Eurokvartal, or M-8 microdistrict, is part of the Seventh Heaven residential area, one of the ambitious projects of Ak Bars Development, a large development company in Tatarstan. The architectural concepts for the "Seventh Heaven", the territory of which surrounds the new hippodrome of the city of Kazan from three sides, have been developed for a long time; in 2008, A. Asadov's bureau worked on the area, as well as a number of other workshops; the pre-crisis concepts remained on paper. Now Ak Bars Development is building the second phase of the Kazan XXI Century microdistrict in the eastern part of Seventh Heaven: twenty eight-storey houses made of panels from the KDSK plant, formerly KPD-3 - the plant bought out and modernized by the developer was solemnly opened in July.
The Eurokvartal territory is located on the other, western side of the hippodrome, on the site of the old airport, the Stalinist building of which is planned to be preserved, and next to the so far only Kazan skyscraper - the Azure Skies tower (120 m high). Eurokvartal will also be built by KDSK, but with architecture, let's say, more personalized. In 2014, Ak Bars Development considered the possibility of holding an international competition, but, abandoning this idea, on the recommendation of the developer's advisor for architecture and urban planning Dmitry Puzyrev, opted for the bureau of Sergey Skuratov, who was ordered a new concept of the M-8 microdistrict; work was ready by early 2015. Now the concept was seen and approved by the chief architect of Kazan Tatyana Prokofieva, the mayor of the city, as well as the acting president of Tatarstan; the project was also shown to the Minister of Construction of the Russian Federation Mikhail Menu.
It is planned that the architects will work in detail with the project for two years to launch several new production lines at the plant - so that, starting construction, it can be carried out quickly: according to the head of Ak Bars Development, the company wants to enter this way "into Western practice." … Now, at the concept stage, the facades have not yet been worked out, and in the future Sergey Skuratov is going to expand the number of individual options to one hundred. "We plan to offer something akin to LEGO," says the architect, "a constructor that could be further developed." New factory lines, or rather even say - the new type of production incorporated in the project and the new nature of the relationship between the architect and the house-building plant, could give a start to the development of panel construction in Kazan of a completely different type: flexible and suitable for many architectural solutions. Since the project proposed by Sergei Skuratov is not at all "typical" in the common sense of the word.
The main plot of "Eurokvartal" was the image of the Volga River and, in general, a reflection on the border location of Kazan between the West and the East. The architect made the axis of the new district a longitudinal park, located approximately on the site of the old runway, with a small artificial river winding along it. It is planned to take water from an artesian well and "twist" it in a closed loop: the river flows out from under the office tower (growing slightly higher than its predecessor neighbor - 150 m), flows through the territory, following the relief drop (2.5 m), then leaves underground, where pumps return water back. The banks of the river are either steep or gentle, it flows from north to south, winds, forms a couple of small islands. In a word, this little "Volga" divides the conditional West and East, with which Sergey Skuratov associates two basic materials: brick and white stone, respectively. In the presentation album of the concept, the shaped poles are indicated by the two towers of the Kazan Kremlin: the white Spasskaya and the red Syuyumbike. The division is clear, but conditional: in the Spasskaya tower of the white-stone - only the lower part, built at Grozny (was he an oriental man or a western man? So in the residential complex of Sergei Skuratov - the banks are not literally separated, white and brick facades are mixed, meet, look at each other. The literal designation applies only to the embankments: the western brick, the eastern white, and their "meeting" takes place on a pedestrian bridge in the form of a striped gradient with a transition from stone to brick. In other words, the inexhaustible and painful theme of the East-West is indicated, but not imposed, you can reflect, or you can not, limiting yourself to observing the curious plastic effects of juxtaposing the textures of brick and stone. The stone in the lower floors of the houses will be, apparently, natural, and in the upper concrete, artificial; the authors are considering the possibility of including oriental ornaments in the decor, which will emphasize the cultural difference between the houses and enhance the intrigue inherent in the project.
Indeed, indeed, the point is not in the Volga and the formal division of Europe and Asia. All of Russia consists of the interpenetration of East and West, as many have written about, without reaching any conclusion, however. This penetration is noticed suddenly, sometimes - as beautiful, often inexplicable; This is the "national", by definition of the late romantics, Russian architecture of the 17th century, to which both the Syuyumbike tower and the Spasskaya bell tower belong: its basis is western, and the view is incomprehensible, eastern, but the mixture of red and white is attractive. So Sergei Skuratov alternates between white and red houses: both with meaning and for beauty. On the other hand, in our time in Kazan, earlier than in Moscow, it was possible to implement the western idea of an innovation city, so a European residential area with all the features of a modern layout may also appear soon.
