The site is located near the intersection of the Moscow Ring Road with the Leningradskoye Highway, on the shores of Butakovsky Bay. In plan, it has a trapezoidal shape, but from the side of the water, its border clearly follows the smooth bend of the coastline. However, for all the picturesque nature of the landscape, the aggressive urban context and the proximity to two powerful transport arteries give this place a rather uncomfortable character. Nearby neighbors include an impressive amount of Metro Cash & Carry and a newly built intercept parking lot that adjoins the eastern border of the site. A power transmission line passes behind the projected complex, which explains the absence of any buildings there: only in the distance are the silhouettes of a typical multi-storey residential development visible.
Before the decision was made to build a business center on this territory, it was used as a storage base for rubble. For this reason, on the site itself there is not only intelligible architectural structures, but also any vegetation, the lack of which is felt very acutely. The idea to fill this gap was also prompted by the presence of an extensive water protection zone, in which it is impossible to build: the building of the office complex occupied only a third of the area of the site, and that part of it that is as far as possible from the bay, while the entire coastal zone is reserved for the creation of a large and diverse park …
The complex consists of two 11-storey towers of the same size, united by a common stylobate part. In the plan, both towers have a quadrangular shape and are inscribed in the area allocated to them at an angle to its borders. The ends of the buildings, acting as the main - river - facade of the complex, are deliberately complicated, referring to the water with large ledges. They are completely made of glass, and the proposed stepped shape made it possible not only to diversify the plastic of the complex, but also to provide the best views of the bay and the park from the windows. According to the architect Andrei Romanov, this part of the building houses all the offices of the management, and the glazing itself is made in the form of an "accordion" with widely stretched transparent "bellows" reflecting the clouds floating across the sky.
The side facades are decorated more monumental due to the decoration with natural stone and relief terracotta panels that form a regular geometric grid of vertical and horizontal lines on the glass wall of the walls. The uppermost, 11th floor, on which the technical rooms are located, is closed with a decorative grille made of dark gray aluminum profiles and shifted inward relative to the main volume of the complex, which partly hides the true height of the buildings. A green courtyard is arranged between the buildings of the complex, above which, that is, starting from the third floor, offices are located: workspaces are grouped along the perimeter of the building around the central core of staircases, elevator shafts and communications.
The first two floors of the complex are completely reserved for public functions - areas for relaxation and communication have been formed here, and in the warm season, small summer cafes will appear. It is interesting that due to the small relief present in the area, the stylobate is revealed only from the side of the bay. It faces the park laid out on the shore by a completely glass façade with a terrace under a flowing canopy - a favorite element of the ADM workshop. It is this visible part of the base of the complex that will be occupied by public spaces, while the underground part of the stylobate, as well as two other underground floors of the complex, are intended for parking.
The solution, when the most graceful and plastic base of the building is replaced by a laconic, rational form of the main volume, can be found in many projects of the ADM workshop (let's call at least
the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Makhachkala or a business center in the Moscow region). The authors themselves explain this by the fact that a person, as a rule, perceives a building either from a close distance, and therefore it is very important to decide the first floors in an interesting way, to enrich them with carefully thought out details, or from afar, and then the silhouette is important. The complex on the Leningradskoe highway was no exception. The stylobate zone, repeating the peninsular outlines of the site itself, like the first floors of the towers, form a comfortable and eye-pleasing space. The silhouette of the complex, seen from a distance, looks no less impressive and elegant: two large towers, rising from a green slope near the water, look like a glass portal or an entrance gate to the city.
Another characteristic feature of ADM projects is the well-thought-out arrangement of the surrounding area. Here, the linear park, which occupies the entire space from the foot of the building to the embankment, attracts attention no less than the architecture of the complex. A wide embankment with deck flooring runs along the water's edge. To create it, the architects suggest using an existing retaining wall. The corners of the "peninsula" washed by the waters of the bay are fixed by two pavilions, which are supposed to be used as a cafe. The roofs of these structures have a distinct resemblance to birch leaves - when viewed from above, they will seem to have been brought here by a gusty autumn wind. On the same "leaves", only larger in size, the territory of the park is also traced by intersecting undulating paths, picking up and developing the pattern of the coastline. Inside the "petals" formed in this way, here and there, loose green hills grow. An artificial embankment allows you to create a multi-layer composition of living plants, gradually lowering from the center to the edges. Tall trees will be planted in the middle, surrounded by a belt of shrubs of lesser height, and flowers and herbs will become a bright border. As Andrei Romanov said, they borrowed a similar technique from the Beth Chateau Park, located not far from London.
Undulating paths are crossed by rectilinear transverse routes leading from the embankment to the complex. Their architects liken pedestrian zebras, only the white paving stripes in them are interrupted by the bright green of the lawn. One of these paths will connect the office center with a small beach on the coast of the bay, which is planned to be cleaned, refined with white sand and black boulders and turned into one of the most picturesque places in the park. True, using the beach for swimming is unlikely to work, but getting as close to the water as possible and touching it, for a moment completely forgetting about the hustle and bustle of the office and the metropolis, it will definitely allow.
