Until recently, the only building that "welcomed guests" to the city from Moscow was the Dirol Cadbury plant: a standard industrial building with a rectilinear geometry of metal and glass planes. The idea to find a more representative architectural solution to the entrance to the city belonged to the city authorities, - say the architects of Yuri Vissarionov's bureau, - and it successfully coincided with the desire of the large furniture factory Elegy, based near Novgorod, to get its own trade and exhibition spaces.
At the end of 2010, PTAM Vissarionova presented a project of a shopping center, marked by the complexity of the composition, the combination of various textures and materials, even a somewhat theatrical look at the context, and not only about the immediate environment - the authors rethought the image of the ancient city as a whole, which we are talking about have already told in sufficient detail.
Now, in 2014, the first stage of construction has been completed. And although, as often happens, not all the elements of the original idea were fully realized: the authors had to abandon the display-windows placed in the external space and the conventional "moat" with water and a bridge, which so unequivocally referred to the fortress architecture - the result was the building still looks very similar to what we saw in the project proposal. The realized version managed to preserve both the effect of theatrical scenery and the image of the ancient city, and to remain in the trend of deconstructivist architecture with its contrasts, complex volumes and emotional effects both outside and inside.
The building is formed by five volumes of different heights, which form a picturesque volumetric composition, adjoining each other in a deliberate "disorder". It faces Moscow with a "central facade" - a reverse trapezoid with chaotically cut rectangles of windows and characteristic "entrance gates" of the main entrance. This "core" is responsible for the collective image of Russian medieval architecture, generalized so much that it is difficult to say which is more in it - a temple, a serf or a residential one; for the architecture of the North-West of Russia, generally speaking, a combination of white mass with asymmetrically scattered blotches is characteristic: be it inset crosses, windows or curbs. But in this case, the windows are quite large, their glasses are located in the plane of the facade and are framed by a wide frame of gray metal: this composition has more modern than medieval, although there is no hint of a cornice, windows brought out under the edge of the roof and protruding fragments of walls between them distinctly resemble serf battlements.
To the right of the cut white volume is adjoined by a glass, slightly higher, also expanding upward - a quote from the facades of the neighboring Dirol plant. But at the same time, it reflects the sky, clouds and reminds of the expanses of water, in particular, of the nearby Maly Volkhovets river (in the spring flood it approaches the section of the shopping center). A narrow glass tower with a white upper tier is the highest volume, it houses a staircase, which again makes one recall a tower or a bell tower, although it cannot be said that the similarities were too intrusive: for a modern shopping center, such a volume is also quite appropriate. The facades of the neighboring corner cube imitate wood cladding (in fact, all the facades are covered with composite material with various decorative films) - and the “wooden” spot looks like a logical addition to the white “stone” volume.
To the left of the main facade, three more volumes are lined up, the height of which is gradually decreasing: one of them is "wooden" and two are glazed. All of them are complemented by U-shaped entrance groups, selected according to the principle of contrast - glass cubes, for example, are combined with a "wooden" portal. The volumes are tightly molded, growing into each other, and sprouting from the ground like a large crystal, and at the same time, they unfold one after the other, slightly changing the turn and tilt, folding into a conglomerate like a city with a long history, white stone walls, temples, wooden fences and houses, concrete and glass modern structures.
The interior space of the multifunctional complex, as expected, reflects its compositional and spatial solution. The space of the central white volume, cut by the spots of many windows, is high, the height of three floors is combined in it, but the picturesquely scattered spots of the windows make it not three, but many-light, creating an unusual, light and complexly articulated space inside. And although in the first version it was planned to make the ceiling of this part look like a wall: a concrete array cut through by windows, and now it has been replaced with an aluminum roof on a lattice structure, the effect of light perforation was preserved, supplemented with spots of square lamps on the gray ceiling lattice. According to the laws of modernist architecture (which is also true for modern trade), spaces of different sizes and heights flow into each other, saturating the tour of the furniture exhibition with emotions and light accents, in the direction of which both natural light from large and small windows, and included in that the same game of illumination of electric lamps.
There are also point plastic plots: for example, vertical supports grow in the corners of the “white hall” practically from the concrete mass of the base of the walls diverging upward - this fusion, natural rationalism of plastic is akin to those “stucco” techniques that are responsible for the charm of medieval Novgorod (strictly speaking, to a greater extent even the Pskov) architecture. However, we are not talking about any massiveness - in the places where the supports are separated from the walls (their visual "sprouting"), squares of small windows appear, which, exactly according to the rules of modern architecture, make the bases of thin supports light, if not "floating”- and all this due to natural sunlight.
“Entry to the city is traditionally marked by status buildings: a travel castle, a tavern, towers, an arch. We tried to create a kind of thematic symbiosis. The Elegy Trade and Exhibition Center also has a "tavern" on the top floor, a high "watch tower" with a staircase, and even several "triumphal arches". And in the whole dynamic composition, something serf is felt. The result is architecture that is very scenic in its essence,”the authors of the object explain. Indeed, it seems that we are not looking at a building, but at a variant of theatrical scenery. Or to a painting by a brush, say, by Aristarkh Lentulov: there all the lines are inclined, the perspectives are enhanced or flattened, and in general the old Russian variegation seems to be seen through some kind of refractive optics, a kind of imaginary kaleidoscope. Here is a similar effect, only seen through the prism of neo-modernist architecture. The conventional, theatrical "city" before entering the city is real, but with an ancient history.
