The active stage of transformation of the "Arma" plant in the area of the Kursk railway station into a "creative cluster" began in 2011, although repairs and putting the territory in order started with the arrival of the first tenants, in the 2000s. Now the territory is open - you can freely walk through it from the tunnel leading to the Kurskaya metro station, to Winzavod, Mruzovsky lane and Yauza. The developers, the Bolshoi Gorod company, have also landscaped and solemnly presented to the mayor's office on City Day 2015 the pedestrian part of Nizhny Susalny Lane - a street along which hundreds, if not thousands of people daily run in and out of the metro. "Arma" was transformed a little later than the neighboring Winzavod and Artplay, but joined their worthy company, maintaining, to the best of its ability, the art-oriented reputation of the area behind the Kursk railway station. On its territory, apart from four gasholders, there are nine reconstructed buildings, where there is trade in the lower floors, and premises for rent in the upper floors. In particular, Boris Levyant's bureau ABD architects has recently moved here. As a completed project of transforming an industrial zone into an art cluster, "Arma" participates in the competition for the CRE Awards-2016. Although it is noticeable that part of the territory closer to its borders continues to be rebuilt and improved, for example, the entrance portals conceived by the architects have not been implemented; but the core of the "cluster" is quite alive, so yes, we can say that the renovation work is close to its logical conclusion.
The renovation of the buildings and the improvement of the territory were carried out by the architects of the AM Sergey Kiselev and Partners bureau, mainly Vladimir Labutin and Alexey Medvedev. “At first, we were invited to consult on the buildings of gas tanks, - says the head of the bureau, Igor Shvartsman, - our participation in their renovation is minimal, we only helped with planning and engineering issues. Then the customers offered to work with another body, then another one, and so on. Ultimately, the general plan for the development of the territory, landscaping, renovation projects for buildings and interiors of several public areas were carried out by our bureau. Renovation of industrial zones has long been one of the directions of our activity. Together with the Bolshoi Gorod company, we were engaged in a business center on Polkovaya street, renovation of a bakery on Krasnoselskaya. “Arma” is the largest, labor-intensive and significant project in this row”.
The Moscow Gas Plant was built in the 1860s as a Bouquier plant and until 1931 supplied gas primarily to lamps, and then to the kitchens of Moscow. Two buildings have survived from the first plant, stretched along Nizhny Susalny lane - buildings number 1 and 2, and the main pride of the current owners, gas tanks - wide towers for gas storage, which differ from European ones, for example Vienna, in that for safety and ease of supply gas under pressure, the floor in them was lowered below the ground. The plant, which allowed the city authorities to halve the cost of servicing the lamps, was built by celebrities of their time: the then chief architect of Moscow, Rudolf Bernhard, a mathematician, engineer and adherent of the economical "brick style", was engaged in gas tanks, he invented a special design of unsupported ceilings for gas tanks. The buildings with the workers' apartments - the very ones along Susalny Lane, were built by Fyodor Dmitriev, a teacher at the Imperial Technical School (now the Bauman Moscow State Technical University), and the author of a book on housing for workers. Then, in 1911, the plant became the property of the city, it was rebuilt and re-equipped: the structures of the roofs of the gas tanks were altered, as historians suggest, by another great engineer, Vladimir Shukhov, and the plant itself, or rather its southern wing, was dismantled and replaced with new buildings, standing separately, with lines, parallel to Nizhny Susalny lane, civil engineer Alexander Roop.
The plant increased its capacity and then worked hard for the First World War, producing everything from gas to grenades. He began to give up positions after 1931: then a new plant "Neftegaz" was built in Moscow, and this one began to be called the old one, and took on the role of not so much production as distribution. In 1946, a gas pipeline from Saratov was brought to the capital, and artificial gas ceased to be produced. In the 1971 master plan, the old gas plant is listed as a harmful enterprise, intended to be taken out of the city, but, in the 1990s, renamed to "Armu", it functioned, producing equipment, until 2002, when, once again renamed into "Gazservice", it moved. The southern part of the territory passed to "Arma" and became the subject of work of the development company "Bolshoi Gorod".
If we look at the plan of the territory, we will see that the renovation mainly affected the southern part of the former plant, located between the historical axis of the plant territory and the railway of the Gorky direction. The axis is preserved; here is the main thoroughfare and the main walking trail, but all the renovated buildings are grouped from the entrance to the right. To the left of the main entrance, the update is just beginning. So, almost all the buildings in the southern part of the territory are now completed. The principles of renovation in general can be described as follows. All Soviet extensions were dismantled. The foundations were strengthened. Dormers appeared in the slopes of the roofs, and in some places - terraces ledges.
Figuratively speaking, now one might think that the old factory buildings were filled and glued with a kind of mercury, somewhere silvery, somewhere gleaming, reflecting the brick of factory historicism. The historic brick is chiseled and covered with a preservative mortar. “We consider ourselves co-authors of architects Bernhard, Dmitriev and Roop,” says Vladimir Labutin, author of projects for the reconstruction of historical buildings.
Armagh: buildings 1 and 2
| Where: | Russia Moscow. Nizhny Susalny lane, 5, buildings 1, 2 | |
| function: | Administrative office / office building | |
| workshop: | AM Sergey Kiselev and Partners / | |
| architect: | Vladimir Labutin |
Alexander Roop added side projections to the residential buildings of the worker's friend Fyodor Dmitriev, which also housed factory offices, turning the ends of the buildings into separate, adjacent to the extended parts of the "wings". In Soviet times, small attic superstructures appeared over two-story buildings.
The architects treated the buildings carefully. The Soviet attic floors were sorted out - under the roof were formed premises for offices, illuminated mainly by dormers built into the hip outline of the roof. In some places, on the inner side of the block, cutouts are formed in the shallow hip roofs - here the offices receive ordinary, vertical windows. Similar cutouts in the inner slopes of the risalit wings form small terraces on their roofs with access to the roof. In some places, the basement floor also received some sunlight through the half-windows on the inner side of the block. Three floors are devoted to shops and cafes, and only in the uppermost - work premises.
The brick walls are sandblasted and repaired with Remmers bricks - the abrasion is visible to the trained eye, allowing one to compare the roughness of the original with the more regular texture of modern material, but it does not stand out too much. The brick is rough, but does not crumble, although it does not look too varnished. The two buildings in a warm carrot orange hue are excellent propylaea for an area where much of the historic factory has been preserved. They work as a visiting card not only for the cluster, but also for the technology of preserving the brick architecture of historical industrial zones, "holding" the eastern facade of the lane.
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zooming 1/7 Arma: buildings 1, 2. Realization, 2015. Photo © Yulia Tarabarina
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zooming 2/7 Arma: buildings 1, 2. Visualization, 2014 © Sergey Kiselev and Partners
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zooming 3/7 Arma: buildings 1, 2. Realization, 2015. Photo © Yulia Tarabarina
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zooming 4/7 Arm: building 2. Section © Sergey Kiselev and Partners
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zooming 5/7 Arma: building 1. Implementation, 2015. Photo © Julia Tarabarina
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zooming 6/7 Arma: building 1. Implementation, 2015. Photo © Julia Tarabarina
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zooming 7/7 Arma: building 1. Implementation, 2015. Photo © Julia Tarabarina
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