We have already talked about this place twice: until 2009, the MFC on a trapezoidal section at the intersection of Ho Chi Minh Street and Prosvescheniya Avenue was designed by Sergey Kiselev, and the number of office premises in it, which was originally planned to be large, gradually decreased, and housing increased. Then Evgeny Gerasimov began to work with the site, at the same time the task changed: the main area was occupied by comfort-class housing, about a quarter - by an apart-hotel, and there were very few offices left, within the framework of a decorative additive. The construction of the complex, designed by Evgeny Gerasimov in 2010, was completed six months ago in almost full compliance with the project.
“In my opinion, the image of a 'wicker basket' or a fence, a picket fence surrounding the courtyard, conceived here, has turned out,” says Evgeny Gerasimov. I must admit this definition is very accurate, since, first of all, the meaning of a new house is that it fences off and protects from city noise and pollution a rather large (total area of the plot is 2.5 hectares) and integral space of the courtyard. Two buildings surround the courtyard with a symmetrical pentagon, vaguely reminiscent of the Soviet "quality mark": a U-shaped trapezoid of a twenty-story building facing Prosveshcheniya Avenue and a sharp “arrow” of converging streets, a wide sixteen-story “book” of the apart-hotel completes the perimeter on the rear side of the complex. There are only three passages to the courtyard: two where the ends of the house and the wings of the hotel meet, plus an arch in the "bow" part, through which you can enter from the side of the park on the arrow between the streets - in other words, the perimeter is very closed, directly opposite to the ideology of the blown " lines "microdistricts.
It turns out similar to the Stalinist quarters, only even larger. However, looking closely at the surrounding microdistricts, you can also find that the idea of a "super-quarter" was born here already in the eighties: panel plates of lower height, but often even longer length are often turned, they get either an L-shaped or U-shaped plan, sometimes they even lock themselves into spacious squares, either dreaming of the old city, or defending themselves from the cold wind. One way or another, looking at the plan of the district, one might think that the idea of a giant quarter was already present in it before, but was not then brought to its logical conclusion. The house of Yevgeny Gerasimov, definitely, fully revealed the topic: among the sloppy, and, despite all attempts, nevertheless very open, open environment of panel houses interspersed with late shopping centers, he is a fortress, a Norman castle, closing a restless sharp corner with his confident, dense mass crossing roads. This is a house-volume, in space it is first of all present - remains, organizing it primarily by its size and calm restraint.
Drawing of facades: a large grid of verticals, like a properly selected women's blouse, helps to structure and slightly lighten the impressive volume of the complex, which is wider from many points of view (except for the main one) than in height. The windows, partly ordinary, partly French, are arranged in vertical rows, alternating with interfloor inserts of neutral gray, and sometimes protrude forward with asymmetrically spaced bay windows. The vertical stripes of the walls between the windows, in fact, form an imaginary "picket fence", a palisade with superimposed on it, partly imitating chiaroscuro, a large pixel pattern of brown, beige and almost white (ivory) stripes. Their pattern is interrupted by thin light horizontals, capturing the "palisade" of the house after six, the hotel - three floors (thus, in one case, the rhythm is enlarged, in the other it is crushed and the difference in the height of the buildings is slightly concealed). In places, the color of the stripes is preserved and stitches the horizontal through and through, emphasizing its illusory nature and the ornamental nature of the drawing as a whole. Where the width of the stripes is wider (for example, in the bosom of the hotel, where the stairs are located), the drawing becomes truly pixelated, breaking up part of the plane. In the play of stripes on the facades - an attempt at optical correction of the volume, it also fits the semantic play: the massive volume of the "castle" in combination with the graphics of the stockade, as one plus one, in total give the Russian prison, the memory of the pre-Petrine north (however, what- then suggests that this allusion arose by accident).
Above, above the two upper floors, there is no horizontal screed (conditional entablature or cornice), the drawing is open to the sky, which enhances the similarity with, of course, very conditional, “rods” or, although the image of the fence is not literal at all, it is rather a reason for a geometric game, which, adding a bit of slenderness and mobility to the facades, turns an array of square meters into an author's work - which was not so easy when working with comfort-class housing (which, as you know, is the upper segment of the economy class; the house has underground parking at 511 cars (1062 apartments), the first floor is fully occupied by shops, cafes, a spa center; there is also a built-in kindergarten; apartments are sold with finishing).
For Evgeny Gerasimov, the YE’S house is one of the first projects in the genre of comfort class. “This is a fairly tough segment of low-cost housing, which involves many restrictions. We have rarely encountered such rules of the game before, - says Gerasimov. - But after all, an architect always works within limits, this is natural, otherwise we would live surrounded by masterpieces, the Louvres and the Eiffel Towers, which, you must admit, would also not be quite normal. There are no bad genres, you can also find interest here - especially if, as in this case, there is a developer who is ready to search for solutions together with us, to talk with an architect."
Comfort-class houses, not too expensive, but still allowing not to be limited to panel construction, came into practice after the 2008 crisis and now some of them, as we see, are being completed. A genre that requires strict self-restraint from the architect and, as a result, attention, accuracy and, probably, great efforts (in this case, the architects made about ten options before the final project appeared), should be recognized as useful and productive, since despite the framework, he leaves room for experiment. For example, for the appearance of such a giant closed quarter, hidden from the city noise inside.
