House with an area of 210m2 from the outside it gives the impression of an extremely compact structure. Both the configuration of the volume itself and its location on the site work for this image. The architect gave the plan the shape of an elongated rectangle, placing it across and at the same time in the middle of the rectangular section with minimal, dictated by the norms, indents from the fences. Ten acres thus visually split into two independent territories: a front garden and a backyard garden. “The layout of the site is classic for a Russian village,” comments the author of the project.
The house has two floors, but this is not obvious from every angle. The fact is that almost all the rooms on the upper level are illuminated through skylights, and the slope of the gable roof is minimal. On the "long" facades (that is, on the main one and on the one that faces the garden), absolutely blank wooden surfaces are installed under the slopes, and although the ends of the house are solved differently, at the entrance to the site, and even more so from the street, only these impenetrable constructions that create the feeling of "things in themselves". It is reinforced many times over by shutters - made of the same wood as the facades, and painted in exactly the same light gray shade, they are able to close all glazed openings flush. And then the only hint of the presence of windows remains only assembled from narrower slats than facades, shutters and their thin rectangular edging-frames. In such a "sheathed" form, the house would look like an ideal parallelepiped, if not for the terraces at both ends, as well as the deep square niche of the main entrance.
The two main public spaces of the house face the terraces - the living-dining room on one side and the workshop on the other. Both of them are double-height, although the number of windows is different: in the workshop, if you wish, you can "uncover" real panoramic windows, while above the living room there is a mezzanine with a children's play area, which automatically reduces the openings to relatively standard ones. The living room and workshop, located at different ends of the house, close the main - longitudinal - axis of his living space, on which smaller "beads" are strung in the middle - technical rooms and a guest bedroom on the first floor, three bedrooms on the second. However, there is also an equally important transverse axis, which is formed by the entrance hall and the staircase located opposite it. Air and spatial intrigue to this formally very small distance are added by glazed openings - a window to the garden and the front door itself, which is also made transparent. Even from the street, this spectacular view "lumbago" is clearly visible.
Alexey Ilyin meticulously develops the themes of monochrome solutions for facades and openness / closeness in all the interiors of his house. The first thing that catches your eye is, of course, the color. In the decoration of the premises, not only the same gray dominates (in fairness, several shades lighter than on the facades) - it is interpreted as the only possible one. “White is too easily soiled, all other colors are too bright,” explains the architect, describing how he chose the optimal background for rare (rarest!) Color accents like an orange sofa or a yellow flowerpot. At first, by the way, the architect wanted to cover the homemade lampshade over the dining table with a yellow cloth, but then he left only a frame woven from bamboo - he says that otherwise the lampshade "ate up" too much space.
And there is no doubt that it is the space that is most important here: not a single superfluous detail. From a purely technical point of view, built-in furniture helped to realize the idea of such an order: with the exception of one open shelving in the living room, there is no visible cabinet furniture here. Moreover, as on the facades, here Ilyin achieves the absence of obvious visual allusions to the border between a simple wall and storage systems. All wardrobes, kitchen furniture, even a refrigerator are disguised under the walls of a bar. This technique made it possible to make even very modest bedrooms visually spacious, and emphasize the dimensions of the living room and workshop as much as possible. The architect himself admits that the most difficult thing in the practical implementation of this idea was to achieve the abutment of the walls, floor and ceiling boards without the use of endless plinths, planks and cornices that fasten the corners, traditional and in some sense integral to any wooden interior. In this house, all such mates are solved with the help of specially prepared corner bars. Such solutions cost a lot of effort to the builders, but they made it possible to realize the architect's idea of an interior without unnecessary parts and cabinets. In particular, all interior doors are perceived as an organic and integral continuation of the walls - opening and closing them, you can change the interior layout of the house almost indefinitely.
