The Saratov Muk factory is located practically in the center of the city, on Chernyshevsky Street - one of the oldest streets in Saratov and its main transport highway connecting the Zavodskoy District with the historical core. However, this does not exhaust the exclusivity of the location of the factory territory: it stretches from Chernyshevsky Street to the Volgograd Reservoir embankment. And although now the embankment is not at all landscaped, it is clear that the proximity to water makes this industrial zone doubly attractive, leaving a completely predictable imprint on the functionality of the future complex. A yacht club, a marina, apartments with access to the water - all this was exactly what the project asked for, and the architects did not deny themselves the pleasure of thinking them over thoroughly.
Like all industrial enterprises founded before the revolution, Saratov Mukka was not built immediately, and this was noticeably reflected in the structure of the factory. Its central core is several buildings of the late 19th century, today state-protected architectural monuments, among which the mill shop stands out - a grandiose structure in a brick style, with turrets and lancet windows, in general, a real castle. Close to it is the Boiler Building with a spectacular stepped pediment and a characteristic brick chimney, at a short distance there is a small one-story volume, in which the factory administration was once located, and a former warehouse of finished products, and everything around is quite densely built up with varied volumes of the Soviet period. Moreover, if the historical buildings at one time were erected closer to the road, then the buildings of the middle of the last century occupied the space between them and the reservoir. There is no artistic value in them, but one cannot but admit a certain logic of their placement: when in the Soviet years the factory received the go-ahead to expand its holdings, these buildings actually fixed the outer boundaries of the site. T + T Architects intend to act according to a similar scenario - primarily for the sake of creating a kind of screens that protect the courtyard of the projected complex from other industrial zones located nearby. That is why the authors of the project form two main building lines - western and eastern, which become a kind of walls of the mini-city being created.
The eastern wing is being built from scratch, serving as a continuation of the two-story historical building located at the very street of Chernyshevsky, while the western one is a complex conglomeration of new, preserved and partially built-on buildings. The architecture of these volumes is entirely dictated by the spirit of the place, although the chosen brick style of T + T Architects enriches with emphasized modern plasticity. Perhaps the most characteristic is the E-1 building, from which the western wing begins from the side of Chernyshevsky Street. It is being erected within the contour of the walls of an old building, but the exterior is completely modern. The architects wrap the three-storey transparent volume with a two-storey-high red brick "skin", and then raise this shell one and a half storeys from the street side - the parallelepiped is facing the road, thus facing a fully glazed corner, which is duplicated by a transparent wedge of the upper level on the back side of the house. “This building is one of the few, the facade of which is visible from the street, and we decided that it simply must become a new city landmark, but at the same time, of course, we should not argue with the central volume, therefore we act here mainly due to tectonics, whereas in its palette it does not stand out from the general array of buildings,”explains Sergey Trukhanov, head of T + T Architects.
The core of the whole composition - the mill building - is supposed to be restored in the most careful way: the brickwork will be cleaned, and the details of the facade will be carefully restored. The architects intend to emphasize the romantic appearance of the "castle" by highlighting the platbands with a snow-white color and using titanium-zinc not only for covering the roof and window openings, but also for decorative aprons. After the reconstruction, it is planned to place offices in this building, and each floor will be leased to one tenant, which will make it possible to use the space as efficiently as possible.
The boiler building is also supposed to be restored to its original form: it will be freed from chaotic extensions, get rid of heavily deformed sections of the wall masonry, receive a titanium-zinc roof and an entrance group designed in an emphatically "industrial" style. It is planned to place an entertainment club here, which will function mainly in the evening and at night, which means that it should not interfere with the offices, which are located almost closely. Building G - a small brick house located in front of the "castle" closest to the street, - according to the architects, is also extremely important for the formation of the image of the loft territory, therefore, its facades will be carefully restored, and its convenient location relative to the entrance predetermined its use as restaurant.
The new parts of the two side "facades" of the quarter represent a kind of transition from brick architecture to modern: their proportions and texture of the walls largely correspond to the nearby monuments, while the material (light stone and multi-colored glass), the rhythm and pattern of the windows and the composition itself are completely unambiguously declare modern origins. Successfully using the existing relief (almost 20 meters) on the site, the architects split both building lines into separate "steps", where the roof of each subordinate building turns into a landscaped terrace. Such a cascading solution also has an important architectural meaning: as the distance from the central core, the houses become more and more modern in their style, as if preparing outside observers for the 21st century architecture to become a sovereign mistress on the shore of the reservoir.
And this is really so: the compositional center of the coastal territory will be a cinema and concert hall of a complex polygonal shape with developed consoles, which seem to fly in different directions. The houses on the pier, the main facades of which are decorated with expressive rectangular consoles, reminiscent of periscopes, are similar to him. The influence of Dutch and Scandinavian architects is obvious here: just remember the "sphinxes" of Neutelings Riedijk Architects or the Plassen Cultural Center of the Danish bureau 3XN. However, T + T Architects do not hide the fact that in their work they focused on the best examples of modern European architecture. Thus, they sought to show the boundless stylistic potential of the loft quarter and the possibility of creating a truly multifunctional and in every sense of the attractive area on this very depressed territory, which will be able to transform the urban landscape of Saratov and give the city a new center of public attraction.
