In terms of the number of square meters under construction, the Danilovsky district today is practically a record holder. Like giant mushrooms after rain, huge residential complexes appear here - ZilART alone is worth something. Against the background of all these large-scale projects, a single-entrance residential building built near the Tulskaya metro station by Alexander Asadov and Karen Saprichyan looks modest but dignified. A memorable appearance, a small number of apartments with various layouts, a closed landscaped courtyard, underground parking create that atmosphere of intimacy, almost clubbing, which is so demanded by residents of megacities. This is probably why the house is practically sold out today.
The site on 2nd Samarinskaya Street, behind the Danilovsky market, until recently was occupied by a MGTS substation built in the 1980s. When it was decided to build a residential building in its place, the investing company organized a mini-competition, which was won by Asadov and Saprichyan. They had to fit their future structure into a rather motley context - being on a straight line between such landmark buildings for Moscow as the Shukhov Tower and the House-Ship on Bolshaya Tulskaya, the substation territory had typical Soviet "boxes" as an immediate environment. On the contrary, across the narrow Samarinskaya street, the octopus of the Danilovsky market sprawled, and this is also an ambiguous factor: on the one hand, the market is a market, on the other, Danilovsky today is a landmark place that promotes a new food philosophy, even excursions now lead here, so what is the neighborhood works rather for prestige. And one of the authors of the project, Karen Saprichyan, has a personal attitude to this old Moscow district: he was born here, grew up, and the school where he studied is some three hundred meters from the new building.
The building, which is quite compact in plan, does not protrude beyond the boundaries of the spot of the previous development; it has only twelve floors, and in comparison with the project, the height of the building had to be lowered by six meters - this was the requirement of the arch council, although there are many taller buildings around. Despite the fact that the structure of the house is one-section, visually it looks like two volumes stitched together, one of which is shifted back in relation to the street line. This solution allowed, firstly, to get away from the shape of a rectangular "box", and secondly, to significantly optimize the internal layout: for both volumes, without violating the standards, it was possible to do with only one staircase and elevator block. Thus, the minimum loss of living space was achieved, while the corridors on the floors turned out to be quite short, which always works towards the image of a comfortable living space.
The first floor of the house is given over to offices, you can enter here from the street; Inhabitants will enter the residential part through a landscaped courtyard that is sufficiently isolated from street noise. The volume of the first level is partially removed, and the building rests on columns faced with porcelain stoneware, under which a passage for special equipment is organized. These supports, of course, are perceived as a voluntary or involuntary roll call with the House-ship located in line of sight on Bolshaya Tulskaya; although the authors were not particularly inspired by the ideas of constructivism in the design process, Karen Saprichyan admits that "the building's frame is, perhaps, really constructivist." Let's add here such a striking technique as ribbon windows encircling both parts of the building (albeit at different heights) - again, a direct "rhyme" to the famous "recumbent skyscraper". Basically, the architectural solution used elements of quite modern: large volumes, bay windows, and in addition to them - additional elements of a smaller scale added in precisely adjusted proportions. Moreover, many interesting details, which were only outlined in the project, appeared precisely in the process of finalizing the facades, so, surprisingly, the building looks even more interesting in real life than in the draft design.
Along the entire height of the house, interrupted only by the aforementioned belts of windows, the verticals of glazed loggias stretch - in the corners they look like bay windows. In terms of layouts, all floors are different; the most spacious apartments are located, of course, upstairs - they are practically penthouses with ceilings of more than 4 meters. Even despite the forced lowering of the height, the architects managed to maintain quite decent heights in the rest of the apartments (a total of 73) - the step between the ceilings was, as a result, about 3.30 m. boxes made in the form of graceful lattices on the inner sides of bay windows, fences of loggias, thin aluminum frames along the perimeter of windows, work to complicate the visual row of facades. “Due to the light and shade, the house looks complicated, almost like a sculpture,” says Karen Saprichyan. "I would say he looks handicraft."
Actually, this is not surprising, given that Saprichyan is not only an architect, but also a sculptor and artist. He paid special attention to the color scheme of the facades. The palette is based on brown, which is present here in three different shades, and if the light gamut prevails on the street facade - the contours of the bay windows are drawn with verticals, the horizontal lines frame the central window belt - then on the facade overlooking the courtyard, the color is noticeably denser. The restrained greenish-gray shade of stemalite and noble gray-blue aluminum act as additional ones (in both cases, these inserts cover the interfloor ceilings). But most of all, the viewer will surely remember the refreshing, like spring rain, inserts of the color of young foliage under the windows, scattered on the facades without excess, but with picturesque asymmetry. By the way, some time ago, in a neighboring panel high-rise building, the balconies were painted in no less cheerful yellow color, so that together these two completely dissimilar buildings now made up an almost Mondrian and very cheerful picture. Especially in sunny weather, when the yellow squares of the neighboring balconies and fragments of the blue sky are reflected next to the green inserts in the glass of the bay windows.
