The construction of the EGODOM residential complex, the project of which we talked about three years ago, is nearing completion - it is planned to commission it already in the first quarter of 2016. The urban space around is filled mainly with Soviet buildings, residential and institutes, but this grayish environment is interspersed with two sights of the turn of the past and the century before last: the Alekseevskaya pumping station, which once pumped water from the Rostokinsky aqueduct to the Sukharev tower, and the orphanage of the Bakhrushin brothers. Both are representatives of the "brick style" - which, like Sergei Skuratov's interest in brick, a warm material with a varied texture, determined the choice of the main theme.
The complex consists of two glass-brick buildings, one of which, sixteen-storeyed, is brought forward, to a break in street routes. The second is a nine-story plate, placed parallel and slightly in depth. The buildings are united by a courtyard surrounded by a brick wall with transparent glass inserts and white matte lamellas - a modern version of the fences popular in the 19th century, stone, but sometimes transparent. The courtyard is buried approximately three meters, equipped with geoplastics and artificial relief, zoning its space, highlighting places for recreation, sports and playgrounds, as well as a lounge area arranged on a hill under a canopy; large trees are planned to be planted in special concrete bowls.
The facades of the house are a strict lattice, from a distance - thin, and close up convincingly volumetric, with a deep relief. Vertical proportions are noticeably predominant, making the house fit like a dandy. But the scale varies: somewhere the cells combine two windows, somewhere - three, and in some places the rhythm returns to the "classic" floor-by-floor version. The facades facing the crossroads are more massive and more plastic than the rest - here two-thirds are occupied by brick planes, animated by a relief mesh in the rhythm of windows; the picture is completed by a slight turn of the "head" of both volumes.
For the perception of the complex as a whole, the material is responsible - brick. That is why both the architect and the client took a serious approach to his choice. The brick forms the canvas of the walls, displays the slender lines of the pylons, unites the ensemble in texture and meaning. Brick is no less active in patios and terraces.
It was possible to form a rich terracotta texture of the walls with overflowing shades - from light ocher to dark chocolate, thanks to a special brand of brick. The EGODOM brick, named after the complex under construction, was specially developed for it by the German company Hagemeister based on the sketches of Sergei Skuratov. The architect strove to achieve a special naturalness of the material with a wide color palette and a variety of shapes. I must say, he did it. The new facing brick, supplied by the Kirill company, has a natural non-uniform texture and a rich range. Clinkers differing in tone and texture are folded into a living and voluminous canvas, skin, which, thanks to the play of shades, seems almost alive.
A total of 1,318,898 clinker units will be used in EGODOM-e. In addition to the standard facing bricks in the 212x105x40 cm format, Hagemeister manufactured, and the Kirill Company delivered to the construction site six types of bricks, in particular: solid brick with three front sides, brick with a front bedded side, and a number of non-standard bricks according to the drawings of the Sergey Skuratov bureau.
Separately, it should be said about the production technology. The brick is made exclusively from natural clay, without chemical additives and dyes. A variety of colors can be obtained due to the high firing temperature. In addition, a special glaze is used, which forms either a matte or glossy surface. The brick can be laid with both the front and back sides, which allows for even greater variability of the texture. At the same time, an absolutely natural eco-friendly material has a rather low level of water absorption and high frost resistance.
Sergey Skuratov has been working with the theme of brick facades for many years, constantly discovering new facets of this "warm", natural and diverse material. Skuratov's houses are not just lined with bricks, they look like they are entirely composed of rich shades of terracotta. That allows you to soften the immanent rigidity of the glass-iron architecture of our time, to endow it with a human dimension, to turn the house into a work of art worthy of comprehensive, in detail, scrutiny. *** Hagemeister is a family business that has been producing clinker for over 100 years. The assortment of Hagemeister includes more than 300 colors, formats and textures of facade and road clinker, complemented by many types of molded, acoustic clinker and ready-made elements. Hagemeister's specialists are eager to develop customized solutions for specific projects - in collaboration with architects and other project participants.
CJSC Firma KIRILL is the general partner of Hagemeister in the Russian Federation. The companies jointly supplied clinker for the construction of the Garden Quarters residential complex in Khamovniki, and for a number of private houses in the Moscow region.
