The plot allocated for the construction of the complex belongs to the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation. It is located on the territory of the Odintsovo municipal district and has an area of more than 450 hectares, on which it is planned to build two polo grounds on the grass with a training field, stables for 250 horses and two indoor arenas, the Presidential Tennis Club (12 outdoor and 14 indoor tennis courts), An 18-hole golf course, as well as residential properties (210 residences and 60 townhouses), a shopping complex, a five-star hotel, apartment hotels and a business center. The architectural workshop of Totan Kuzembaev is designing polo arenas and typical cottages to surround the field.
On the site determined by the general plan for the creation of a polo club, five solid red brick outbuildings have been preserved - three parallel-elongated poultry houses in the north of the site, and two more located closer to its southern border. The architects liked the picturesque brickwork, and they included these volumes in the overall composition of the complex, combining passages and placing stables and various office premises in them. The result was a system of one-story buildings intersecting at right angles and courtyards between them. Between the trimaran and the catamaran from the stables, perpendicular to them, is the Small Manege. From it, two parallel buildings with passages lead to the Bolshoi Manege. From a bird's eye view, this complex organism will probably resemble a space station, only it is made of brick, wood and polycarbonate.
The predominance of right angles in the volumetric-spatial composition of the complex is softened and balanced by the introduction of smooth lines ̶ sloping arched roofs of the Big and Small Maneges. And so that the contrast between circular and straight lines is not too sharp, the ribs of the gable roofs of the stables are "stretched" across the arched vaults and brought out by triangular pediments on the main facade of each arena.
The building of the Grand Manege consists of two volumes - the arena and the foyer, between which there are stands for 712 seats with a balcony and auxiliary premises (warehouse, cloakroom, bathrooms and restaurant kitchen). The roofs of both buildings are supposed to be made of laminated veneer lumber covered with translucent cellular polycarbonate 24 mm thick. This will fill the interior space with daylight and visually make the large-scale structure almost weightless. The arena itself, the dimensions of which are 100x50 meters, will be covered with a net "woven" of three-hinged glued wooden frames, and the ends of the building will be glazed with stained-glass windows with staggered imposts. As Totan Kuzembaev himself explains, on such an impressive surface, such bindings look more organic than a rectangular mesh, and resemble a pattern of veins on plant leaves. And the architects intend to completely glaze the ends of the brick blocks in order to make the forest approaching the site close to the site a part of the interior.
As for the cottages, 76 of them will be built in total. The cottages are supposed to be located in the areas around the playing field in such a way that their inhabitants could watch the game without moving to the stands. For this, each house is equipped with a gallery bridge that leads to a spacious observation deck (11.7m²) - an individual "sports box". The length and height of the bridges depend on the distance of the cottage from the field and the relief of the site, therefore, two completely identical houses cannot be found here, except that the compositional principle is the same for everyone and is obviously dictated by the image of a stately and graceful horse.
A typical cottage as interpreted by Totan Kuzembaev is a two-storey building with a basement floor that is 1.5 meters deep. In the basement there is a garage, a sauna, a relaxation room and technical rooms. From the rest room you can go to the closed courtyard, and the said gallery can be accessed from the balcony of the second floor or via an external staircase from the first level. The house itself, its terrace, gallery and platform are covered by a common roof, while the bridge, observation deck and terrace are clad in end-to-end sheathing made of ribbed lamellas - something like vertical pergolas that allow you to provide a private space, at the same time open to light and air …
It is interesting that not only the general volumetric solution refers to the equestrian theme, but also the palette invented by the architects: the cottages are proposed to be painted in accordance with the horse suit: bay, dark bay, black and apple-gray. In general, these houses, as well as the roof of the Bolshoi Manege, are immediately recognized as Kuzembaev's. Perhaps, only this architect in our country today knows how to create such compositions from wood, striking at the same time with their complexity and amazing naturalness, and it is difficult to disagree with the fact that in this case the author's "specialization" is the best match for the genre and theme of the designed object. …
