Located near the Voykovskaya metro station, Metropolis is considered perhaps the most successful multifunctional and shopping center in Moscow. Location, architecture, wide range of tenants and services - all this makes it extremely popular with the public and receives respectful feedback from experts. However, even the most popular shopping center cannot stay at the zenith of fame for too long: such a super-dynamic metropolis like Moscow makes more and more demands on such complexes, so the construction of the second stage of Metropolis was only a matter of time.
First, the new building was designed by the English bureau DunnettCraven, which interpreted this object as a “thing in itself” with a self-sufficient form and bright, but blank facades. It looked impressive, but the city did not interact in any way with its immediate surroundings or with any of the main highways, and the customer decided to hold a separate closed competition for solutions for the facades of the future ITC. The winner in this competition was the UNK project bureau, and in July of this year the project developed by it
was approved by the Architectural Council of Moscow.
According to the chief architect and co-founder of the UNK project, Yuliy Borisov, the authors of the project very quickly abandoned the idea to develop solutions of the existing complex in the facades of Metropolis-2 (remember, designed by ABD architects). One of the main arguments was the length of the facade of the new building - it is almost twice as long as the existing one, and if these planes visually merged into one, a building-fence would appear along Leningradka.
However, deliberately contrasting with its closest neighbor, the building of the second stage is sensitive to the context of Leningradka as a whole. In particular, the buildings of the Stalin era on the opposite side of the highway became an important starting point for the authors - the eaves of these buildings (28 meters) were recorded in a new volume with the help of a modern, but very clearly articulated cornice. “I definitely wanted to respond to the clear vertical rhythm inherent in the Leningradskoye Highway like no other Moscow highway,” says Yuliy Borisov, “therefore, one of the main themes of the facade was lamellas of different widths, which, moreover, were located at different distances from each other”. These elements, which are supposed to be made of metal or architectural concrete, visually crush the extended facade, giving it dynamism and thereby making it extremely in tune with the never-fading Leningradka.
Horizontal divisions also help to fit the new complex into the surrounding buildings more organically - the facades are assembled from three wide belts, which unobtrusively conceal its true number of storeys. Two of them are made of glass. At the lower level, this will make it possible to maximize the opening of the building to the city (in the literal sense in summer, and only visually in winter), as well as to provide the necessary advertising to the shops located in it and, under this pretext, almost completely rid the facades of the complex from billboards and screens. On the top floor, panoramic glazing is also very useful: there are a restaurant area and winter gardens. The central belt is made of natural dark brown stone. In contrast to it, the already mentioned lamellas work, which the architects propose to paint in a light coffee shade. However, the interaction of these materials is not only limited by the color - the UNK project contrasts the polished surface of the stone with the complex texture of metal panels. The polygonal ornament underlying it resembles textured leather from which bags of many expensive brands are made.
In the same exact style - dark brown stone and light textured metal panels - the covered pedestrian crossing, which will connect Metropolis-2 and the next-door transport hub of the Moscow Railway, is also made. This connection has an important urban planning and social meaning - thanks to it, light metro passengers will be able to get to the regular metro (to the Voikovskaya station) directly through two shopping malls, and not bypassing them. At first, they were going to build this overhead crossing exactly that bypassing the new building, in fact, letting glazed "sausage" on legs along its entire main facade, and UNK project proposed to lead a small tunnel to the side facade of Metropolis-2 and combine the opening hours of the shopping center and the light metro … “For Russia, such a synergy between transport and trade is a fairly new format, but the experience of such megacities as Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing shows that it is in great demand, and we hope that it will also take root in Moscow,” Yuliy Borisov comments.
For those who are going to come to Metropolis-2 by car, the project provides for the reconstruction of a multi-level above-ground parking located right behind the shopping center. It is interesting that the architects not only build on it, providing almost a thousand additional parking spaces, but also close it from the street side with a special colonnade-screen, as if extending the facade of the shopping center and thereby achieving stylistic unity. And so that visitors do not have the temptation to leave the car right in front of the store on the Leningradka backup, UNK project raise the sidewalk in front of the Metropolis-2 entrance and frame it around the outer perimeter with concrete pots for trees and shrubs. Thus, motorists wishing to get inside will find it much easier to do this from the parking lot than from under a meter-high sheer wall, and a small landscaped area will appear in front of the store, reliably protected from noise and slush of the roadway.
