Archi.ru has already written about the competition, the subject of which was an industrial zone with an area of 26 hectares in the metropolitan area of Dorogomilovo. It stretches from the Kievsky railway station to the Third Ring Road, occupying the entire space between the railway and Berezhkovskaya embankment. Today it is a chaotic and unpresentable built-up area, where all kinds of production and logistics enterprises are located, but the owner of the site - LIRAL company - intends to radically change its fate in the coming years. The complex renewal of the site became the topic of a closed competition, within the framework of which the Asadov Architectural Bureau developed a concept called Berezhki - a city for life.
In order to turn the industrial zone into a comfortable residential cluster, the architects had to solve many problems. The main ones are transport accessibility (or, more precisely, inaccessibility) and a huge amount of encumbrances that the site owes to its closest neighbors. The sanitary protection zones of the railway, the TTK, located between the industrial zone and the CHPP-12 train station, as well as the diesel fuel warehouse "eat off" almost half of the usable area. But the architects, of course, could not surrender the priceless land without a fight: the economic feasibility of the project in this case would have been reduced to zero, and the hypothetical residential quarter would have ended up in the ring of alienation. On the contrary, in its project, Asadov's bureau tried to use the entire potential of the territory, developing a step-by-step strategy for turning existing restrictions into advantages for the future habitat.
First of all, the authors rethought the close proximity to the railway track. In fairness, the Asadovs' team has not invented anything fundamentally new for themselves here - on the contrary, the architects gladly returned to one of their favorite ideas, which they have more than once
"Tried on" to Moscow. It's about the creation of the so-called. habitable platforms above the railway tracks, which will minimize the noise from passing trains and effectively use the area of the track itself and the sanitary zone around it. Interestingly, in this project, the Asadov Architectural Bureau proposed to block not only the section of the tracks that runs along the northern border of the site, but also the railway between the rehabilitated industrial zone and the Kievsky railway station. In total, according to the calculations of the authors, the territory thus freed up can accommodate business, exhibition and other functions with an area of up to 1 million sq. M.
Of course, this is a very long-term decision, but it's hard to disagree with the architects: only this kind of "bridge" can fundamentally change the insular position of the industrial zone, which today is actually cut off from the city. In addition to the giant (and, of course, very expensive) "case" for the railroad, the architects propose to build several bridges - one automobile, which will connect the "Berezhki" straight line with the Moscow City area, and three pedestrian bridges, which, in turn, will create a new area accessible to townspeople from almost any direction: from the metro, from the opposite bank of the Moskva River and from Mosfilmovskaya Street and from the Setun River floodplain park.
The third transport ring, of course, cannot be covered like that, therefore, to combat its noisy neighborhood, the authors of the concept were looking for architectural means. Along the entire border of the site, facing the Third Transport Ring, a linear super-house, as the Asadovs themselves call it, is growing, which serves as a noise shield and at the same time the role of a visiting card of the new district. Its number of storeys gradually decreases as it approaches the embankment, and the smooth bend, echoing the tracing of the road, the architects strengthen with the help of large cells of window openings, which give the facade a complex multidimensional pattern.
The need for protection from the adjacent thermal power plant, in turn, gave rise to a developed cultural and social center in the eastern part of the site, designed to become a point of attraction for the city scale. It received the shape of a horseshoe, deployed towards the new area and thus forms a comfortable space. In the competitive project, the Asadovs propose to cover it with a light tent structure, showing in the visualizations an elegant translucent sphere suspended at the level of the roof of the public center by thin steel cables. The association with the Berlin Sony Center comes to mind immediately, however, the authors do not hide that this object served as one of the prototypes - in the competition of preliminary concepts for the development of the site, when it comes to a specific architectural and planning solution, it is quite appropriate. They propose to include in the public complex an exhibition center, a concert hall, a media library, as well as the Center for Alternative Energy, where new energy supply technologies will be researched and introduced - the successors of the CHPP.
Landscaped and built-up platforms above the railway, a house-wall and a buffer in the form of a public center - these are the "outposts" with the help of which the architects force the existing sanitary zones, if not to part, then at least slightly loosen their "grip". “By exposing them from all unfavorable sides, we got a uniquely comfortable interior space, where we placed the main residential and public areas,” comments the architect Andrei Asadov. And if in the analogue of the Sony Center, public spaces arose mainly on the first floors of the centers under construction or on an area almost closed from outside influences, then here the authors give themselves free rein to design comfortable recreational areas that make the new area truly comfortable and attractive. Residential development is divided into two lines of quarters, between which there is a walking area with a triangular-shaped artificial lake. Housing on the first line overlooking the Moskva River will receive all the advantages of a “house on the embankment”, while this reservoir with comfortable embankments, designed on several levels, will provide decent views of the inner quarters. All courtyard spaces are also raised on the stylobates - according to the authors of the project, this will not only accommodate the required number of parking spaces, deepening only one underground level, but also clearly separate private and public spaces.
