The historical center of Kaluga. Public gardens and churches, classicism and empire style, merchant mansions, typical five-story buildings and the remains of a wooden "two-story Kaluga" of varying degrees of preservation. Across the street - Theater Square with a neoclassical colonnade of the building of the drama theater, which Kaluga residents are very proud of; on the other hand, there is the house-museum of the founder of Russian cosmism, Alexander Chizhevsky. It is in this environment that the site is located where Alexander Asadov and Karen Saprichyan are building a new residential complex. A well-known "master of struggle and explosion", twenty years ago, Asadov would certainly have shot here with something radically curvilinear, blowing up the sleepy patriarchy of the ancient city. But not now.
“We have been tormented for a long time in search of a solution that would help our house somehow enter the context,” says Alexander Asadov. - I wanted to get away from direct modernism, which is a little tired and is looking for different ways today: some of the architects go to historicism, some to ecology, to “green” construction … We have deliberately decided here to make an eclectic house, to some extent even provincial, despite its solid size. To collide a variety of archetypes, to create, on the one hand, a holistic composition, on the other, so that it evokes a whole series of some allusions, memories, for each person. This project is an echo of our inner search for the way to go further”.
In terms of the residential complex, it is almost a traditional block, open to the south and consisting of two three-section residential buildings - thanks to the four-level gallery connecting them from the main facade, they look like a single volume - and the apartment building, which closes the courtyard, which also consists of two blocks connected by two-storey the premises of the fitness center. Such a decision, which looks quite logical, is actually dictated by a severe necessity, and specifically by the mysterious circumstance that a sanitary zone of a pasta factory that has not existed for a long time runs along the southern side of the building area. Because of this "smile of the Cheshire cat", only compact six-storey apartment buildings were located here. The main, front facade is facing north, towards Ogarev Street and the Chizhevsky Museum.
Paradoxically, construction was allowed up to sixteen floors - this is in the center of a provincial city, where even modern buildings have not yet risen higher than individual nine-story buildings. To the customer's credit, he did not particularly strive to use the entire allowed height, and with joint efforts the architects managed to reduce the number of storeys to thirteen. In order for the building to organically fit into the context and this height, by and large, was too much, so further it was necessary to act by architectural means.
The first thing that the authors of the project came up with was a clear division in height. Here, the “second land” technique worked perfectly: up to the sixth floor - the approximate level of the surrounding buildings - the building is, in essence, a giant stylobate, solid, squat, beaten off on top by a wide cornice and lined with red brick to heighten the “soil” effect. This finish carries one more connotation: although by the time the Moscow architects appeared here, the construction site had already been cleared, local residents remember well the red-brick buildings of the Kaluzhsky Avtopribor plant located here until recently.
The massive horizontal volume, which works well with the surroundings and forms the structure of the street, is interrupted by a high, four-storey, portal entrance to the courtyard, connected to the buildings by a four-level residential gallery. The arch, flanked by two smaller portals, gives the facade a ceremonial monumentality of not provincial, but quite metropolitan architecture of the thirties, adds lightness to the volume and echoes the color with the upper floors, which the authors of the project imagined in the form of "large cottages" built on the roof of a brick building and lined with light porcelain stoneware. The first two levels are pure Le Corbusier: high, two-storey rounded columns against the background of stained glass immediately evoke the association with the "legs" of the Villa Savoy. The higher one looks most like modern urban mansions in a new expensive area of some European city: moderate number of storeys, one or two apartments per floor, a lot of glass, terraces, an exploited roof. Interestingly, the architects provided for different heights for the two buildings of the complex: 11 and 13 floors. In addition to the desire to make the volume lighter and more varied, there is a certain sensitivity to the context in such a solution. Firstly, nine-storey buildings approach the site just from the side of the higher western building, and from the east the buildings are lower. Secondly, it is from this side that one of the main thoroughfares of Kaluga passes - Moskovskaya Street, along which people enter the city from the capital. Considering that at the moment the house designed by Asadov and Saprichyan should become the high-rise dominant of the center of Kaluga, the architects did not want the views of the visitors to open up the massive volume overwhelming surroundings. In this version, it will look like two buildings - light, visually light due to the large amount of glass and at the same time different: in the distance - higher, in front of it - the one that is smaller.
