Just by the name alone - Lev Tolstoy Street - it is clear that we are talking about the very center of Moscow, and, accordingly, about the highest class housing. The site for its construction was found on the territory of the former brewery, and the spectacular building of the 19th century brewery will be included in the new complex. In general, the neighbors of the future residential quarter are very different - the building site located at the intersection of Tolstoy and Rossolimo streets, on the one hand, borders on the estate of Leo Tolstoy, on the other - with the Research Institute of Eye Diseases. And if the proximity to the manor park contributed to the emergence of additional "air" in the structure of the complex, then, on the contrary, it is turned to the hospital by completely deaf ends and a high fence. However, first things first.
In total, the complex will include 7 buildings, including the already mentioned brewery. At the same time, since along Rossolimo and Lev Tolstoy two extended buildings of the Experimental Drinks Factory and the former factory building remain, the presence of new volumes on both streets is minimized. The residential complex will actually be connected with Rossolimo only by the entrance route, and two low-rise buildings are looking at Leo Tolstoy, as if flanking the preserved building. One of them is a corner one, and precisely because of its location at a busy intersection, it loses its residential function - here the authors of the project propose to place shops and a gallery. The second volume, "breaking through" the existing development, is already a part of a residential building, in terms of resembling the letter "G", whose long side is hidden in the depths of the block.
Visually, this extended volume on the second line is divided into several parts, which the architects emphasized with the help of different storeys and fundamentally different facades, but in terms of urban planning its length is more than justified - the house separates the public pedestrian zone from the private spaces of the courtyards. It is no coincidence that on the first floor of this building there are mainly shops and cafes, while the lower levels of the volumes hidden behind it are occupied by housing - entrance lobbies and apartments with separate entrances.
There are four residential buildings behind the multi-part building. All of them are set perpendicular to the volume that protects them from the factory building, and accordingly face the Tolstoy estate. The red-brick building of the brewery serves as a kind of border between the territory of the cultural monument and the new residential quarter - as one approaches it, the number of storeys of buildings gradually decreases. It also largely predetermined the palette of the future complex. “At first we made all the volumes in brick, playing with the ability of this material to create a wide variety of textures,” recalls the chief architect of the project, Alexei Medvedev, “but a more thorough analysis convinced us that such a decision threatened to make the complex too heavy, so we introduced its decoration is light limestone”.
The authors add each volume of two "halves" - white and red, and their order changes from house to house, due to which each courtyard acquires an individual appearance. Considering that the width of the courtyards is only 20 meters (the building density was initially set as high as possible), it becomes clear how important this is for the spaces being created. And in order to further saturate their visual environment, architects give each facade a pronounced texture: the laying of brick and stone is constantly changing, and these materials themselves seem to grow into each other.
The five-storey building, located closest to the brewery, is solved a little differently: here the central red-brick volume seems to be embraced by two white-stone wings. Such an allusion to the classicistic composition can be considered a tribute to the neighborhood of the estate, and the very location of this house practically on the corner pushed the architects to create a kindergarten in it. The retreat from the former brewery turned out to be very handy - the playground of the preschool institution will be located here. As for the historic building itself, its function will change - a fitness club will be organized here. At first, they were going to create a beer museum or a beer restaurant in the former brewery, but neither the kindergarten nor the elite housing in general needed such a neighborhood.
And if from the side of the estate of the great writer a brutal brick building with a chimney and superimposed red-and-white planes of the facades of new buildings will become the hallmark of the projected complex, then its “envoy” on Leo Tolstoy Street itself, of course, will be the angular volume of the gallery. In fact, the architects could give it any dynamic shape they wanted, but they remained true to the spirit of the place here too - in terms of the building the building repeats the original boundaries of the territory, and its main facade seems to be bent in several places. These broken ledges are accentuated by fluffy brickwork and larger, deeply sloped window openings. Thanks to such an active and expressive reaction of the facade to its immediate surroundings, the building promises to become an integral part of the existing intersection.
