Grishina Street is relatively narrow, and its surroundings are densely overgrown with trees. The Stalinist quarters "keep" the red line here, the microdistrict development diligently breaks it, but does not succeed entirely - the typically Moscow, or more generally Soviet "war of the worlds" stretches for several kilometers between the Mozhaisk highway and the ring road. The site is located between a gray silicate brick house of the fifties built along the red line, with a gable pediment, plaster pilasters and a cornice - and several "plates" of the early seventies from among those that later became a symbol of late Soviet development. So, although panel houses are found at a distance, and five-story buildings are lined up opposite, the nearest environment is brick of different shades.
Therefore, it is not surprising that brick became the main material of the facades - a contextually substantiated material that is also popular in modern architecture, which allows you to maintain the respectability of a traditional city without losing the relevance of the form.
However, brick facades were not a prerequisite, but the choice of architects.
The main task set for the authors of the project was: to fit a maximum of square meters of housing, a parking lot and a kindergarten on a small, half hectare, plot with a six-meter height difference (the slope starts from Grishina Street and goes inland to the east). In addition, there are plans to build a passage along the northern border someday.
Three-quarters of the allotted spot was occupied by the stylobate of the building; a small rectangle to the south remained free, which was best lit. That is why they gave him to the playground. The two-storey building of the kindergarten, again for reasons of insolation, was located by the architects on the south side - it catches the sun with large windows, but being low does not obstruct the most advantageous, southeastern light of the residential buildings. There are two buildings: one, seven-story, stretched along the red line of the street and supports the theme of the Stalinist five-story building. The other is a fourteen-story one, inscribed on the scale of the later houses of the immediate surroundings, placed at different angles in the depths of the territory. As you can see, the project is no stranger to reflective comprehension of the properties of the surrounding urban fabric: the complex both “holds” the street and opens up to the nature of the inner part of the district, it not only “reconciles” the two types of city within itself, but also experiences its borderline position.
Public premises are planned on the high ground floors. In addition to the courtyard “on the ground”, the authors envisaged two more courtyards: on the flat roof of the kindergarten for walks of its pupils and the main courtyard without cars for residents on the roof of the underground parking. From Grishina Street, you can enter the courtyard through a high rectangular "arch" opening on the left side of the seven-story plate. The landscaping inside is laconic, although special paving and artificial relief are provided. And down to the ground, from two courtyards - a large and a kindergarten, open flights of stairs lead. They descend from two sides along the eastern border of the stylobate, and when viewed from the wooded inner part of the area, the profiles of the stairs may seem like some park parterre, although their design is minimal: this is, of course, not Palazzo Pitti, but a simple, calm urban comfort class house.
Meanwhile, the main and most noticeable means of architectural expressiveness will be the solution of the facades. Their composition is designed for a thin, almost white, ivory-colored brick-crossbar and is attractive for the balance of the components. The floors are combined in pairs of two, but each pair is drawn in the middle with a thin horizontal stripe. The width of the windows and bay windows with balconies alternate rhythmically and moderately. However, the bay windows are contextual and resemble the glazed balconies of the neighboring Stalinist house. The depth of the wall varies widely: from one and a half meter loggias to thin one-brick French windows to the floor. The black metal of the balcony gratings, black inserts in the upper part of the windows, light bricks and glass of the windows are complemented by inserts imitating dark brown wood, which enhances the effect of depth and layering of the walls.
The wall here is not a plane at all, but an organized series of ledges and ledges, inscribed in a brick lattice of facades with a strictly drawn grid of joints. Wide horizontal rods are laid out in a clean spoon masonry and framed by edging made of brick pokes, and all this is in one plane, graphically. The vertical rods, on the contrary, are embossed: rows of bonded masonry alternate with a drop of half the width of the brick. It turns out similar to pixelated flutes, where the horizontal lines are friezes, and the ribbed verticals are visually "bearing" their blades.
Geometrized, but subtle in details, the game resembles the search for late mature modernism, where architects either strengthened constructivist ribbons, pushing the piers into the background, or gave free rein to vertical thrust, openly appealing to the warrant and even the portico. This kind of reference to the seventies and eighties in this area of the city is not only appropriate, but can also be understood as part of the author's understanding of the context. However, it should be noted that despite the noticeably greater complexity, multi-composition and refinement of the texture in comparison with the eighties, the architects managed to balance the vertical and horizontal, without giving priority to either one or the other. All lines have been calculated, not a single line has been crossed.
