Architect Alexei Ivanov tells Archi.ru about the project, which won the main award of the competition:
“We are participating in the RHD Foundation competition for the third time, and, as it seems to us, we have finally managed to find the ideal formula for economical housing. In previous years, we tried to propose, within the framework of this competition, some fundamentally new models of housing - both from a planning and from a stylistic point of view - until, finally, we recognized that experiments are not very compatible with economy and, by and large, are not needed by the final to the consumer of such housing. This year, we staked on simplicity and practicality of solutions, convenient layouts and a laconic architectural image - and, as the results of the competition showed, we were absolutely right. "Archstroydesign ASD" won not only the Grand Prix of the competition, but also the first prize in the nomination "individual residential building", and in two other nominations - "Multi-apartment residential building" and "Block type residential building" - we won silver.
Our individual residential building has a traditional gable roof, the ridge of which we noticeably displace relative to the central axis. This makes the silhouette of the cottages more expressive. And if such a shift is not reflected in the appearance of the roof itself, then the appearance of the side facades is entirely dictated by its tectonics: with the help of a narrow wooden insert, the pediments are split into two halves, which seem to exist independently of each other. On the combination of two basic materials - white plaster and natural wood - the image of this house is being built: due to wooden panels of different sizes, we visually split the facades, depriving them of the feeling of solidity. The same problem is solved by window openings, which we specially make different (using frames of standard sizes for this, of course), as well as niches of the entrance porch and a spacious veranda on the back of the house. We propose to make the roof over the veranda made of translucent polycarbonate, - the insert from it is cut into the roof slope at its own angle, which further complicates the silhouette of the structure, gives it some piquancy.
The strong point of our project (and this was unanimously noted by the jury) is the layouts, which we tried to make as rational and cost-effective as possible. On an area of just over 100 square meters, we were able to accommodate 3 bedrooms, a large living room combined with a dining room, a sufficient number of storage rooms and bathrooms. However, the most important thing is that only the outer walls are load-bearing, so that, if necessary, the owners can painlessly adapt the housing to their own needs.
The apartment building and townhouses are actually modifications of the cottage. We actually "collect" the blocked housing from the same houses, slightly cutting their main facades and complicating the shape of the roof. The principal point for us here was the separation of the entrances to each of the sections - the houses are interlocked in such a way that the neighbors do not constantly collide at the doors, but see each other from afar. Each townhouse also has its own terrace, but here there was no need to make a separate shed for it - it is integrated into the main volume.
The structure of a three-story apartment building seems even more complicated. The basis of its palette is also made up of white and a light shade of natural wood, but we compose more complex compositions from panels that allow us to diversify extended facades. Their plasticity is also enriched by ladder blocks pulled out of the "body" of the main volume, topped with a gable roof with an obviously displaced ridge.
In other words, from a few simple and understandable ingredients, we get light, moderately permeable volumes, which, it seems to us, have a self-sufficient appearance, which nevertheless does not lose in the case of repeated replication. By the way, on our own initiative, we developed general plans for settlements with houses of all three types - we wanted to make sure that the housing we had invented did not conflict with each other. We tried to make such a multi-format building the basis of a comfortable living environment using a radial-circular layout of the general plan, in which the central public space is not rigidly fixed, but organically goes into private households."
