Work on the DAWN LOFT * STUDIO project by architects DNA AG began with winning a closed architectural blitz competition held by KR Properties last fall. Three teams took part in the competition, including one bureau from Holland. The dimensions of the house and its structure were determined by the parameters of the existing building; the architects were required to propose a concept of external appearance, landscaping and interiors - solving them in the so-called "loft" style, while making them unlike other objects of KR Properties.
The house is located in the very center, in the Krasnaya Presnya area: it is the eastern part of the territory of the Rassvet machine-building plant, the oldest buildings of which, still belonging to the plant, were built in 1900 by Roman Klein for the legendary furniture factory “Mur and Meriliz”. Since then, the site has been built up with industrial buildings from different periods, including the end of the 20th century. DNAag worked with one of these late Soviet corps. The eastern border of the site is adjacent to the park of the former P. I. Shchukin, a small neo-Russian-style complex, known to many Muscovites as the Timiryazev Biological Museum.
“Walking along its linden alleys with scattered bizarre museum houses, you find yourself in the amazing atmosphere of a chamber Moscow estate,” confesses one of the authors of the project, Natalya Sidorova. - Here, nearby are residential high-rise buildings and brutal industrial buildings of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet period. We could not ignore this colorful neighborhood and tried to find a solution that would be organic to the contrasting environment, but endowed with an individual character. And to form a comfortable courtyard space without "prompts" from the urban context."
The accuracy of the conceptual solution, immediately found by the authors in the competition sketch, allowed them in their further work to fully follow the original idea, specifying in the course of further work only the dimensions and details, - the architects say.
The essence of the idea was to visually divide the horizontal of the longitudinal facades of the building into six "separate houses" - everything together turned out to be similar to a fragment of a city street built according to the general design code, but not quite the same.
Architects use bricks of different shades for each conventional "house", and play a little with the levels of the cornices. The idea of small houses is emphasized not only by the plasticity of the facades, but also by volume - due to the different heights of the ridge of the roof. The silhouette is enriched by the open terraces of the upper floors, enhancing the street appearance. The conventional "house" - one cell of the facade - corresponds to one large loft overlooking the museum on the western side of the building and two smaller ones on the eastern side. Therefore, the western and eastern facades additionally differ from each other - in width, proportions, and the number of windows. The theme is picked up by nuances and details: the texture of brickwork, window frames (brick frames, metal and laconic windows without frames) and balconies (protruding, French, recessed loggias), - forming the individual facial features of each "house".
Inside there are four floors of two-level lofts with parking in the existing basement of the building and a two-level attic in the upper level. All lofts with a mezzanine and with a second light, up to 6 meters high. The premises of the first floor have their own entrance from the street, the rest of the lofts can be accessed from the elevator halls and the longitudinal corridor located across the floor. Since the construction of the building is a frame, it will be easy for buyers to combine lofts both along the facade and in depth, acquiring lots located opposite each other, which, by the way, was done by the very first buyer, say the architects.
The concept of interiors of public spaces of the building proposed by the authors follows the general idea of the project. The design of the corridor reflects inside the decoration fragments of each facade, reminding the inhabitants of which of the conditional “houses” they are inside: the brick finish changes color and texture, the borders between the conditional “houses” are accented with frames.
According to the authors, it was important in the project to find a way to integrate industrial development into a residential urban environment, while preserving the historical factory spirit of the place. From here arose the plot of the insertion of small volumes, more characteristic of residential buildings, into a large rectangular industrial frame. It is difficult to say which plot is more important - a factory plot suggested by the environment and the customer, or an urban plot introduced by the authors - probably in this case it makes sense to combine two themes or even develop one into the other: factories into a city and cities into a factory - a kind of metaphor for reorganization industrial zones as such.
