This building was completed in 1951. At first, it housed a design institute, and in recent years its premises have been leased. The building itself was of no artistic interest - a standard sand-lime brick box - which cannot be said about its surroundings. Actually, it was the location of the building in a quiet, green residential area that pushed the investor to the idea of equipping a high-class house here. A competition was held for the best renovation project, in which the architectural bureau ADM won, proposing to radically change the appearance of the house with several precise strokes, preserving the structure and shell and without resorting to complex technical solutions.
In order for a bright and expressive architectural object to appear in place of the gray dull amorphous mass, which was the former institute, ADM radically changes the appearance of its facades. First of all, the architects changed the ratio of walls and openings - the authors extended the former small windows that “perforated” the massive wall to floor level, which made it possible not only to make the interior lighter, but also to accentuate the facade with dynamic verticals. The windows are visually extended also due to the fact that inserts made of fiber cement "under the concrete" are installed above the opening.
The facades themselves are faced with clinker tiles imitating aged bricks, which contrast favorably with this silvery-gray surface, and with glass, and with a composite material alpolis, imitating the texture of wood, with inserts from which the window openings are finished. Narrow "wooden" inserts are installed on one side of the window over the brick - they alternate, staggered to the left or right of the opening, depending on the floor. Such a "failure" allows you to avoid monotony in the design of the facade, to set a clear rhythm that echoes the picturesque masonry of variegated bricks. And in order to finally get rid of the feeling of a squat elongated volume, the architects completely glazed the staircase blocks - transparent crevices visually split the parallelepiped of the former institute into segments of a chamber scale that is convenient for the human eye to perceive.
The contrasting combination of textures and colors of finishing materials - brick with its rich palette of shades, light "wood", silvery aluminum (horizontal belts in the form of T-bars denote overlapping), polished glass and rough "concrete" - makes the verified ornamental composition of the facade spectacular and picturesque. In this form, the building no longer resembled the dull "box" of the 1950s. According to the architect Andrei Romanov, the balcony railings helped to finally get away from the "office" appearance of the renovated volume. In each room, two whole balconies appeared - one is used for its intended purpose, and the other is intended for an air conditioner, which in the future will help to avoid their independent chaotic installation. Simple designs of balconies enrich the facade with embossed projections and add thin, graceful lines to its large rhythmic pattern.
Rethinking the laconic flat roof of the original building, the architects extend the wall material by framing the upper level windows. Brick hinges seem to “sew together” the volumes of the building and the sloping roof with masonry. The entrance area of the first floor, on which non-residential premises are located, was also carefully worked out - they made a porch, benches integrated into a granite fence, thought out the concept of advertising. The complex of these simple and inexpensive building interventions has transformed an ordinary volume into a unique architectural structure that seems to be simply doomed to the admiring glances of the townspeople.
