Not all architects can boast that modernist architecture successfully coexists with restoration projects in their portfolios. But for Alexei Ginzburg, grandson and great-grandson of the avant-garde masters of the 1920s, working with historical architecture was not the only, but extremely important part of life. As you know, father and son, Alexei and Vladimir Ginzburgs, founded their workshop in 1995 to work on a project to restore the Narkomfin building. Gradually, in addition to the absolute masterpieces of the avant-garde, earlier buildings began to appear in the portfolio. Even now, when the restoration of the Izvestia building of 1927, built by the great-grandfather of Alexei Ginzburg Grigory Barkhin, is being completed on Pushkinskaya Square, the architect is also restoring houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries at the beginning of Malaya Dmitrovka - thus working with part of the quarter of houses of different times in the center of Moscow. The restoration of Tyulyaeva's apartment building, built in 1910 by the architect Claudius Leonidovich Rosenkampf, is almost complete.
The house is located at the corner of Malaya Dmitrovka and Nastasyinsky Lane, opposite the Lenkom Theater, whose building was built one or two years earlier by the famous architects of Moscow Art Nouveau Illarion Aleksandrovich Ivanov-Shits and Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Oltarzhevsky for the Merchant Club. The buildings clearly have something in common: Rozankampf repeated the Shits-Olarzhevsky colonnade, and the “horned” towers characteristic of Art Nouveau, garland rings, and female masks. But the columns of Tyulyaeva's house are more magnificent, the order is composite, and the modeling of faces is generally large, with chopped planes and resembles the ribbed style of drawing a plaster head, which is required from applicants of the Moscow Architectural Institute for entrance exams. On the facades of Rosenkampf, there are also strong replicas of the Empire style, a favorite theme of neoclassicism of the 1910s, so well helping to fit any architecture into the Moscow context, reminiscent of the work of Gilardi and Bove. A curious house, very Moscow, traces of eclecticism and Art Nouveau in it are perfectly intertwined with neoclassicism.
Of course, the similarities with the architecture of the Merchant Club, the current Lenkom, were important for Claudius Rosenkampf. They also turned out to be important for Alexey Ginzburg and Natalya Shilova, a member of the Union of Architects, who proposed for the facades, previously rich yellow, a greenish color on the verge of olive and light green. The shade echoes the color of the facades of Lenkom, also recently restored by the company
Stroyinvest. The color of Lenkom's facades, however, is closer to mustard-bronze, stricter, like the architecture of Shitsa-Oltarzhevsky. And yet, the similarities between the two buildings are now clearer. Moreover, the part of the street between them became as if ringing light, unexpectedly light. This is facilitated, of course, among other things, by the fact that as a result of the summer Moscow reconstruction, the street lost its wires, and the lanterns were replaced with replicas of historical, gas ones.
But above all, of course, the new quality of the urban space in front of the Lenkom Theater owes its appearance to the granite pavement of a fragment of the street. It grows smoothly, rises to the surface of the sidewalk, in front of the alley, and just as smoothly descends to the level of the asphalt behind the theater building. Cars in this place seem to run into a speed bump, or drive in like a bridge, involuntarily slowing down, because the driver thinks that he suddenly found himself in the territory of a pedestrian. Almost white slabs, replacing black asphalt, make the air lighter, and the space seems to be even more meditative, calmer, depriving it of its everyday vanity. A semblance of a carpet appeared in front of the theater, or a square for a parade passage - fenced with granite bulls and decorated with several benches. It connects Lenkom and Tyulyaeva's house - the buildings are almost simultaneous, into an ensemble, as, apparently, it was assumed in the brilliant era of the beginning of the 20th century - the time of electricity, cars, active urban construction, new life in apartments of multi-storey buildings in a big city.
Now, passing the beginning of Malaya Dmitrovka, we seem to even return to the time when Moscow was rapidly and completely losing its "rustic", garden flavor. However, the process was prepared - says Alexei Ginzburg, an architect, fascinated not only by restoration, but also by history, - since the middle of the 19th century, the noblemen who were ruined after the abolition of serfdom began to cut into apartments and rent out their buildings, which were still low at that time, estates. The estate of the retired major Novosiltsev, on the foundations of which the architect Klavdiy Rosenkampf later built Tyulyaeva's apartment building, did not pass: in the 19th century, people of varying degrees of fame rented apartments here, for example, Yulia Lermontova, the first Russian woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry. The tenement house was built on the foundations of the estate and includes those parts of its walls that could be leaned against with benefit - many houses in the center of Moscow can boast of this kind of layering, and some store, as you know, fragments of the 17th and 18th centuries. In this case, the house included only the remains of a manor house from the beginning of the 19th century. It is possible that the elements of the architecture of the Empire mansions, so recognizable on the facades of Rosenkampf, did not appear by chance and serve as a memory, denote continuity with previous buildings. Having disassembled part of the Empire manor, Rosenkampf reproduced similar fragments in the upper part of his facades - why not?
