The building of the second stage of the Metropolis shopping complex is lined up along the Leningradskoe highway between its first part, built in 2008 by ABD architects, and the line of the ring railway, recently opened as the MCC; the station "Baltiyskaya" is located nearby. Voykovskaya metro station is located three hundred meters to the south. The place is more than lively, but also confusing: cars, electric trains, bridges and overpasses. Therefore, the authors were required not only to expand the existing store: the main task was to organize convenient and safe movement of both transport and pedestrians.
We have already talked about the project, the fate of which has been developing for a long time and not easy. The UNK project workshop, which became the author of the final version, did not start working immediately. The original concept, developed by the English company DunnettCraven, was not approved by the city. The closedness of the building, blank facades, lack of communication with the city, highway and transport hubs - these are the main complaints that were expressed by the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction. Such a project would be more suitable for a suburban mall, but not for a large metropolitan complex. In search of the right solution, the customer organized a closed competition, as a result of which the work on the elimination of comments was entrusted to the team of Yuliy Borisov.
Preserving the structure of the building, which took a corner position at the intersection of the Leningradka double with Novopetrovsky Proezd, the architects proposed a new permeable shell for it, thematically combined it with the ground car park located directly behind it and connected it to the Baltiyskaya MCC station with a covered passage. According to Yuliy Borisov, all decisions were prompted by the environment: “The first thing we did was to analyze the development of Leningradka three kilometers in both directions. Analysis revealed the inherent rhythm of the site, with horizontal cornices and vertical pylons. This principle was taken as the basis for the facades of Metropolis-2, but received a modern interpretation."
The new complex is stylistically not tied to the first stage, which is justified by the desire to form a diverse street front. In addition, the stores have different owners. However, Metropolis-2 correlates well with its neighbor in height, and the horizontal cornice at the top of the building corresponds to the top mark of Stalinist houses on the opposite side of Leningradka.
Instead of blank and bright facades proposed by English designers, the new version has almost entirely glass walls. Transparent showcases on the ground floors invite visitors inside; a system of autonomous entrances to shops from the street has been thought out. Above the first floors, there are glazed zones of bypass galleries, staircases, and on the uppermost tier there is a food court and a winter garden under a sliding roof. Thanks to the large amount of glass, the building interacts openly with the city, offering visitors views of the arriving trains and the busy highway.
For the blind fragments of the walls, vertical pylons and lamellas made of composite panels with a metal coating are responsible. They all have different thicknesses and are located at different distances from each other. The broken rhythm of the verticals hides the scale of the overly extended building. The authors compare the resulting drawing with a barcode. Horizontally, the main facade is also divided into parts: the top and bottom of it, as already mentioned, are glass, and in the middle there is a wide belt of dark stone. Particular emphasis is placed on wide and blank planes with ornamental patterns, intended for placing advertising banners. Ornaments of Stalin's houses are paraphrased into a large "waffle" grid of diagonal squares, reminiscent of the thirties rather than the fifties of the XX century.
The pylon on the side of the railway hides the volume of the multi-level car park. The existing skeleton of the aboveground garage was built on and combined with the shopping center by a common shell. As a result of this extension of the facade, a balanced semi-arc with an articulated central entrance in the corner part was obtained. In front of the entrance, it was possible to organize a small semicircular pedestrian area, raised relative to the road. You can climb there by stairs or ramps. I must say that the architects raised the entire sidewalk along the highway by about a meter, which made it possible to protect the pedestrian zone from the dust and dirt of the highway, and also made it impossible for chaotic parking of cars. The initial concept, taking into account the difference in terrain, proposed the construction of numerous stairs and ramps. Now the entrance to the building, including separate entrances to the boutiques on the first floor, is from one level. Trees, shrubs and lawns planted along the edge of the carriageway also made the space comfortable. Comfortable benches, street lamps were installed behind a low fence, and the once noisy, uncomfortable roadside area turned into an urban space loyal to a person.
But the authors did not stop there. Initially, the investor, burdened with the need to solve the transport and infrastructural problems of the site, intended to start up a ground crossing to the metro station bypassing the building or to bury it underground. But Yuliy Borisov's team proposed the most logical and simple solution: a pedestrian bridge was connected from the ring railway to the building, directing passengers towards the metro through the warm and bright shopping galleries of the new and then the old Metropolis. Thus, the shopping center provides a much-needed through passage between the stations in this place, allowing you to change trains without leaving the street, and at the same time brings potential customers closer to the shops. In the Russian climate, this is extremely convenient. Now you have to walk almost half a kilometer from the MCC station to the metro station along the Metropolis galleries, but it's warm.
The inclusion of a shopping complex in the structure of a transport hub is not yet the most common experience for Moscow. So, perhaps, this decision is one of the important components of the project, making Metropolis-2 something more than just a new Moscow shopping center, albeit large, modern and not devoid of a certain brilliance.