However, no less than the diversity of several buildings, the unity of the “code” is important, which prevents the composition from falling apart, playing in the diversity of urban development. All six facades on both sides of the building are united by a common grid, where the window of two-level lofts is taken as a module. Somewhere, mainly in the upper parts of the building, which, according to the principle of superposition, are supposed to be lightened, a jumper appears, splitting the module into two parts; somewhere, on the contrary, two windows are merged in large stained-glass windows. But the logic is not violated: the module is read even on the blank walls of the end facades - a checkerboard pattern of a decorative brick texture. The unity of the material is brick, and the general, despite the different heights of the cornices, is a gentle slope of the gable roof.
Inside, in the interior projects proposed by the architects, there are also many brick surfaces; they are supported by the texture of concrete, black doors and metal elements. Some brutality of this set is compensated by the abundance of white surfaces and natural light: all the windows are "French", from floor to ceiling, which is especially impressive in the space of a two-story living room. The ceiling of the upper level of the attic is an inclined surface of the rafter structure of a pitched roof, trimmed with wood and cut through with zenith skylights. The cozy country space is complemented by spacious terraces and a fireplace, provided only for the upper floors.
Wood trim appears on the outside as well, in a ribbed canopy above the entrance. The visor is cut through with the semblance of a lens capable of casting a round striped patch of sunlight onto the wall: superimposed on the embossed stripes of a brick wall, it should look mesmerizing. In addition, the circle of light at the entrance, moving along the wall following the sun, was conceived by the authors as an association with the logo of the Dawn project. The evening illumination of the entrance repeats the same theme, and in the vestibule it is duplicated by a pendant lamp, which illuminates a circle on a wooden surface.
At the other end of the house there is a sharp nose of a visor over the entrance to the parking lot made of artificially oxidized steel, the edging of which clearly indicates the difference or even the opposite of the “human” entrance and the “automobile” entrance, not in vain placed on two different sides.
The lofts on the ground floors received separate entrances and open terraces raised above the sidewalk to their floor level. The plinths of the terraces, as well as the entrance to the parking, will be finished with sheets of oxidized steel and, along the contour, will be complemented by a variety of vegetation in the built-in flower beds. All this together forms a permeable, artistic border between the private and the public, and the house, it turns out, combines the properties of a private suburb or townhouse on the ground floors with city lofts above. Private is elevated, hidden from view, but not completely - and as you walk by, you can catch a glimpse of the residents behind the foliage drinking coffee on the terrace, almost like in a cafe on the street - such a contact of residents with the urban space gives it a different dimension, less closed and more human than is now accepted in Moscow.
Below we publish answers to several questions posed by Yulia Zinkevich to Natalia Sidorova, Konstantin Khodnev and Daniil Lorenz, kindly provided by the architects.
You say that you wanted to "avoid prompting from the context." And yet, how did you react to the environment?
Konstantin Khodnev:
- The building is located inside a dense urban area, we see all the facades in fragments or only when approaching the building, and long facades are perceived in a strong perspective reduction. The small-sized courtyard spaces are mostly formed by the building's own facades. Therefore, we paid great attention to the plasticity and proportions of the facade elements, the texture of the material, the detailed solution of the character of private terraces on the ground floor and their landscaping.
What inspires you in working on projects?
Daniel Lorenz:
“In our numerous travels around the world, we try to absorb a wide variety of architectural and cultural experiences. And in the future we use them in our works. Moreover, this is not a copying of specific forms, but a desire to convey the correct images and sensations, avoiding secondary. From fresh "impressions" which came in handy in the development of the concept "DAWN LOFT * STUDIO", I can name the historic warehouses along the harbor canals in Hamburg with picturesque brick walls extending into the water.
Does DNA AG carry out authorial control over the implementation of the project?
Konstantin Khodnev:
- We always try to accompany our projects until the completion of all work on the building. Re-equipment of an existing factory building is not an easy process, various questions constantly arise and require a solution to the designer's supervision, even though we very carefully think over all the details at the design stage. I hope that in this case we will be with the project at all stages of its implementation, especially since it has already begun.
