in this very ratio of heights, and in the arrangement of volumes, in which one is visually perceived rather as a skyscraper, and the other as a "plate", is easily recognizable composition "Houses on Mosfilmovskaya". Skuratov himself readily admits this, adding, however, that by its architectural design, the complex, rather, grew out of the Barkli Plaza and Arsenal Palace projects. And on closer examination of the project, it is difficult to disagree with this.
What you pay attention to in the first place is the expressive sculpturality of both volumes. The ends of the high-rise buildings seem to be dented inward and are made up of separate segments cut into each other, and the main facades are "recruited" from windows with wide vertical slopes having different angles of inclination. Indeed, Skuratov already drew similar windows - both in the Arsenal project and in the house under construction at 11 Burdenko Street, but this time the architect alternates the openings so varied and dynamically that from afar the plane of the facade seems to be closed by vertical blinds, individual lamellas of which in a chaotic manner deployed in different directions. The facade of the three-storey stylobate is slightly more ordered in this sense - due to the more even arrangement of the "lamellas", it acquires a visually almost weightless lamellar structure. Adding visual lightness to the whole complex, the material chosen by Sergey Skuratov is a light natural stone, ideally matching the character of the "southern" architecture and demonstratively protesting against the dominance of red-brick buildings in this area of the city. The very combination of a house made of white stone and water, in which it is reflected, of course, cannot but remind of Barkli Plaza. The facades facing the city are also interestingly resolved. So, the end of the higher tower, overlooking Gazetny Lane, is sewn with large stitches of triangular bay windows - as if the deformation of the opposite end did not pass unnoticed for the volume - and the facade of the plate is decorated with microplastics, unambiguously resembling skin peeling off after sunburn.
However, even having borrowed some of the architectural elements from himself, Skuratov did not confine himself to compiling already tried techniques. Towers on Beregovaya are in closer and equal relations with each other than their prototypes with Mosfilmovskaya - they are faced with the same material, have a similar plastic and, instead of conducting an intense dialogue with each other, are united in opposition to the aggressive visual environment surrounding them. At the same time, the tower that fixes Gazetny Lane was deliberately lengthened - the architect wanted to strengthen its dominant role and built up the residential floors (brought up to the permitted level of 75 meters) with a high permeable "crown". The technical floor and the boiler room are hidden behind this structure, and the southern climate makes it as open and economical as possible. The plate, in turn, takes on tectonics - it slightly extends beyond the limits of the stylobate, and under the formed console the authors place the entrance to the residential complex with a narrow two-height vestibule. The second entrance lobby is located on the side of the stairs, and the entrance to the underground parking (the difference of 10 meters on the site made it possible to provide all future apartments with a sufficient number of parking spaces) is marked by a brutal rectangular portal that decisively pushed the "lamellas" of the stylobate facade. In addition to parking, this part of the complex houses offices, a cafe and a restaurant, and Sergey Skuratov proposes to place a recreation area with a full-fledged park on the green roof of the stylobate.
In the panorama of the embankment and the entire city center, the new residential complex will dominate not only due to its height. Thanks to the light shade of the stone, which is not very characteristic of modern Rostov-on-Don, and Skuratov's signature minimalist plastics, the volumes are likened to sculptures that can change their appearance depending on the lighting and time of day.