The plastic solution of the facades also does not leave the slightest chance for monotony. Bay windows and terraces, cornices and consoles, ledges, ledges, galleries, balconies and balconies - everything is broken and dismembered, no statics, continuous dynamics, the house lives, moves, breathes, entering into an active dialogue with the observer and the environment. This is especially noticeable from the side of the courtyard, where, according to the figurative expression of the architects, they "allowed themselves to relax a little, putting on striped pajamas" - as opposed to the strict "white tie" dress code of the front facade. The role of a white butterfly here is played by an arch, in contrast with the terracotta of the bulk of the six-story stylobate, faced with light porcelain stoneware. "White top" and "dark bottom", with all their typological differences, make up one harmonious whole: light Corbusse columns disciplinedly continue the verticals of brick walls, stained-glass windows do not break the rhythm of wide windows, the horizontal lines of cornices and awnings echo the lines of the "earth" In the center of each of the buildings, slightly stepping back from the line of the walls, a deaf brick strip rises, behind which there is an evacuation staircase; as if as compensation above the cornice, it is answered by a square, two-storey, glass fragment. Visible galleries on the sides and around the portal - there will be loggias and panoramic living rooms of the adjacent apartments - precede the architecturally designed emptiness of the blue sky between the buildings. In response to the visual unification of the two floors of the "villa", the same two-level gallery appears below, only not airy white, but brick, with rectangular supports firmly standing on the ground and the first floor with showcases given over to retail. Along the gallery, landscaping naturally suggests itself, at least in the form of a lawn, - say the architects, - I want, as far as the climate allows, to green both the open terraces and the roof.
The effect of "pajama" striping of courtyard facades is achieved due to a freer alternation of finishes than on the street. Like the cuffs of a suit, the brick facing of the portal gallery “turns out” into the courtyard; otherwise, the decoration is more white, which is interspersed with brick inserts of different heights - the architects here do not limit themselves to the level of the “second earth”. Inserts create the effect of vertical stripes, continuous glazing of loggias - horizontal, so that in some places cells are obtained. Since the courtyard is completely located on the roof of a two-storey underground parking, which unites the entire complex, it is proposed to place fill hills on it for planting plants, which at the same time will serve as the boundaries of functional zones. Due to the difference in relief on the southern side, the roof of the parking lot will be higher than the ground level - it is proposed to collapse it and build a six-storey volume of apartments on it.
The apartment is quite diverse: there are many types of apartments with different intermediate spaces. The footage is modest, which is largely compensated by thoughtful layouts and a lot of light: the window sills are low everywhere, there are many "French" windows with balconies. The entrances are mainly located in the courtyard, but the corner L-shaped sections have received second staircases, which can be reached from the street.
And the architects have foreseen one more intrigue for the residents of Kaluga. Along the front facade, on the cornice, they propose to erect sculptures - monuments to outstanding personalities. Who exactly will be honored to be immortalized on the facade of the residential complex, the authors left it to the townspeople to decide. “Well, yes, this is such a small provocation,” Alexander Asadov does not deny. - Will it be specific people or some allegories, great people or ordinary city dwellers, our contemporaries? We have no plans, this is an element of the project, which is not yet fully known to us. We look forward to interesting discussions! Well, considering that one of the authors of the project, Karen Saprichyan, is not only an architect, but also a sculptor, you don't have to worry about the artistic side of the “X-element”.
P. S. Alexander Asadov and Karen Saprichyan express their gratitude
to architect Pyotr Zavadovsky for fascinating conversations about architecture, thanks to which the solution to this project was largely born.
