For more than five years, an unfinished reinforced concrete volume stood on Prospekt Mira in Moscow, making pedestrians sad with empty openings and a massive lattice of ceilings. Last year, the new owner of the building approached the architectural studio ADM with a request to clean up the "ruins" by transforming an abandoned frame into a modern office complex. At the same time, the customer wanted to leave the existing protruding concrete pylons, so the architects had to work in the literal sense in a very strict framework.
Moreover, these "frames" were not at all ideal proportions: the already stocky volume seemed even more stocky under the massive concrete visor. And the brutal stylistics, declared by the previous authors (unknown foreign architects who made the sketch-idea), did not really fit in with the context of Stalinist architecture prevailing on Prospekt Mira. Of course, Andrei Romanov did not set himself the goal of merging with him, but he could not ignore the current environment. “We wanted the new building not to turn into a faceless alien“glass”, but to fit into the line of Prospect Mir with its characteristic Stalinist architecture, that is, skillfully drawn facades, lots of details and indispensable ceramics,” explains the architect himself.
Having comprehensively analyzed the current state of the unfinished volume, the architects came to the conclusion that it would not be possible to do it with just a cosmetic intervention to decorate the facade. First of all, because the planning scheme of the building did not fully correspond to the new functional program. For example, ADM were forced to remake the elevator group - add passenger and technical elevators, arrange them taking into account ergonomic recommendations, and organize comfortable elevator lobbies. But, of course, the façade demanded the main attention.
The first step was to correct the proportions - the building was stretched upward, lengthening five protruding bay windows and thereby visually lightening its upper part and shifting the emphasis from the visor. The second change concerned the design of the facade - the architects tried to give it a markedly modern, but not minimalist look, and to complicate the appearance of laconic surfaces with the help of plastically verified decorative elements. Detailing is created by graphical division of the facade with strips protruding perpendicular to the glass or overlapping with it, faced with a composite material Alpolik with a wood texture. Monolithic parts of the facade (walls, pylons) are made according to the Diat ventilated facades with "antique" clinker tiles.
Wood and variegated brickwork add warmth to the image, and layouts of multi-format lamellas and careful drawing of details (window blocks made of stemalite, T-beams-belts along the floors) set the human scale. The horizontal and vertical division of the volume corresponds to the facades of neighboring buildings and does not violate the measured perception of the development.
The first floor, given over to shops and the service sector, is faced with gray granite, which gives it solidity and visually emphasizes the typological zoning. The seven floors above are intended for open-plan office space. On the top floor there is an exit from the offices to the open terraces. In addition, a two-story volume has been added to the existing frame, the first floor of which will also be used for public functions, and the second for offices. And if in the decoration of the main building the "wooden" lamellas are delicately implanted into the brick robe, then the extension is decorated only with them - the visual lightness and natural color of these elements are designed to emphasize the chamber scale of the additional volume.
The construction of the office complex is planned to be completed by the end of this year. And then there will be less unfinished construction in Moscow with one "knocked out tooth". “I felt sorry for this project and, despite the fact that we were very limited in its finalization and could not make any facades, we tried to do this work as best as possible in the name of the city to which we are returning the building.”
