We talked about the project of an office complex on the first kilometer of Rublevskoye Highway in 2008. Now it is built; the area around is not yet very attractive, but these details cannot be seen from the Moscow Ring Road, and the complex fits well into the perspective of Moscow highways.
I must admit that I managed to understand these buildings only when they were built, that is, now. In 2007, Sergei Kiselyov showed the project not without pride and with the words: “Look, what we came up with for the first kilometer of the Rublevskoe highway,” and then I did not understand. Two large, but graceful cases, in Vkhutemas style set at right angles to each other, with aluminum Corbusse legs. The wide planes of the side glass facades - then, in the project - were wrapped at the ends with a golden copper net: a fashionable shape of a "cut roll", simultaneously playing with perspective and scale, focusing on the Moscow Ring Road. Modernism, laconicism, simplicity of the solution "one-two", as Sergey Kiselev liked to explain. A clean shape, a little shine, lightly but boldly drawn contours of the plates … The suspicion that the shape speaks did not leave, and now it is clear what it is, more precisely, what kind of plastic hint is present in the two cases, making them an irreplaceable addition to the intersection.
This is a pointer. Two giant crystal hands, precious, in a "gold" setting, cyclopean jewelry hands from a fairy tale, very appropriate at the main elite crossroads of the Moscow region - the Rublevskoye highway. So the architects rethought the topic, with a hint, of course, but how else - neither life nor art allows anything else, so, of course, there are no arrows; it seemed. There are only asymmetric "dovetail" tails, the slopes of the facade surfaces with a height of six floors, and the bevel of the roof, which strengthens the perspective, three floors. Where the arrows could have been, the volumes were cut obliquely, almost straight, leaving only the notches of the "tails" on the opposite side; and rightly so, it would literally be impossible to make arrows. But all together, but from a distance, from the district, at speed - the pointer is. The theme of the crossroads is strong in it, now you can't miss the intersection, the place is marked with a building-sign.
In the initial version of the project, the housings looked more expensive and, shall we say, more luxurious. The crystallinity of the glass shine was enhanced by inclined, glass "canopies", infrequently scattered over the entire plane: the courtyard facade was made of similar stripes
The Hermitage Plaza, but here later it was necessary to simplify, remove the stripes, simplifying the glass to large planes in a neatly traced thin grid of gray bindings and a large one - interfloor contours and rare verticals, which add up to a pacified modernist pattern of dotted ribbons. And all the same, the plates remained crystal, transparent through and through, only the shading of the embossed flaps was replaced by restrained regularity in the spirit of the seventies.
And one more thing: at first you walk past many buildings under construction with pleasure, observing the simplicity of the three-dimensional mesh of concrete columns, and later with disappointment when the volumetric structure is hidden behind a dull shell. Here, due to the transparency of large planes of glass, the original effect of the three-dimensional grid was preserved - albeit not completely, but on a sunny day you involuntarily freeze, seeing through the building, through the light. The crystallization of space, its transformation from an ephemeral natural into an inhabited, lattice and multi-tiered one, occurs easily, without any tectonic overcoming, but as if it were outlined with a confident hand and cut out, placing it at the right time and place. This effect is especially noticeable where the inclined planes of the end facades intersect with the straight inner mesh.
The framing contour changed the most during the cost optimization process. Immediately after 2008, he lost his golden openwork shine, having parted with jewelry connotations. The new color of the cladding panels, now aluminum, was chosen for a long time, through a careful compromise between the wishes of the customer and the plans of the architects; tried on on the spot, assessed how this or that color will look in different weather. And finally, we settled on light beige panels, which in a cloudy time seem to be restrained matt, and in the sun they shine, shimmering on inclined surfaces and endowing the facades of the "shell", if not gold, then a moderately precious silver tint.
The end facades were cut through with windows: in 2008, the architects considered an option with even rows of dotted square openings, but implemented, and in my opinion rightly, another. The first option was from the nineties, and the second can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, the beige color is a bit like a Jurassic stone, and the vertical windows partly fit into the current moderately classic trend. But on the other hand, the rows of small, grouped in pairs, vertical windows in the fawn wall evoke completely different, non-glamorous associations - from a distance they look like the holes of punched cards, cardboard media of bit information in computers of the eighties. A good way to unobtrusively comprehend the history of both buildings and places in the spirit of the notorious spiral: enough already, they shook them with gold bracelets, it's time to return to the ideals of the time of perforcards and form some kind of foundation in the spirit of Asimov.
SK&P architects also designed the interiors of the lobbies, solving them in the same vein: laconic, but not without a sonorous reception. Glass walls, a dark floor, beige walls, and a white ceiling cut through by continuous stripes of light fixtures whose lines of perspective continue to be reflected in the shimmery polished stone. In the same way, the bodies are reflected-continue one in the other.
The building turned out to be calm and businesslike, although not without a share of nobility in the transparency of the plates and beveled planes. The architects appreciate the fact that they managed to persuade the customer in the process of optimizing costs not to straighten the facades to a box-parallelepiped and to preserve the original plasticity of the volumes, the sharp dynamics of which was carefully calculated based on the look from a passing car. This is really a great success: the fact is that markets, hangar-type breakwaters and, oddly enough, forests still prevail on the Moscow Ring Road: the gaze stops on little, but here it catches right away. From the track, the complex does not seem too large and, thanks to the perpendicular positioning of the larger body, is mobile - it quickly alternates angles, even provokes to slow down, to make out. The capacious form works by itself, with every line, thanks to which it turns out to be insensitive to the economy of decorative finishes. It happens the other way around: they finish it expensively, but the box is a box, no joy, it's a pity for the funds that went into the lining. And then no, the takeoff of the perforated wings is as proud as if they were gold. Appropriate, in a word, and light work. One of the last completed projects, on which Sergey Kiselev personally worked.
