When ordering the UNK project for a project of a new residential area in Ivanteevka, the investor set three conditions: the development should be low-rise, dense and, despite the low final cost, expressive in appearance. At the same time, the district was supposed to be built practically in an open field: the site is located on the border with a pine forest, in that part of Ivanteevka, which is only formally called a city - so far only private houses have been erected against the backdrop of a picturesque landscape. Another important "introduction" was that the complex, which is now being designed as a completely separate settlement, in the future, most likely, will merge into a larger area. “The customer immediately set before us the task of developing a project that could be multiplied,” explains Yuliy Borisov, “so we tried to put a certain versatility in it.”
The segment of the economy class, in which the architects had to work, imposed rather strict restrictions on apartmentography. Most of the apartments in this area are studios and "small-sized", which, in turn, actually predetermined the impossibility of designing it in the form of separate quarters - it turned out to be easier to comply with the insolation standards with the help of the linear orientation of houses. And the close proximity to the private sector imposed a restriction on their height - residential buildings were not supposed to be higher than 5 floors. So it turned out that the UNK project was to assemble an area of five-story buildings - in other words, a task emerged that could terrify any architect from the USSR.
Having wondered how to make a five-storey residential building as different as possible from a traditional "panel", UNK project decided, first of all, to visually split the parallelepipeds into separate segments. Following this, the idea very quickly arose to liken the segments to separate "houses": so the line buildings that grow across the street from the private sector will not be entirely alien to the latter - rather, a second cousin of a townhouse than an apartment building. And already from the idea of "a house as several similar, but not identical sections" a stylistic concept was born, which later gave the name to the entire project - "Dutch Quarter". “Of course, we in no way tried to reproduce any Dutch buildings, rather, we are talking about a general feeling - the lines of houses and their carefully thought out heterogeneity create picturesque“corridors”of buildings that somehow really resemble the development of Amsterdam canals or, let's say Copenhagen,”says Yuliy Borisov.
It is clear that the linear layout is obviously less diverse than the quarter layout, and the architects tried to compensate for this with all the means available to them. First of all, they divided the passages between the "lines" into two types - streets along which you can drive up to houses, and internal pedestrian boulevards, completely free of cars. There are six “lines” in total, and the architects form three pairs of them, each of which receives two types of public spaces - external and internal. Although the streets here are passable, you cannot leave your car on them - all parking lots are located along the outer perimeter of the village. And on the boulevards, public spaces are organized, intended for different social groups: there are playgrounds, sports, and recreation areas for pensioners. It is important that you can get to them from the street through any of the entrances - they are all designed by checkpoints in order to save residents from the need to bypass houses.
A pine forest closes the perspective of every street and every boulevard. And in the gaps between the "lines" architects also create green spaces - this is a timid, but still an attempt to set transverse directions of social activity. By the way, about the social sphere. The "load" to the residential buildings in the "Holland Quarter" includes a car wash, a cafe and a shop within walking distance, as well as a kindergarten. The latter will be located on the first floor of one of the houses, and the store, cafe and car wash are concentrated around the checkpoint, in the appearance of which the name of the project is also played up, however, not by architectural, but by design means - tulips cut out of metal serve as both a fence and a recognizable logo.
As for the sections proper, in total the UNK project has developed 11 types, of which various combinations are assembled on each of the lines. They differ from each other both in finishing materials (plaster, ceramics and several types of clinker bricks), and in height, window pattern, presence or absence of rustication. In houses consisting of four or more sections, inserts in the form of dark blinds are made: behind them there are air conditioners, but the main thing is that they visually make the volumes not so massive. Architects are also stealing the true number of storeys of houses: in the highest of them, the floors are blocked by two, due to which these buildings outwardly really look more like townhouses than apartment complexes. It is inevitable with such an arrangement of volumes and the occurrence of a large number of ends. Their architects, in contrast to the generously glazed street facades, make them absolutely deaf, diversifying the monotony of these surfaces with the help of rustication.
Already in the process of working on the project, the idea of creating a quarter with predominantly small-sized apartments was transformed into a multi-format housing project. Now there are studios with an area of 30 square meters, and apartments for a small family, and full-fledged three-ruble notes, and on the upper floors there are even two-level housing, which, with some stretch, can be called penthouses. “We offered the customer to diversify the format of housing, and he willingly agreed to this, realizing that this is a chance not only to sell apartments faster, but also to create a truly heterogeneous social environment here,” comments Yuliy Borisov.
Within the framework of one, in general, a small quarter, UNK project was able to find the optimal ratio of layouts and techniques that would create a sufficiently diverse, proportionate and humane environment. And in the event that the project in the future will really be "multiplied", on the scale of a larger settlement, it will be possible to get away from such a rigidly defined linear structure - at least, the architects are counting on this very much.
