TOTEMENT / PAPER was invited to participate in this project in the summer of 2010. In words, the customer's task sounded quite simple: to add several new buildings to the buildings already existing on the site. However, having carefully studied both the house itself and its immediate surroundings, the architects came to the conclusion that they had a very difficult and non-trivial work ahead of them. Firstly, by that time, the territory of the house had already undergone several changes and additions that were not provided for by the original project - for example, a summer kitchen with a platform under an awning and a guest house appeared. Secondly, the very original style was completely alien to the architects. “In addition, to develop this architectural idea further meant to completely lose at least some consistency of buildings on the site and overload it with masses of buildings,” recall the architects. - Therefore, we decided to create something completely different, contrasting with everything that stands not only on this site, but also in the village. Our main task was to give the house a new quality and a new scale by implanting into it “someone else’s flesh” capable of resisting the surrounding architectural reality”.
At the same time, from the point of view of function, the task assigned to the architects was quite simple. The customer's family grew and needed new premises, in particular, a recreation area for adults and a spacious playroom for children. However, there were also pitfalls here: for example, the architects had to find the areas for both new zones outside - they could not interfere with the layout of the house. And if the place of "adult" rest was asked to be accommodated on the existing terrace above the pool, then I had to sweat a lot to find the optimal placement for the children's room. “Since there were no more vacant areas either inside or adjacent to the house, we decided to reconstruct the guest house located to the north-west of the main one, adding one more floor and connecting it with the main house with a warm passage,” the authors of the project explain.
The "adult" block is designed as a glass volume that merges with the environment as much as possible and provides vacationers with panoramic views of the site and its surroundings. It is divided into two glass parallelepipeds with sloping walls offset from the axis of symmetry of the existing house. In the left half there is a "female" living room, in the right half - a "male" one. The parts, formally solved in the same way, have subtle gender characteristics in their architecture: for example, the “female” is made more plastically and makes a smooth slope towards the “male”, and that, in turn, boldly hangs over the pool and reflects the children's block. Both parts are connected by a dynamic wooden canopy that disguises the fresh air intake system.
The children's block, in contrast to the adult, is made practically deaf - in this volume, which has a complex shape of a five-pointed flywheel, there are only a few "notches" of windows and a skylight in the roof. Aluminum was chosen as the main facing material, ideally withstanding all the whims of the Moscow region weather and just as ideal for applying "war paint". In this case, the role of the latter is played by a dynamic drawing, which from a close distance "destroys" or "blurs" the plane and, of course, completely modifies the guest house. “We tried to get the most dynamic directional, but unfinished form, as if“made”by a child. This volume is connected with the main house by a kind of "umbilical cord" - a transition that is held on one point of support - it develops and looks into the "future", letting in the warm southwestern sun through long horizontal slits of windows and a lantern ", - the architects explain their idea … And if the adult rooms are furnished extremely rationally and stylishly, as if even a little for show, given their completely transparent walls, then the children's block from the inside is a kind of graphite white-gray-black chest that changes depending on the time of day and the position of the sun. The internal planes are inclined here, and the volumes have such an intricate configuration that it seems as if they are in constant motion, not yet finding their final position and working as a background for their "content" - children, their super-movable shadows and numerous toys.
The game of "complete" and "empty" is the main spatial compositional idea of this house. Another important component of the architectural image of this object is the connection of times. The existing house serves as a kind of reference point, from which the vectors of the past (block for adults) and the future (children's zone) scatter in different directions: and if the past is transparent, since it has already happened and strives for absence, dissolution, then the future, on the contrary, while does not have a definite form, is in a phase of active development, which is so vividly conveys its super-dynamic architectural solution.
A kind of bridge between the two new volumes is a panel made of black and white stones on the roof of a glass extension and depicting a labyrinth. This "tattoo", as the architects themselves call it, visually continues the theme of the spotted children's block, however, this connection can be found only when viewed from the upper floors of the house - such a tiny architectural secret that testifies that the TOTEMENT / PAPER reconstruction changed this building forever …
