Let us remind you that the competition for the best project of a residential complex, which is planned to be built in Moscow at the intersection of Rublevskoye Highway and Yartsevskaya Street, was organized by the PIK group of companies and the Moskomarkhitektura
at the end of last year. Today in the center of our attention is the work of TPO "Reserve", which won the "silver".
As Vladimir Plotkin recalls, he agreed to participate in this competition, first of all, because of the site. The architect himself lives nearby and knows the area very well. The “failure” in the urban planning fabric that exists at the intersection of Rublevskoye Shosse and Yartsevskaya Street has long been an “eyebrow”, and he was sincerely interested in the opportunity to rethink this situation, to offer his own solution to the problem. Moreover, as soon as the architects got their hands on the technical task, the solution for the future complex came by itself. The hand holding the pencil drew a sketch before the architect had time to read all the points of the TOR to the end. And this spontaneously come solution seemed so optimal that the compositional and planning idea was no longer changed - they were just finalizing the program and facades.
The authors proceeded from the fact that when driving along Rublevskoe highway and along Yartsevskaya street, the complex should be perceived completely differently. Both fronts of Rublyovka are built up quite densely and at the same time chaotically, and I wanted to oppose these almost continuous "chains" with a rather impressive material volume, which would be visibly present in the panorama of the highway and had time to intrigue those passing by. Yartsevskaya is a completely different story. She goes lower and quickly runs away to Mnevniki, the panorama of which boasts "air". Accordingly, it was precisely the thin verticals that asked for it, which did not radically change anything. This is how the Plotkin complex was formed: it consists of two 40-storey two-section plates of residential buildings, which are oriented perpendicular to the Rublevskoye highway. In the middle of each of them, the architects make a 19-storey cutout, so that the plates turn into letters P - one of them rests on the stylobate and becomes a kind of portal, and the other, on the contrary, looks with its “legs” up, allowing the creation of an additional public space. Such mirroring gives a generally very laconic composition and dynamics, and an expressive silhouette, and the sought-after "transparency".
This solution has a number of other undeniable advantages. Firstly, in this way the architects have reduced to a minimum the number of apartments overlooking the noisy Rublevskoe highway. It was also possible to get rid of uneconomical corner sections, as well as to minimize the number of staircase and elevator blocks, which is very important for economy-class housing (and it should be built here). And finally, a purely compositional aspect. On the contrary, across Yartsevskaya Street, there is a very high and, in every sense, a dimensional residential building, the mass of which is difficult to ignore: flanking the site with two slender plates, the architects visually balance this volume, creating a kind of propileia of Yartsevskaya Street, and displaying "windows" on Rublevskoye highway which are hard to miss.
An extended two-story volume, inscribed between the ends of the buildings from the side of Rublevskoe highway, adds visual lightness to the complex. Having the depth of one section, it is completely glazed, which allows not only to support the street front, but to make it more permeable and friendly. The functions have also been selected accordingly: it is proposed to place commercial and public premises here that would work for the city. And at the same time, this expressive glass "crossbeam" closes the courtyard space, separating it from pedestrian flows along the Rublevskoye highway and working as a kind of noise screen.
The rest of the stylobate, which actually occupies the entire site, is reserved for parking, and on its roof the architects create a landscaped courtyard intended for the residents of the complex. The architects saturate this seemingly quite standard element with functions as much as possible: here there are sports grounds (on the roof of the guest parking), and a shady garden (it is proposed to make a full-fledged soil for planting large-sized vehicles, donating part of the parking spaces in the underground parking), and playgrounds. In a single landscape system, it is possible to create a system of various public spaces, in which there was a place even for a small stylish reservoir. And the landscaping of a fragment of the roof in the eastern part of the complex (the very crossbeam of the inverted "P") will create an additional open-air lounge area at the height of the 21st floor.
The architects have developed several options for the solution of facades, radically different from each other. One of them is based on the use of large "graphics" formed by the diagonal, arising from the combination of horizontal and vertical walls, in the second case, each of the plates is conventionally divided into two parts, one of which the architects cover with a fractal pattern, and the second with small "pixels".
Two more options are based on the active introduction of color. A more radical proposal involves the use of a red hue, in which architects paint both the ends of buildings and most of the walls, while a more restrained one, in turn, is based on alternating yellow and white surfaces. As Vladimir Plotkin himself admits, the authors could not choose which of these facades is the best, so they specially presented all four options to the jury. And, perhaps, the architects can understand: the sculptural form they proposed is, indeed, so self-sufficient that virtually any drawing of the facing emphasizes its expressiveness.
