Project
"Olympic Village Novogorsk" was launched in 2009 and today is entering its final stage. Townhouses have already been built and populated, a multifunctional complex with a restaurant, a school and a training center for the Russian Olympic team in rhythmic gymnastics is under construction. The construction of the "entrance gate" of the village - the building of the checkpoint, as well as the four-storey residential building located next to it has been completed. These volumes, due to their location, promise to become the hallmark of Novogorsk, so it is not at all surprising that the architects paid special attention to their solution.
The design of the building, which, in addition to guarding the village, also houses the maintenance service and the sales office, has changed several times during the work on the appearance of the Olympic Village. For a long time, architects interpreted it as an integral part of a multifunctional complex - these volumes were formally divided by a road connecting Novogorsk and Mashkinskoye Highway, but the authors used their proximity to create a spectacular arch. Later, the building of the IFC grew significantly, and the arch, which became waist-high, looked strange, so it was abandoned. But Vladimir Bindeman's team still wanted to preserve a certain visual unity between these buildings, so the checkpoint complex, formally separating from the "big brother", in its appearance develops the figurative-plastic theme set by the main public building of the "Olympic Village". And if the architects cover this large volume with an undulating roof imitating a ribbon, then the compact checkpoint becomes its tail or a piece, as if for a second jumped to this part of the site with a wave of the gymnast's hand. That is why the shape of this small building is so "talking": the wave of the neighboring roof here finally comes to naught, falling down to the very ground.
It is the roof that plays the main role here: the building has a developed visor, proudly raised above the fully glazed end towards the entrance and the multifunctional complex, and with its opposite end the roof makes an elastic bend and turns into a full-fledged facade. The expressiveness of this "gesture" is multiplied by the rather perceptible thickness of the roof chosen by the architects, its dark chocolate color, as well as the rebate. Plus the presence of several mature trees on the site forced the architects to cut a large rectangular hole in the visor. “Despite some complication of the structure, this opening ended up being just in everyone's hands: both the trees were preserved and the roof as a whole was considerably lightened,” explains Vladimir Bindeman. For the same environmental reasons, the architects slightly raised the building itself above the ground, placing it on a reinforced concrete slab with low supports, under which they poured gravel.
In plan, this volume has an arcuate shape and with its inner radius faces the road. Except for the sloping "back" formed by the bent end of the roof, then all its other facades are completely glazed. But if the authors leave the "entrance" end completely transparent, then the longer facades are protected by inclined pergolas. These elements connect the base of the slab and the roof, simultaneously serving as a screen for the air conditioners placed on the facades, and separating a small gallery connecting different entrances to the building.
The plan of the residential building is also based on an arc that repeats the bend of the Mashkinskoye highway, which makes a rather sharp turn exactly in this place. However, the architects did not want to reproduce the configuration of the red line so head-on, so they brought out on it not a semicircular facade, but numerous teeth. In other words, they made a cogwheel house, not a hinge house. Although the internal structure of this building would still be more like a hinge: its two smoothly curved residential wings are connected by a central "core" of the communication core with two staircases, an entrance lobby and a freight elevator.
The cornering position influenced not only the overall compositional decision. To prevent the new building from making this section of the highway even more blind to motorists, the architects raised it on one-story pillars. It is quite logical that the customer wanted to use the space created as a result of this to organize parking: initially, this was exactly what was included in the project, but in the midst of its approval, a new joint venture came out, prohibiting the placement of open parking under a residential building. It was not possible to approve the option with parking, even despite the presence of a fire visor and a technical floor above it, so the increase in height only played into the hands of passing motorists. And, perhaps, to the building itself: in fact, it is six-story, it looks more solid and proportional, dominating the fence and reliably protecting the townhouses located behind it from the noise of the highway.
The architects compensate for the location by the road with beautiful views of the dam of the Skhodnya River flowing on the other side of the highway. All the apartments of the house are oriented towards the water, where, by a lucky coincidence, the sun sets every night, while the gallery-type corridors face the townhouses. The only exception is the end sections, in which the project provides for apartments of a larger area, having a two-sided orientation. The jagged plastic of the main facade is emphasized with the help of bay windows, lined with dark wood - they replace the balconies for the residents, which, according to the authors' plan, guarantees the preservation of the facade in its originally conceived form. For the same reasons, by the way, we managed to convince the customer to make roof outdoor units of air conditioners - a special channel is connected to each apartment, which will avoid the appearance of mismatched boxes under each window.
In its current form, this house really looks noble: the supports and the technical floor are painted with light beige plaster, three residential floors above it are faced with dark beige artificial stone, the upper attic floor is "recruited" from double-glazed windows of the same dark wood as the bay windows, and they, in turn, directly resonate with the chocolate seam roof. The fence is also matched to the tone of the house: the horizontal composite panels are as close as possible in color to the shade of the roof, and the colored inserts echo the two main colors of the facade cladding. At a bend, the architects “discharge” the fence to almost complete transparency, so that drivers driving along the highway in this place see only narrow bright inserts that give the new complex additional attractiveness.
