Recall that one of the features of the site on which the Moscow Cardboard and Printing Plant is now located is its location: if you look on the map, Paveletskaya Embankment is practically the center of the city, but if you try to get to it by public transport or on foot, it will quickly become clear that the place this is by no means the most affordable. Communication with the nearest metro stations ("Tulskaya" or "Paveletskaya") is greatly hampered by the Paveletskaya railroad running behind the embankment, and this geographical incident predetermined the relatively low class of the designed housing. The new district will be designed primarily for young people, so the architects initially included a large number of social infrastructure facilities in its composition. Over the past year, the concept of the residential complex has finally crystallized: the number of storeys of housing has decreased, the building density has increased slightly, all the necessary accompanying functions are organically woven into the living fabric, and the architects used the existing factory buildings to place them. And if in the initial version of the pre-project proposal industrial objects were included in the complex as a single unit, now the red-brick architecture "with history" is fully present in the appearance of the district.
“In our competition project, the theme of reconstruction of factory competitions was only announced, but now we are giving specific proposals for their preservation and re-profiling, made on the basis of measurements and a refined functional program,” explains Sergey Skuratov. So, the central building of the factory is planned to be turned into a cafe and an exhibition hall - this two-story volume, which the architects build on with a transparent attic and covered with a brutal gable roof made of ferrous metal, will be located in the middle of an artificial pond. The reservoir itself, in turn, is surrounded by a brick-paved square and serves as the starting point for the axis of the central pedestrian boulevard. This “recreation” (pond, square, boulevard), composed of several spatial elements, is conceived as the central core of the entire composition of the complex, around which the main volumes are built. Another pedestrian artery connects the square and Paveletskaya embankment - along it there are several factory buildings at once, which are proposed to be converted into a cultural and social center. And so that the complex does not visually disintegrate into two stylistically absolutely dissimilar parts (you go to the left of the pond - you get to the factory, you go to the right - you will find yourself among the glass), the architects support the theme of the wash with several new volumes made of clinker bricks.
Some of them are attached to existing factory buildings, while others, on the contrary, are closely adjacent to modern houses, forming an interesting stylistic symbiosis. The architects also turned out a very stylish building when they partially overlaid a brick volume with a metal casing - the latter does not look too massive, since its polished surface is filled with reflections of the surrounding buildings, but at the same time it obviously emphasizes the “technocratic” past of the place. Two more volumes are solved as high-rise dominants - due to them, the authors detach the industrial theme from the ground level and force it to enter into a dialogue with modern architecture. This is a 10-storey tower located on the border of the boulevard between bright residential multi-section buildings made in a modern style, and a 17-storey tower that closes the north-south axis and actively participates in the formation of the embankment silhouette. Both high-rise buildings are residential and both are designed as a vertical development of the architectural theme of the volumes from which they "sprout". So, a 10-storey building closes and complements the elongated building of the kindergarten - both volumes face a glass surface framed by a brick "baguette" to the surface of the pond and the translucent facade of a modern house, while a completely brick wall looks at the boulevard and the factory buildings opposite, the only decoration which, in addition to the textured masonry, become so characteristic of Skuratov's vertical windows, the thickness of the lintels between which gradually becomes thinner as one approaches the pond. The second, taller tower has a much more brutal, monolithic appearance, and this is quite predictable, considering that it is adjacent directly to the factory buildings and their stylized extension, where the office and business part of the complex is supposed to be located. The only stylistic link connecting this volume with modern houses is the transparent boxes of the balconies.
Two words should be said about the offices themselves. Extending the factory buildings all the way to the embankment, the architects logically placed premises in them intended for rent. In the initial project, this volume was solved in a very lapidary way - a futuristic bridge, connecting the complex with the opposite bank of the Moskva River, was almost close to it, and against its background no plastic excesses were required anymore. But the bridge had to be abandoned - this is too expensive a pleasure - so the problem of the front facade became very acute. The elongated brick volume, facing the embankment at an angle, the architects extended as much as possible with the help of a very developed canopy made of the already mentioned black metal. The building itself, as it approaches the embankment, decreases by one floor, so that under the canopy, directed towards the water, a kind of open observation deck appears. This is both a well-thought-out "visiting card" of the entire complex, and a witty reminder of the bridge, which could make life much easier for the inhabitants of the new district, but, alas, will remain a dream.