However, the games of cultural opposition East-West are also, in essence, invented by European culture. In this project, Sergei Skuratov remains more than European, rational, subtle and is aware of new trends. The grid of quarters is orthogonal hippodamous and is oriented strictly to the cardinal points. The authors offer their own module for the quarter - half as short as in Manhattan, but not as square as in Barcelona, namely 99.4x66.5 m - as Skuratov explains, this size was the result of calculations and was determined by many reasons. The height of the houses is comparatively small: on average, eight to nine floors, something in between a Stalinist house and a lucrative one of the 19th century; closer to the 150-meter tower of the office center, the height rises to 12 floors. The courtyards are closed to cars collected in underground parking, raised above the pavement, quiet and green. The first floors are given over to cafes and shops - going out to the river they turn into galleries, similar to the Rue de Rivoli.
One of the peculiarities of Eurokvartal is a large amount of space allocated to various, including public, infrastructure. This is a full-fledged small city, akin to a medium-sized antique city-state, it should have about five thousand inhabitants. It is not surprising that a theater with an additional summer stage, an amphitheater in a river bend, a small museum, a shopping and sports center with an "agora" square in front of them are conceived. In the middle of the residential buildings, two block rectangles are allocated for kindergartens, and two more are built into residential buildings.
But most of all, the school is striking: its gigantic volume spread out on the ground is bionic, and at the same time calligraphic, similar to a stroke of Arabic script. Covered with an ornament of triangular lanterns and at the same time flexible, he continues the "oriental theme" (school of white color), and begins a new line of reasoning - about the invasion of modern architecture into a relatively conservative quarter building, about their coexistence. Following the laws of the architectural game of reconstruction of the history of the city, which is popular in our time, a seemingly small, rather still European, or border (let's not forget the main theme) town with all the components: with small, rationally planned and conservative quarters of the “new urbanism ", with inserts of bionic plastic, with its" City "- an office tower, with a river and so on.
On the other hand, and especially when looking at the school, we can say that the town is becoming similar to the ancient city-state: it also has everything or almost everything that was considered in these cities, in their own way ideal, necessary for life. For example, a school that lightly embraces a large stadium with tiers of benches does not at all resemble the box of a Stalinist, or, say, a Victorian educational institution, but resembles an antique gymnasium, a place for educating people strong in spirit and body - a necessary accessory of Roman and Greek cities … Which perfectly fits into the resonance with the neighborhood of the city hippodrome, a grid of streets, an amphitheater. The theme is emphasized by the motifs of thin "Chipperfield" porticos flashing among the still temporary versions of the facades: the white-stone flair of the East is shifting somewhere in the direction of Asia Minor, throwing a bridge for a thousand or two years, and indicating the relationship of modern care for public spaces with the original source. Which, however, is also unobtrusive; you can count the semantic layers, or you can limit yourself to whatever you like - for example, the European quality of life that the project promises.
Among the facades proposed by Sergei Skuratov at the concept stage and subject to, according to the author, further processing and individualization, there are many that stand out for his hand: asymmetrical window slopes, thin nets, various textures, bold consoles. There are also fresh ideas that can be expected to remain. In particular, remembering that one of Shukhov's lattice towers has survived on the Volga, Skuratov offers his own interpretation of the motive - the diagonal grid of the truss holding the façade is framed with bricks. “In metal and wood, there were such solutions, but in brick, it seems, not yet,” the architect comments. Spread across the facades, the Shukhov farm becomes another Volga contextual accent, and, on the other hand, it is engineering, European in spirit, and it is not without reason that it appears in the “brick” part.
In this developing project there are many subtleties and, apparently, many ideas that have not yet been refined. And meanwhile, the most interesting thing should be considered the fact that it was conceived to be realized using panel technology. The fusion of East and West in this case looks like a culturological seasoning for another, more important process: Sergey Skuratov, who made diverse, artistic architecture of housing his specialization - few people work with residential buildings so artistically - in this case he transfers his experience to prefabricated architecture, factory construction while inoculating the renewed Kazan plant. This is not the first experience of Russian architects working with panel construction, but each following example gives hope for a gradual change in the panel construction, which is so annoying for everyone, to individual, unique, meaningful and, on the other hand, relatively inexpensive. The process is akin to the evolution of species - it is necessary for the architect to penetrate into the zone of responsibility of the plant, subordinate production to himself, transform it so that it does not work out, as it was in the seventies, on the contrary.
