The project in question was developed in the middle of last year as part of a closed architectural competition. In addition to Sergey Skuratov Architects, Project Meganom and the workshop Tsimailo, Lyashenko and Partners took part in this competition, but the winner was never named. The customer simply changed his mind about summing up the results, so that all projects fell on the shelf. We present to our readers the version of Sergei Skuratov about how a residential building, built at the very beginning of Vernadsky Avenue, could turn out.
The site, which became the subject of the competition, is located between the park areas of the observation deck of Vorobyovy Gory, Moscow State University and the former Palace of Pioneers. Most of its territory borders on the Leninogorsk water supply junction, and only from the north does it adjoin the Monolit residential complex (Kosygina, 19) and the Institute of Housing and Communal Services. From the point of view of future tenants, the place for the construction of a chamber club house is simply ideal: almost the very center, an abundance of greenery, enviable views from the windows. In addition, the customer was able to agree on a direct drive to the territory of the future complex from Vernadsky Avenue, which means that residents will have one of the most convenient routes in the Moscow south-west. In addition to the highest requirements for the class of the designed housing, the participants were predictably limited in its height: the house was not supposed to disturb the prevailing panoramas of the area, and ideally not to look out at all from the trees growing along the avenue. Skuratov fully observes this wish.
Oriented to Vernadsky Avenue, the site is actually located perpendicular to it, expanding as it moves away from the highway, and Sergey Skuratov gives the same logic of urban development to the residential complex. First of all, it is a three-part structure, which made it possible to avoid the creation of a monotonous squat volume in conditions of limited altitude. The architect designs three buildings - the narrower one actually fixes the entrance to the site from the avenue, while the other two are located in the depth along its central axis.
The resulting displacement of volumes relative to each other becomes the most important not only compositional, but also the architectural theme of the project: firstly, the complex has “external” and “internal” facades, which are solved in completely different ways, and secondly, space, detached by the first building, it acquires a more intimate status than the main courtyard, which stretches along the other two houses. The relief difference existing on the site is extremely helpful in this sense: a 5.5-meter drop towards the avenue makes it possible to create a single stylobate for all buildings, only two distant buildings, as expected, grow out of it, and with the "street" it forms a single whole. Due to this, directly from the side of the avenue near the complex, there is an entrance to the underground parking, which excludes the accumulation of cars in the courtyard area, and the courtyard itself is solved in two levels, forming a complex system of open and closed spaces.
The theme of the drop in relief is reflected in the architectural design of the narrow building. Having received the shape of a trapezoid in the plan (Skuratov puts it exactly along the borders of the allocated "appendix"), it expands slightly in the direction of the avenue. And the architect gives this literally representative facade a tangible bias: the house seems to take its head away from the noisy highway, not wanting to have anything to do with it. And since its first level is actually a stylobate, the architect decides the “bottom” as massively as possible, using solid brickwork. Above, the armor is cut through by rather narrow verticals of the windows, which only on the side facade begin to stretch and become truly panoramic.
Similarly, the "external" facades of the other two buildings, with which they face the neighbors - a residential building and an institute, are also solved. Skuratov intended to make the impregnable walls from the Kolumba clinker bricks produced by the Danish company Petersen Tegl, and pair it with glass, sometimes transparent, and sometimes becoming more and more opaque, to a state of genuine milky whiteness. This is how the internal facades are made, with which the houses look at the most intimate part of the territory - the gardens of the apartments on the first floor.
Separately, it should be said about the relationship of the buildings with each other. Where the trapezoid and the square-shaped middle house face each other with milky facades, the architect rounds off the sharp corners, thereby making the glass part of the buildings' envelope even more ephemeral. On the other hand, the second and third buildings interact with the blind planes of the firewalls: the fact is that the house farthest from the avenue is twice as long as the average one, and the length ratio made it possible to place the central entrance to the complex just under this "gorge". Naturally, the roof above it is made completely transparent, and the resulting dizzying light well effectively complements the interiors of the public area. And in them, I must say, the architects invested especially.
And if the architecture of the complex is dominated by strict geometry (the new house enters the context in a very collected manner), then the interior, on the contrary, is dominated by the theme of dissolving boundaries. The interiors of the apartments are not just laconic, but they bring to the absolute the idea of "nothing superfluous", which, as you know, only very wealthy people can realize in everyday life. The refined whiteness of private living spaces is framed by more materially decided interiors of public areas. Here, too, there is a white color, but it no longer dominates so unambiguously: the dazzling white floors pass into the walls of milk glass, and it, in turn, becomes more transparent as it approaches the ceiling. This fragile, as if thinning matter is contrasted with the warm monolith of natural wood - it is used to decorate the ceilings, part of the walls and interiors of the library, which was included in the premises of the first floor at the initiative of the architect and became the “natural intellectual finale of this typology”. The lobby is separated from the street by a glass wall that bends in a wave, not only shifting the border between the outside and the inside, but giving the entrance area a more welcoming soft outline that betrays the true face of this seemingly very closed house.
