Archi.ru:
From your point of view, what place did MIBC “Moscow-City” take in the city structure of the capital?
Sergey Estrin:
- A traditional city, to which Moscow certainly belongs, is a horizontal city. It has a historic center, shopping streets, industrial and residential areas, maybe, say, national quarters or an entertainment part. We are used to such a city, we know how to navigate in it, we know what to look for. But if in such a paradigm such a perpendicular formation as a complex of skyscrapers suddenly appears, then this phenomenon is undoubtedly extremely noticeable - both in terms of urban planning and from the point of view of the attitude of the people who live or work in these buildings. This is a completely different business model: not just a new quarter, but a building visible from any part of the city; not just a house and a street, but an individual address - the Eurasia tower, the Mercury tower, and so on. Which, of course, significantly increases the popularity of such housing.
That is, first of all, this is a new level of prestige?
- This is generally a new urban format, offering, which is very important, a qualitatively different emotional saturation. Dizzying panoramas, sunrises, sunsets, clouds floating under you, the "fifth facade" of the city, which cannot be seen otherwise than from this height, and it is incredibly beautiful! What about night views? Even banal traffic jams, if you look at them from the fiftieth floor, become an art object: when the city is lined with red and yellow glowing straight lines, you perceive the geography of Moscow, its avenues and highways in a completely different way. By the way, not everyone at this height will be comfortable, but if a person is psychologically ready for this, then, once having experienced this adrenaline delight, he is unlikely to give it up. What is it worth just knowing that the tower is constantly swaying a little - half a meter can be a deviation at the top point!
What else does this format give, besides emotions?
- A skyscraper, as a rule, is a multifunctional building, divided into zones: offices, housing, trade. Somewhere add sports clubs and swimming pools, somewhere winter gardens, cinemas, restaurants, art galleries. That is, without going outside, you can get almost everything that a modern metropolis is rich in. And I think the point is not even that you save time on moving around the city: it is unlikely that a person will really not go out for weeks, this restaurant and this garden and this gallery will quickly bore him. But the very feeling that you are in such a dense, saturated environment, as if the whole city was put on the butt, is very attractive for many. Look, there is suburban housing - silence, nature, sky, landscapes. There is a city - life, drive, mobility, tone is boiling around. And now there is also a new format - when you seem to be in the city, but at the same time a hundred meters above it, and there is the same silence, panoramas, sunrises, sunsets, just do not stand in traffic jams on the highway. Of course, we are not talking about those people for whom this is the first or only home - they are unlikely to choose an apartment in a skyscraper. But for those who, perhaps, already have both a city apartment and a house in nature, a skyscraper can become an intriguing alternative.
Obviously, the new urban environment also presupposes new architectural solutions, including interiors?
- Certainly. You can, of course, simply enlarge the techniques worked out many times on an appropriate scale, accelerate them by five or ten meters in height, and you're done. Many do so, by the way. The result looks rather mechanical. From my point of view, the architectural technique itself should be commensurate with the scope in which it is applied. The entrance lobby, for example, is a very important element; this new, fresh, exceptionally attractive urban environment begins with it. It must be appropriately perceived both from the outside and from the inside to respond to the rooms that follow it, and for all its scale, it is necessary to carefully develop details that can be examined from different angles, from different points of view, so that they will never get bored. Only this approach will allow the interior to live for a long time and each time to tune the incoming to a certain emotional level, worthy of the grandiose building into which he enters.
When we thought over public spaces for the Eurasia Tower, the so-called “Forest Symphony” was chosen as the leitmotif. The entrance group to the office premises is decorated with stylized tropical trees - powerful trunks, wide crowns. But at the same time, if you look closely, there are a lot of non-repeating details. The slots in the wooden leaf panels are of all kinds of configurations, the veneer is natural and also different all the time, even if it covers a wall thirty meters long; "Spots of light" seeping through the foliage, complex lamps at the junction of the petals …
For "Eurasia" we made public interiors of all seventy floors, starting from the rise from the underground level, where it should already give the impression that you are entering another world, to the elevator halls.
The entrance at ground level to the residential part is also decided in a "forest" theme, here again there are large elements, but still not as large as in the office group, because the hall space itself is smaller, and the part that is behind him, less ambitious. The light is hidden everywhere - it was important for us that it was not concentrated on any specific details, but seemed to come from nowhere, as if the sun's rays were filtering through the lush foliage.
We talked about the entrance groups. And what about the interiors on the upper floors, in the penthouses?
- The main specificity here is that the panorama of the city outside the window is such a powerful thing that it is impossible to compete with it, and it is not even necessary. But it is necessary that, even turning away from the windows, a person should see something worthy of these views and this space. While decorating a penthouse on the 76th floor in one of the Moscow City towers, we worked for a very long time on the wall of the living room, achieving a certain proportional relationship with an incredibly beautiful view. The wall, twenty meters long, was decided as a pile of cubes covered with copper leaf, through which bare fittings seem to protrude, and gliding rays of light were sent along it - like in a theater on a curtain.
Not very similar to living space in the traditional sense …
- I started with the fact that such a penthouse is most likely not the only residence. Here, of course, there are comfortable bedrooms, a kitchen, and everything you need, but it is really difficult to imagine in such an interior a family with three children who are worn and who must be protected from injury. But we are talking about the fact that if a fundamentally new spatial environment has appeared in Moscow, then it should look completely different.
For example, in the complex "Falcon's Nest" we "hung" a glass island on the second level of the penthouse, to which a glass staircase leads - a complete feeling that you are floating above the city.
And in the penthouse in one of the "Constellation" towers on Shabolovka, curved gypsum panels resembling clouds were brought up, and a number of rooms were decided in a futuristic, "space style".
There is no celestial theme in the apartment in the Moskva tower in Moscow City; there is another "shock" element here - a huge turquoise wave with a lace edging of foam. Moreover, in this apartment the ceilings are not so high, almost as in an ordinary house, but an ordinary interior, neatly plastered, with wooden baseboards and panels, on the fortieth floor with such panoramas is absolutely impossible to do!
So, you think that the elements of a classic interior cannot fit into such a space in any way?
- Again - if you take some technique, then not literally, but rethinking it in relation to the situation. Such a thing as curtains, for example, we reinvented every time. In this case, they do not fulfill their usual utilitarian function - to close the window (it is clear that with such panoramas the curtains are not drawn) - and are needed rather in order to compositionally connect the floor and the ceiling. On Shabolovka, for example, each curtain is essentially an art object made of several kilometers of vertical blinds and, with the bottom lighting on, looks like a wooden sculpture. This is just one example of large solutions that had to be searched for a long time, because traditional techniques and materials were decidedly inappropriate.
Light also has its own specifics. In fact, more often than not, you just want to turn it off, so you shouldn't focus on the lamps. In this case, there should be enough point sources, a variety of light scenarios. For example, in the City, we hid the light in laser-cut columns - they both structure the space and are very decorative in themselves. And on Shabolovka, they removed the “clouds” under the ceiling, resulting in natural light, the same as outside the windows.
And as for the classics themselves … Well, of course, in such a space you won't let the stucco molding along the cornice and you won't arrange the columns from the catalog of finished plaster products. But if you take, say, the base of some classical column, and rest the trunk against the ceiling - they say, it did not fit entirely, the capital is somewhere on the hundredth floor - then it will be very strong. And again, this will be a decision of a new level, corresponding and commensurate with the new spatial paradigm.
