The work on this project was initially carried out in difficult conditions. Firstly, the functional planning concept of the future shopping center had already been developed (it was carried out by the English architectural bureau Dyer), and secondly, relying on it, the customers calculated the optimal TEPs for themselves and did not want to deviate from them. Thus, the authors faced a very difficult task: the concept had to be adapted to the current standards, supplementing the “bare” scheme with all the missing ones and at the same time not reducing the share of leased space, but for the volume itself to come up with a functional and memorable architectural solution at the same time.
One of the points of reference for the architects was the water tower located in the immediate vicinity of the planned object. This building was built according to the project of the famous engineer Shukhov at the turn of the 20-30s of the last century. Once fulfilling a purely utilitarian function and being in a predictably deplorable state, the tower received the status of a monument and will be restored in the near future. As conceived by ABD architects, it will become the main decoration of the square in front of the shopping complex, that necessary authentic element that will increase the value of the entire object, make it a place "with history". The tower will help to organize a new public space and purely functional - it will become a convenient landmark for the townspeople, in the shade of which lawns will be laid out and numerous summer cafes will appear.
The most important circumstance that ABD architects had to take into account when developing the project was the fact that this shopping center is the second stage of the complex, which is very successful both in terms of architecture and in socio-economic terms. The new and existing buildings (built according to the project of the architectural studio "Sergey Kiselev and Partners") had to be connected with a passage, and the authors of the concept proposed to do this with the help of a building-bridge. From a functional point of view, it is a two-level gallery, the lower floor of which is reserved for buyers (it is supposed to locate some shops and a food court here), and the upper one - for the passage of cars to the parking lot. The fact is that parking lots in the entire shopping complex are located on the third level, and there is a ramp for entering them only in the first building, so there was no way to do without a bridge for cars. The project also provides for greening both the roof of the suspended building and the entire open parking lot on the third level.
Due to the location of the rooftop parking, it was not possible to design an overhead light in the shopping gallery area, so the architects came up with special ceiling cylinders made of white-painted plasterboard: their surface is illuminated by spotlights, which creates a complete illusion of skylights. The architects tried to solve the food court in the style of the square of a European historical city, strengthening this allusion with the help of characteristic paving, arched vaults and overhead light of skylights. On the ground floor, in the café areas, two illuminated waterfalls were installed. Mobile kiosks and information counters are made in the same style and have a rounded shape that repeats the line of the atrium.
The bulkhead raised above the ground by its typology in any architect, first of all, evokes associations with the famous Bauhaus building in Dessau. Modernist aesthetics really determined the appearance of the second stage of the shopping center: wide rectangular windows prevail here and the lines of the floors are accented with wide aluminum stripes. In all these elements, one can feel exactly that original and pure modernism, coming from the traditions of the Bauhaus, while the "side" wall of the facade, which appears here and there, small divisions and an attic intended for advertising, are perceived as modern layers and additions. The facades are finished with terracotta-colored ceramic tiles - this not only makes the new building related to the existing one, but also gives it, with all the modernity of the volumetric-spatial solution, a "traditional" character, visually harmonizing with the tower, which is almost a century older than the new building.
