The Zhukovka XXI cottage community is located 9 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road along Rublevo-Uspenskoe highway, in the floodplain of the Moskva River. In plan, it has the shape of a fan, divided into two unequal parts of the Ilyinskoye highway, and it is in the alignment formed by the route and the bend of the river that the entrance to the territory is organized. The main object of the village infrastructure is also located here - a social and sports center. This volume was originally conceived as a visiting card of the entire complex, a symbol that would favorably distinguish Zhukovka XXI against the background of by no means ordinary neighboring villages. So it is not at all surprising that the customer announced a competition for the architectural solution of the center, however, it was quite a long time ago, and since then the functional program of the project has undergone major changes more than once. “We can say that this is a long-lived project, because we won the competition back in 2004,” says Andrei Asadov. “However, even despite numerous improvements, we managed to preserve the original architectural concept that inspired the customer and won the competition.”
Talking about how this dynamic building was invented, as if spreading its wings to meet cars approaching it, Andrei Asadov certainly quotes the famous novel by Richard Bach about a seagull named Jonathan Livingston: “Your whole body - from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other - again and Jonathan repeated again, - there is actually a thought, embodied in a form that is accessible to your sight. Having broken the fetters that fetter your thought, you will also break the fetters that fetter your bodies …”The book, without exaggeration, that determined the worldview of a whole generation, the architects recalled as soon as they found themselves on the future construction site: a picturesque floodplain in the bend of the Moscow River asked for an easy, close solution in spirit, the feeling of freedom and space that permeates this place. “It went without saying that we were going to design a building that looked like a seagull, as if crouching on the shore and spreading its wings to soar into the air again,” Asadov says.
First, the architects drew a bird on the master plan in the literal sense - a triangular building with its beak facing the road, and its wings spread out on both sides of the through passage. The metaphor of the flight was read very clearly here, and although later one of the wings "got quite fat" due to the addition of two indoor tennis courts, the architects as a whole managed to preserve it. In particular, a sharp beak hanging over the road and the central ridge of the through passage, splitting the volume into two independent parts, the roofs above which are endowed with wide overhangs, survived in the project. The triangular shape of the latter gives the building a resemblance to a bird - the wings are supported by thin supports, and their architects set them at an angle to the building, which gives the whole composition additional dynamism. In other words, from a bird's eye view, the completed building is no longer very similar to a bird, but when viewed from the ground, it fascinates with its uniquely birdlike appearance.
It is interesting that only one of the "wings" is made solid, while the second is cut by triangles of different shapes, and the theme of pergolas set here becomes one of the key ones for this building. Numerous awnings actually surround the building around the perimeter, forming covered intermediate spaces that link the interior to the surrounding landscape. It must be admitted that for this typology, such a solution is optimal: the inner space of the center contains the two already mentioned courts, a fitness center, a spa, a children's club and a cafe, sports grounds adjoin the building from the river side, and the indoor pool smoothly flows into open.
The decoration of the building is fully consistent with the declared high class of both the sports center itself and the village as a whole. Very expensive natural materials were used in the project - Jurassic marble and oil-impregnated wood panels. The undoubted merit of the architects is that these materials not only emphasize the solid status of the object, but also perfectly embody the conceived image. The flying planes of the roofs, lined with terracotta-colored panels, make the new building an integral part of the natural environment and unequivocally hint at its belonging to the order of birds, and the light cream facades, whitening against the background of the greenery surrounding the building and the river flowing nearby, suggest that it is a seagull in front of us.
