Serviced house / experimental residential complex "Lebed"
Architects: A. Meerson (head of the team of authors), E. Podolskaya, A. Repetiy, I. Fedorov (workshop No. 2, "Mosproekt-1")
Engineers: B. Lyakhovsky, A. Gordon, D. Morozov, V. Samodov
Address: Moscow, Leningradskoe shosse, 29–35
Years of construction: 1967-1973
Mikhail Knyazev, architect of the Khora bureau and co-founder of the Sovmod project:
“In 1973, on the Leningradskoye Highway in Moscow, the construction of a 'house-complex with services' was completed. Its other name, under which it entered the history of Russian architecture, is the Lebed residential complex.
This house became the dominant feature of the experimental microdistrict of the same name, which was being created in those years in the north-west of the capital. This is how one of the authors of the project, the architect Elena Podolskaya, described it: “The project of the detailed planning of the microdistrict provides for the construction of 9-, 16- and 30-storey residential buildings, as well as a large shopping center, school and kindergartens. The ensemble of the microdistrict, the silhouettes of the buildings of which will loom over the pines of the Pokrovskoe-Glebovo park, will serve as the compositional beginning of the huge new urban district of Khimki-Khovrino. A characteristic feature of the "Swan" is its well-known isolation, isolation. We are talking about the lack of direct communication with other microdistricts. After all, the rest, or rather the main area of the Khimki-Khovrino massif, is located on the opposite side of the Leningradskoe highway and a little further from the center of Moscow. " (E. Podolskaya. House-complex with maintenance // Building and architecture of Moscow, №1 / 1968).
Representatives of different spheres were involved in the design - economists, statisticians, sociologists. The result of the joint work of the architects under the leadership of Andrei Meerson and the invited experts was the division of the population of the future microdistrict into groups, or, as the participants of the study called them, “collectives”. The authors of the project believed that such a differentiation of residents into groups that were planned to settle in different conditions would help to form an optimal service scheme for the population and establish the characteristics of a new format dwelling. The architects considered the Swan complex, set aside for living for the "team No. 3", as the most important part of a large experiment.
The volumetric-spatial composition of the Swan is made up of four 16-storey buildings, three of which (buildings No. 4, 5 and 7) have two sections and are closer to the Khimki reservoir, and a one-section tower (building No. 6) is put forward on the red building line highway. Insolation, fire safety and sanitary requirements, individually calculated for each house, played an important role in determining the final location of the buildings.
All volumes are on the stylobate of the service block, where a spacious lobby with a wardrobe and vending machines, an order bureau, dry cleaning and laundry, a rental office for household appliances, a medical room, a kindergarten-nursery for 140 places, a conference hall, circles, workshops, library and more. This set of functions was supposed to provide the residents of "Lebed", if not an autonomous existence within the complex, then at least create a high level of service for those times and the most comfortable living conditions.
The exploited roof of the stylobate had a recreational function: on it residents could spend time outdoors and even play sports. In the underground part of the complex, the architects provided for a cooperative parking garage for 300 parking spaces, storage rooms for each apartment and a group of technical rooms.
A person who settled in "Lebed" received an apartment with an improved layout, a number of technical characteristics of which distinguished it from any other Soviet apartment. High ceilings (2.7 m clean), large kitchens, spacious rooms and utility rooms, a system of built-in wardrobes, loggias of impressive size - all this corresponded to the ideas of a new type of dwelling.
The facades of the complex, despite its high-quality filling, did not differ much from the solutions used for mass residential development: for the exterior decoration of residential volumes, the usual suspended expanded clay concrete panels with roughly sealed seams were chosen. The simplicity of the exterior decoration of residential buildings is compensated by the successful rhythm of the location of the loggias, which gives the facades the necessary plastic. The walls of the service block are made of red brick, which is effectively combined with rough reinforced concrete surfaces. The sharp contrast of the Swan with the surrounding landscape enhances the perception of its architecture and adds even more expressiveness to the sharp forms of the ensemble.
For the "Swan" project, the architect Meerson, who built the famous
"House of Aviators" on Begovaya, won the Grand Prix in Paris. Regardless of whether the ambitious experiment ended in absolute success, we can say that the architects competently solved a number of difficult tasks, and the Swan, the pearl of the experimental microdistrict of the same name, deserves respect and deserves a special protection status."
