The subject of the competitive design was the public areas of the Alkon business center, located on Leningradsky Prospekt near the Sokol metro station, a space with a total area of 700 square meters, which is actually separated from the noisy highway only by a fully glazed facade. On the one hand, it is, of course, ultra-modern and fashionable, but on the other hand, such a constant visual connection with the city became a serious challenge for architects - T + T Architects tried not only to avoid the aquarium effect, but to oppose the busy highway with an interior that is interestingly perceived as at speed and from cork.
“This space also had obvious advantages, which we immediately decided to turn to the benefit of the project, for example, its dimensions, or the presence of impressive planes, thanks to which we got many opportunities for large-scale plastic work and for creating thoughtful details at the level of the human eye., - says the head of T + T Architects Sergey Trukhanov. "In general, it was this combination of initial data - the elongated configuration of the room, the glazed facade and the blank" background "walls - that pushed us towards the idea of creating a light, air-filled space dominated by a single large-scale element that attracts attention."
Before embarking on the creation of such an interior "anchor", the architects carefully thought out the functional scheme of the future central vestibule. Proceeding from the fact that the lobby is a space in which both employees of companies renting offices here and their numerous visitors should be comfortable and cozy, the authors of the project identified several different zones in it. At the entrance, visitors are greeted by the so-called. the service area - compactly located ATMs and payment terminals - and the central role is naturally assigned to the reception desk, to which the architects give a deliberately elongated shape, oriented along the main facade.
Thanks to this solution, the counter actually divides the lobby into two parts - the main part and the transit part. The first contains a small exhibition space and a waiting and negotiation area, consisting of separate cozy clusters grouped along a transparent wall, while the second is a corridor, only without clearly defined boundaries, from which you can get to the underground parking and elevator halls. The end planes of the reception desk are navigation panels that help visitors navigate the building of the business center and at the same time give this element a greater monumentality, allowing it to unconditionally dominate the lobby space.
The architects propose to make the rack from natural Italian granite of light beige color, having achieved, with the help of high-quality processing and calibration of this material, a seamless finish of vertical and horizontal surfaces. The walls of the lobby itself are also planned to be made light, using curlite slabs with imitation of stone texture for their facing. The sterility of the white color is intended to dilute the accent materials - copper and wood, as well as stainless steel, from which the fittings and skirting boards are made.
Having relied on the simplicity and brevity of the interior palette of the central lobby, the architects actually interpreted it as a background. “The background for the parametric structure of the lighting system, be it a crystal lattice or a wave, which becomes the protagonist in this spacious and light space,” comments Polina Voevodina, head of the concept department at T + T Architects.
Deciding to make the lamps the hallmark of the entire project, T + T Architects sought to find a form for them that is iconic, but not flashy. After much deliberation, they settled on the image of the wave - moderately abstract and at the same time obviously echoing with the plasticity of the main facade, which seems to be braided with wide horizontal ribbons of glass and stone. The light wave must pass through all the public areas of the 1st floor, and the architects split it into two, albeit intertwining, but independent streams, one of which serves to illuminate the transit zone, and the other, respectively, the main one. The project provides for two versions of the wave: it can be a wave-cloud, consisting of thin "beams" of LED elements, launched in parallel to each other, or a wave-lattice, in which these "rays" form crystalline compounds, built on the principle of parametric design.
At the same time, each luminaire assumes the possibility of address control, which will create an incredible variety of light scenarios for the wave invented by T + T Architects: it will be able to change the lighting intensity depending on the time of day and weather conditions, highlight individual zones when people approach them, create a flickering effect etc. And in order to make the estimate of the project more humane, the architects propose a third option - to use not a lamp, but a figure made of plexiglass or plastic as the base element of the "wave". Thanks to their concave shape, together these figures form the same train effectively developing above the vestibule, and the desired effect is created by illuminating the entire structure with floodlights from different sides. By the way, this solution, in addition to the lower cost, has additional advantages in the form of an interesting play of light and shade and reflections. And if you add a projector here, then the “wave” will turn from just a spectacular lamp into a multifunctional media object.
