Kindergartens created according to the author's project are still a rarity both for the capital and for other cities of Russia, which means they are perceived as a luxury that one has to dream of. But the residents of the district near the Kurskaya and Chkalovskaya metro stations were lucky: a kindergarten, designed by Asadov's architectural bureau, appeared here in Maly Poluyaroslavsky Lane. The case turned out to be just one of those about which they say "There would be no happiness, but misfortune helped." On a small plot, squeezed from all sides by the existing buildings of the old Moscow district, they were originally going to build a typical municipal preschool educational institution. But it was not possible to place a standard building on a small area and at the same time comply with the standards for the size of walking areas. Then a competition was announced, which was won by one of the oldest private schools in Moscow, the School of Cooperation, and Asadov's architectural bureau received a complex but interesting order.
According to the project manager, Andrey Asadov, the architectural concept of the building took shape gradually, in the process of overcoming the tasks of observing one or another norm that regulates the construction of kindergartens in our country. Not a single decision in the architectural appearance of the garden is accidental, but dictated by some need. For example, the two-part shape and the location of the volume on the site are due to the choice of the optimal orientation to the cardinal points. As you can see on the plan, the building consists of two wings, perpendicular to each other in plan. One wing stretches along the northern border of the site, the other along the western one. The buildings block the courtyard from the most unpleasant winds, opening it to the sun from the south and east. The maximum of windows illuminating the spaces of kindergarten groups also face the southern and eastern sides, which made it possible to comply with the standards for their insolation. (According to the Moscow city building codes - MGSN - for preschool educational institutions, the permissible orientation of the windows of group cells on the sides of the horizon is in the sector from 85 to 275 degrees, but 180 degrees is considered optimal, that is, to the south).
A beautiful semicircular glass insert on the western facade owes its appearance to the need to place a platform for turning the fire engine near the emergency exit.
The small area of the site also significantly influenced the layout of the garden. The area left from the building spot was still not enough to provide each group with a walking area (again, according to the MGSN, this is 108 m2 for a group of children under 3 years old, 80 m2 for a group of children from 3 to 7 years old, plus 40 m verandas2, plus a common sports ground, 250 m2). It is not surprising that the authors of the project placed additional walking areas with verandas on the operated roofs. Moreover, there are such roof platforms both at the level of the second and third floors. All this determined the recognizable appearance of the building - both wings are ledges, similar to the decks of a ship. The ship's associations also arise from the rounded contours of the walls and the fencing of the platforms on the roofs.
The authors compare the new building of the kindergarten with their earlier project "Patchwork": a concept of a low-rise urban settlement based on the principles of self-organization similar to a medieval city. For "Patchwork" is characterized by nonlinear, asymmetric development, "quarter-centricity", where each quarter is a city in miniature, a variety of finishes and forms, ultimately - the formation of a rather dense, but at the same time "humane" environment with many comfortable social connections. Moreover, the thoughtful architectural organization of the urban space becomes the starting point that gives a kind of impulse to this socio-cultural process.
A kindergarten on Maly Poluyaroslavsky - with a complex system of roofs of different heights, changing when viewed from different angles, with uneven, unevenly distributed windows on the facades - could be part of such a "patchwork" city quarter. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, the entire garden, together with the playground and verandas, which are both on the ground and on the roofs, looks as a whole like the settlement of "Patchwork" in miniature. And this, again, primarily due to their dynamic, multi-level appearance: on the verandas, the architects designed a play environment reminiscent of a toy city, with the silhouettes of imaginary houses - the same different heights and colorful as the building itself. Thus, the end-to-end design links the main building and the verandas into one campus complex.
The landscape solution of the site is visually connected with the architectural one. The rounded layout of the paths is in tune with the rounded contours of the building. They are also emphasized by flowing mounds, made in order to get away from the monotony of a flat relief. On the roofs, vegetation and relief surfaces were not done, so as not to complicate construction work. We limited ourselves to colored rubber coating.
The facades received a very emotional finish in a positive sense of the word. Most of the walls are covered with cream colored plaster. Against this background, several volumes lined with variegated terracotta tiles look great. The tonality ranges from light sandy to maroon, with a few splashes of gray. The same color scheme was chosen for the verandas, only here everything is made of wood, painted with different shades of stain. If in the main building the colored sections of the facades are visually split into peculiar pixels - according to the tile format, then the verandas turned out to be a multi-colored embossed strip: due to the painted rafters that support the roofs and the slats with which the walls are finished.
The windows on the facades facing the site are placed at different distances from each other, moreover, it is striking that they are of different sizes - some are higher and wider, others are lower and at the same. Which brings an informal, playful element to the look of the building. We can say that the principle of "Patchwork": the combination of dissimilar houses into one "canvas" in this case is repeated in the composition of window openings on the facades of the preschool educational institution.
The idea to decorate the windows with carved wooden platbands also comes from the concept of "Patchwork". Customers from the School of Cooperation also played an important role. They actively participated in the choice of facades' finishes and themselves offered to look for interesting solutions for platbands. As a result, it turned out that all the frames are not only different, but each is a collective image of window frames from any region of Russia. The looks were invented on the basis of the collection
the virtual museum of platbands, which has been created by Moscow photographer Ivan Khafizov for several years. They were embodied in reality by a hereditary woodcarver from the Russian hinterland, Yakov Velnikov. By and large, the decor of facades is becoming a kind of educational project: if you approach it creatively, such windows could become a starting point for engaging in entertaining local history and geography with children.
The interior layout of the kindergarten was made taking into account the established norms, according to which each children's group has its own specific set of premises: a locker room with lockers, a playroom with a dining room, a bedroom, a pantry, and a bathroom. On the ground floor, at the entrance to the building, there is a large hall with solid glazing. The hall turns into a semicircular wide and also completely glazed corridor (this is exactly the same contour that arose from the need to make a turning platform). Inside, there are quite a few rooms with curved, irregular contours, which should be an additional attraction for children. In addition to the three above-ground levels, there is a basement floor, where utility rooms and part of the administrative ones are located.
So the strict framework established by the MGSN for kindergartens did not prevent the architects of Asadov's bureau from creating a project with many original solutions. One even gets the impression that the restrictions, both territorial and in terms of legislation, in a sense have provoked the authors and gave an additional impetus for creative discoveries.
