The plant, the territory of which is supposed to be reconstructed, is located in the Western District of Moscow and is part of a large-scale industrial "spot" bounded by the Moscow Ring Road, Mozhaiskoye Highway and Ryabinovaya Street. Semi-abandoned industrial lands are adjacent to a rather old residential area, the Kuntsevsky cemetery and the whimsically meandering Setun River, the banks of which are almost the only green zone of a huge area. In the project of a multifunctional complex developed in June 2013 on the site of the former plant, Sergey Skuratov enlarges the territory of the nature reserve by means of new plantings and a landscape park stretching between residential buildings.
If we close our eyes to the industrial past and the relatively close proximity to the cemetery, then the site located on the border between natural and urbanized areas can be called more attractive than vice versa. Its relief gradually decreases from the road to the river, along which the park is supposed to be laid out, and between the former factory buildings there is a small lake. The task facing the architects was greatly simplified by the fact that absolutely all factory buildings were to be demolished. In general, the initial conditions would be close to ideal, if not for one "but": almost close to the site is a "people's garage" - a multi-level parking monstrous in its proportions and appearance. Therefore, the first thing the architects were forced to think about was how to visually isolate the projected complex from this colossus.
Sergei Skuratov recalls that initially he was going to base the project on the principle of several development zones with a gradual decrease in its density as it approached the river - the very closeness to the natural zone was very good for this - but the need to close the parking lot made the architects interpret the first line of houses as a kind of protective screen. Along the outer border of the site, the authors concentrate all commercial functions: these are two rather extended volumes with a height of 5-6 floors, one of which occupies an office center, and the second is a shopping and entertainment center. Probably, if it were not for a garage, they would both freely be located along Vitebskaya Street, but since the parking lot is located at an angle to it, the building of the shopping and entertainment center has acquired the shape of an elongated check mark, open to the territory of the complex. Moreover, it actually embraced the reservoir existing on the site, and in order to create a full-fledged pedestrian promenade between it and the building, the architects change the geometry of the lake, turning it into another tick in the plan and thereby making it an integral part of the next "belt" of development - a landscape park between residential buildings.
The street front of the building, thus, turned out to be rather monolithic. To avoid the feeling of a very rigid structure, a small pedestrian square, as if integrated into the building of an office center, actively working on the city's first floors of buildings, as well as a wide boulevard that they flank on both sides, helps to avoid the feeling of a very rigid structure. This green axis is designed to connect all the projected objects of the complex with each other and provide a passage to the river, and then, along a light overpass, and to the opposite bank, to the Church of the Savior Image Not Made by Hands on Setun. Between public and residential buildings, the architects are designing another boulevard: running parallel to Vitebskaya Street, it forms a simple and intelligible coordinate system of the new district with the main pedestrian axis.
In the central part of the development area, on both sides of the main boulevard, there are two lines of housing: groups of five and six 21-storey towers. Quite compact in plan, high-rise buildings "sit" at different angles relative to the central axis, and their own corners are noticeably rounded."Growing" out of a landscape park broken on the roof of the stylobate and connected by a complex system of paths, in the plan they resemble, more likely, a grapevine than a residential area. “We considered a variety of options for the layout of the quarters and came to the conclusion that the towers are most appropriate in this case: an expressive and at the same time permeable silhouette, the exit of the squares required by the customer and the complete opposite of the“first line”development,” comments Sergey Skuratov.
The architect admits that six months later he used a similar solution in
the project of a residential complex on Rublevskoye Highway: there, between the towers, a full-fledged park is also broken up, under which places for guest parking are created. Here, however, the area of greening is much larger, and therefore the spatial scenarios are more diverse: a developed system of paths and ramps, playgrounds, recreation areas and even kindergartens are located here more than freely.
But the school is located closer to the river. The two-part volume (junior grades and the gymnasium are divided into different buildings), united by an elegant pergola, is interpreted by Skuratov as the last urban "landing" in the fabric of the natural park. Surrounded by sports and playgrounds, it seems to dissolve in the recreation area of the Setun River.
The competition for development concepts does not imply a detailed study of the architectural solution of the complex, and in the project of Sergey Skuratov only initial sketches are given of how the new multifunctional area on the site of the former plant might look like. In particular, its vertical dominants - residential towers - received different, but single-style facades, the color of which gradually changes from dark green to white. As if extending the man-made park upward, they would bring new life-affirming colors to the predominantly gray area.
We emphasize that the subjunctive mood was not used by chance: the results of this competition were never summed up, and Sergei Skuratov does not even know which of his colleagues he competed with in absentia. As the architect admits, his workshop took part in 5 competitions last year, but the organization and results of this very competition were perhaps the most discouraging. Instead of determining the winner or somehow systematizing the received concepts, the customer resold the site without taking advantage of the results of the competition, which, alas, means that the project "Sergey Skuratov Architects" will almost certainly remain on paper.