Alexey Ginzburg and Natalya Shilova made their restoration of the house as careful as possible: they repaired and cleaned all the reliefs. The elements of the facade, which were blurred, “melted” due to a multitude of illiterate repairs, were carefully measured, and then, according to measurements and samples, they made templates and cast reliefs with clearer plasticity, - says the architect and remained broken off). The structures were reinforced: wooden floors with thin metal beams were declared unsuitable for repair and were replaced with thin monolithic slabs on columns that could withstand heavy loads. The historic brick walls have been preserved and fortified. The rubble laying of the foundation was reinforced. The roof of the house was replaced in Soviet times, and since then it has fallen into disrepair. The new roof is made of titanium-zinc material from a German manufacturer
RHEINZINK in the same seam technique with gentle slopes according to historical patterns. Light lanterns appeared above the staircase and elevator nodes - at the beginning of the twentieth century they were quite common in houses of this type; in Soviet times, the lanterns were removed, Alexey Ginzburg restored them according to the original project. Above the Monier vaults preserved in the basement, new ceilings were erected from above, which do not touch them, but unload.
In addition, the architects took care of restoring the historical authenticity, cleaning firewalls and courtyard facades from Soviet paint to bricks. At the beginning of the 20th century, as a rule, only the main facade was plastered and painted, - says the architect, - the rest were left brick, saving money. The cleaned brick was covered with hydrophobic compounds, the seams were prescribed. Later, during the restoration of the neighboring houses of the quarter, their internal facades are also planned to be cleaned to brick: then the courtyard of Tyulyaeva's house will finally acquire brick authenticity. I must say that Alexei Ginzburg returned the brick "rear" and the old building of "Izvestia". What did it do? - A new, rather unexpected color: the "bourgeois" light-green houses of Tyulyaeva and the revolutionary dark-gray "Izvestia" in combination with rich terracotta make up an interesting, almost Lenulovian palette, forgotten by the city in the second half of the 20th century.
Since Soviet times, the Rosenkampf house has housed offices and institutions. Now he will be returned to his original - residential - function. On the ground floor, as it was at the beginning of the last century, cafes and shops should appear. The apartments in the house were originally large - 150-200 m each.2, the most spacious - 300 m each2 - were in the wing overlooking Nastasinsky Lane. Moreover, the apartments were located compactly, across the building, with windows to both the courtyard and the street, which favorably distinguishes this house from other tenement buildings, where apartments were, as a rule, stretched along the facade. Due to the fact that the courtyard did not become a courtyard-well, since the neighboring houses do not stand on this plot in a tight circle, there is enough light here and the courtyard side of the apartments is well lit. Initially, each apartment had two exits - to the front staircase and the back staircase; now these exits have been restored. However, the apartments, taking into account modern realities, have been cut smaller: if earlier there were six apartments on the floor, now there will be ten. What has been done taking into account the cost of housing in the center - it is clear that a square meter of housing in this house will cost a lot. In addition, the potential contingent of residents was taken into account: in the alleys of the historical center, in a house with a minimum yard, people who are not burdened with large families will settle, choosing the center for both business and evening-night life. However, the apartments on the upper floor will be two-tier: they will be supplemented with the space of attics, which are no longer needed for heating the house with an air gap; new loft windows - sharp, triangular, peeking out delicately from behind the cornice, their modern origin is recognizable.
The floors of Tyulyaeva's apartment building differ noticeably in height: the most prestigious floor is the third and, accordingly, it has the highest ceilings. The upper mezzanine floor was built a little later, it is lower than the others. The appearance of the house lacks the rational functionality that is typical for many other high-rise buildings of the 1910s with uniform rows of windows and floors of the same height. This kind of house stands right next to it, stepping back from the red line of Nastasyinsky Lane, practically in the courtyard of the Rosenkampf house, says Aleksey Ginzburg: this is an eight-story apartment building built by the architect Nikolai Zherikhov three years earlier, in 1907. It belongs to Izvestia and is still awaiting restoration.
Over the past thirty or forty years, the Moscow center has experienced a lot: for many years the houses were dilapidated, although the advantage was that almost any quarter could be walked along and across. They were repaired carelessly, unable and unwilling to restore and even preserve bourgeois beauty. Then the onset of the "mushroom" period brought with it demolitions, barbaric reconstructions and dummies - at best, they kept the "hung" walls of the facades, and even they often fell from zealous reconstruction. It is quite obvious that the work of Alexey Ginzburg and Natalya Shilova with the restoration of an apartment building, the protection status of which is not great - it is listed in the newly identified ones - belongs to a qualitatively new stage. One can argue about the need for monolithic floors, but in perfectionism one should not go too far - the house is alive, the function and many historically reliable elements have been returned to it, from fragments of stucco to the brick of firewalls and internal lanterns. Both he and the surrounding space have been conscientiously cleaned, "washed" and ready for a new life. Of course, it will not be cheap to live in, and I would like to count on the fact that one of the new owners will list the apartment on airbbnb - curious, what if. But more importantly, this fragment of the city will regain its nobility. And the nobility of the city is not only high prices for real estate, it is also a living space where anyone can come to the theater and cafe. Now this fragment of the city has all the chances that it will grow into such a real, non-dummy space. Largely - thanks to Alexei Ginzburg's hobbies for history and restoration. In the end, the quality of a city is determined only by the pavement of sidewalks and intersections, albeit by it too. The architecture of the surrounding houses and their historical integrity are also important.
