The project of the Mirax Plaza office complex is well known to everyone who is interested in modern Moscow (see our text about the 2007 project). Although after the crisis and the departure of the iconic investor, the complex lost its proud name, but two austere prismatic towers saluting the City skyscrapers from the opposite bank of the Moskva River are almost completed and are clearly visible from cars passing along the Third Transport Ring.
However, the towers are only part of the whole concept. Its second part is a group of ten-storey buildings inscribed in a neat oval plan at the foot of the skyscrapers. The yellowish-stone buildings, gripped by energetic ribs similar to horizontal flying buttresses, were supposed to continue the series of Stalinist buildings on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, creating a contrasting counterbalance to the office towers.
But, as often happens, the development of the project did not go quite as planned. Supervision over the construction of a part of the "island" (the building that faces Kutuzovsky Prospekt and makes the rounded "nose" of the oval) passed to another workshop, the project was changed and the building was not built as it was intended. It, one might say, was generalized and simplified: there was less stone, more glass, although the horizontal ribs were preserved, they became thinner and more monotonous. Cladding blocks made of horizontal, yellowish-sandy ones with the markings characteristic of neighboring Stalinist houses - have become grayish-pink, vertical and resemble shell rock with which Soviet cinemas and institutions were faced in the 1970s.
A building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, built without the supervision of the SKiP. Photo: panoramio.com, stargate
The new facade, with its smoothness, has become closer to office towers and less like the houses of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. It was as if one important twig was taken out of the coherent figurative structure of the ensemble, which is why the architectural plot lost a certain amount of tension, the force of resistance of glass and stone.
Such stories cannot but upset, and especially (quite rightly) they upset the authors of the project. Well, then the following happened.
When working with the next ten-story building, which forms the extended part of the oval from the side of the Third Ring (on the plans of the complex, it is denoted by the letter "B"), it became clear that it would not be possible to preserve its previous shape due to changes in the land use rules of the adjacent section of the railway. “If earlier the conditions assumed the possibility of installing the pillars of the building's stylobate on a section of the railway, now the services of this department have excluded such a possibility from consideration,” the architects say. In other words, according to the original design, the volume of building “B” and the railway tracks intersected: the convex arc of the facade hung over the tunnel that penetrated the volume of the building along a chord - but now the building must retreat into the boundaries of its site.
The customer has announced a tender for the project of adjusting the ten-story building - with the aim, of course, to preserve the building area in the new project at a minimum cost. For SK&P, it was a chance to return their own object and bring it to its logical conclusion. Knowing the project well ("like the back of their hand"), the architects quickly found a solution to the problem. Of course, the project has changed significantly (under the circumstances described, it could not have been otherwise), but the authors "tried to take into account the already erected structures as much as possible and made decisions, if I may say so, in the reconstruction mode." In a word, only the necessary changes were proposed, returning all useful areas to the project.
The correct, drawn on a compass, but protruding too far, the arc of the oval plan had to be cut off, stepping back from the paths - the plan of the hull ceased to be a segment and acquired a forced-beveled outline, like on a television set in the 1960s, when the corners are rounded and the walls are straight.
In order to compensate for the lost usable space, the architects divided the extended building into five parts, replacing the four atriums with open courtyards. Each of the resulting five volumes was expanded "in length" by narrowing the space of the courtyards. This made it possible to return all the lost meters without increasing the height of the buildings. The courtyards have become more like short stretches of pedestrian boulevards: they all lead to a longitudinal inner street connecting all the buildings. The buildings, on the other hand, hang over the pedestrian spaces with deep consoles, gaining some more useful meters and forming small canopies over the resulting boulevards.
It is characteristic that the architects did not make their courtyards-streets passable, having reserved them for pedestrians. This can be seen as a reminder of the luxurious atriums that had been canceled - courtyards have certainly lost the luxury of their glass surfaces stretched ten stories high - but they remain safe, comfortable spaces. However, unlike atriums, courtyards are open to the city and therefore more democratic: anyone can take a walk here. This is a European rather than a Moscow principle; Moscow still has a hard time getting rid of endless fences and checkpoints, so the open inner streets of the office center are, albeit a small, step towards the townspeople.
The facades, of course, also had to be revised: now they consist of the same alternation of horizontal bands of stone and glass as the towers. At the ends, in the places of rounding, the stripes are thinner - here they respond to the graphics of the building, built from the side of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. As we can see, in the end, architects came to one of the most common - if not "classic" - facade methods of office architecture. The effectively frozen stream of stone hoops, which in the first project made one think about the century of speeds and similar man-made things, has turned into a respectable office street. However, the project managed to restore integrity - this is especially important for the authors. Courtyard streets, dividing the formerly one-piece building into five volumes, at a cursory glance from the side of the Third Ring, they will look like narrow gorges and will not break the unity of the façade system. The idea of an “oval island” has also been preserved, Andrey Nikiforov is sure.
One can only be glad that the scattered, divided project was unexpectedly "repaired". This story once again confirms that a good architect is capable of helping the customer out of a difficult situation, and recovering the project that was lost, and returning the project to its former integrity, and finding a new image.
The aforementioned "new image" - resulting from the transformation, is also interesting. It is calmer, more practical and even more democratic. Although “Mirax Plaza” was intelligently restrained and contextual, it was still dynamic, expensive and effective. It was intended to amaze and amaze: with the glass of atriums, flying hoops of facades, regular arcs of circles. In its architecture there was a tension of contrast: between glass and stone, towers and avenue (of which one is a representative of the power of money, the second is the power of a tyrant). The contradictions of the city were caught in it and turned into a sonorous, energetic plot. That corresponded to its time: a period of somewhat insane rapid growth, arrogant investors, gigantic projects.
Now the contrasts have faded, the opposition has softened, and the plot has generally moved to another level: it has largely ceased to be a theatrical production frozen in stone, and has become more like a natural history of compromises, reasonable economy and architectural integrity. The complex retreats from the obstacle on which its predecessor proudly stepped, but steps aside, allowing the city to enter. These are all signs of the times, and perhaps not the worst.
