There are several versions of the birth of the architectural image of the shopping center in the village of Gribki. According to one of them, 15 km from Moscow, at the fork of Dmitrovskoe highway and its projected backup, two powerful ice blocks collided, reared and broke. On the other - a giant wooden bar, trying to go around the road, split at the turn … The shape of the building can also be compared with a broken boat, from the cracks of which water is gushing, or with a snowboard split on an ice hummock. It is important that the customer, the Stroy-plast company, needed just such an architecture - image-building, memorable, and arousing curiosity and interest. By the way, this is not the first time that Asadov's Architectural Bureau has been cooperating with this company - it was for this company that the projects of the Pushkin Plaza shopping center (in Pushkin near Moscow) and a public center in the Hyde Park settlement were developed.
Work on the complex in Gribki began with the fact that the customer showed the architects a ready-made technological scheme, packed in an ordinary "box", which just had to be brightened. Fortunately, the very specificity of the shopping center disposed to this in every possible way. Since in one half of the building it is planned to concentrate goods for winter sports, and in the other - for water sports, the plot of the spatial development of the volume was outlined by itself. The dramatic effect of the plot was given by the shape of the site, which has a slight bend: at this turning point, the building, as it were, splits into two halves of the building. One plate broke off the ground and flew up, the other dived under it. Their side faces are elastically bent. Glass skipped through the "torn" fabric of the facade, and a high "wave" of the atrium "rolled" along the bend.
Despite the fact that the architecture turned out to be so “literary”, its appearance is fully consistent with the content. The expressive sculptural form is functional and rational. Open parking is located under the trading halls raised 5.1 meters above the ground. In addition to it, there is also an underground parking. You can get from them to the two-level shopping center by elevators from the "grounded" central part of the complex. Trade floors are "laced" with ribbons of travelators installed in the atrium. Along the edges of the shopping area there are two anchor tenants - water and winter sports shops. And in the middle, around the atrium, there is a scattering of boutiques, stores of related goods and cafes. The atrium expands upward like an inverted pyramid, which visually creates the feeling of an even larger open space.
In addition to the desire to obtain a striking architectural object, the customer also formulated a requirement to actively use alternative types of energy in the project, which is associated, first of all, with the lack of energy resources allocated to the object. The authors enthusiastically embraced this idea and proposed several types of progressive energy-efficient solutions at once: heat pumps, solar collectors, and the recycling of rain and waste water. In addition, the architects envisaged in the project the possibility of creating a full-fledged vegetable garden with greenhouses on the roof of the complex - they could grow organic vegetables for a local phyto-restaurant.
True, the latter idea, unfortunately, is still frozen, since at the moment it is cheaper to buy organic vegetables and fruits than to grow them on your own. But the customer always has such an opportunity. Facade solutions will also have to be simplified. The customer did not support the excessively bold and fraught with additional costs for the construction of a large extension of the atrium console and double-curved stained-glass windows that are difficult for execution. Therefore, now "Asadov Architectural Bureau" is finalizing the project - while maintaining the basic ideas of the concept and the dynamism of the facade, the geometry of the glass planes is simplified.
Interestingly, at first, instead of glass, the architects wanted to use Teflon membranes (the so-called "Teflon cushions", well known from the designs of the Beijing National Swimming Complex and the Alliance Arena stadium in Munich), but in this case the object would have lost its transparency, and after all its stained-glass windows are showcases that attract the attention of buyers, through which yachts, scooters and snowmobiles suspended in the atrium can be seen from the track even from afar. By the way, about advertising - the authors have foreseen in advance special places on the facades for placing outdoor advertising and thereby forever rid their brainchild of signs, billboards and banners disfiguring architecture.
The external cladding is planned to be made of sandwich panels with a finish imitating the texture of wood or plywood, so that the building looks like a bent wooden block. The atrium, regardless of whether there will be a garden on the roof or not, is proposed to be turned into a green oasis - to lower vines and ampelous plants from above. Such "phytotherapy" is designed not only to remind of the distant tropics, which can be conquered with the equipment sold in the shopping center, but also to keep customers energized at any time of the year.
