One of the most noticeable features of the house built by Sergei Skuratov on Burdenko Street in Khamovniki is the brick shell that envelops all its external surfaces so thoroughly that it is perceived as a kind of “skin” of the building. Brick is everywhere here: not only the main planes of the walls, but also the slopes of windows, sandriks, window sills, frames, as well as horizontal surfaces, including the lower surfaces of the consoles and the floor of the terraces, are made of bricks, which made it possible to emphasize the depth of the walls and sculptural modeling volume. From a distance it seems that the house has been hewn out of a block of bricks.
In fact, this is not the case. The outer shell consists of fine handmade bricks that change in color from dark cherry and grayish metallic to almost yellow ocher. A colorful carpet at first glance may seem natural or even chaotic - but no, the brick layout is drawn in detail for each part of the wall. Why do this if you can just mix the colored bars? - The answer is quite simple, by the way, in all of Skuratov's projects, any color extensions are always drawn to the smallest detail. If this is not done, the probability of accidental repetition of the pattern is high, which can paradoxically deprive the facade of its thoughtful naturalness.
The variety of tones is complemented by a relief pattern of bricks, which on some of the planes protrude slightly from the plane of the wall, also folding into a thoughtfully chaotic pattern, especially effective in sunlight and harsh shadows.
But back to the details. Striving in every possible way to avoid the effect of an inert plane, to connect the surface with the volume, Skuratov uses many atypical options for bricks, made according to drawings on a special order. These are, first of all, corner bricks: here there are corners of all kinds, from wide "obtuse" to the usual straight and beautiful sharp angles with different degrees. These are bricks of the relief lattice of the northern facade, and window sills, where brick pokes are placed in a row. All non-standard bricks were counted and drawn. The brick shell project has become a kind of drawing unit, which is fundamentally important for the quality of the construction of this building.
Such atypical, individual requirements for the main facade material - not every brick, even a European one, can fulfill a brick. In this case, the architects were helped by the Hagemeister company, where they were able not only to find the sorting bricks needed by the color scheme, but also to manufacture the entire atypical range.
“In the building on Burdenko Street, we used a mix of two sorting bricks of our factory: Gent and Burdenko,” says Anastasia Langraf, Sales Director in Russia at Hagemeister. - The second sorting, as we can see, bears the name of the building, since it is named after him. Before the house on Burdenko Street, this sorting did not have a name, and the following story is connected with its appearance. We, Sergei Aleksandrovich Skuratov, Christian Hagemeister and I, have been looking for a sorting system suitable for Skuratov's project for a long time. And as usual, together with Sergei Alexandrovich they found it somewhere in the farthest corner of the warehouse. She stood facing the wall. This sample panel was made a long time ago for some other project, where it was not used and stood waiting for its happy hour until Sergey Aleksandrovich Skuratov found it. We pulled her out - as they say, into the light of day - ran into the street, ran around for a long time, looked under different lighting, until Skuratov exclaimed: "Yes, this sorting will do." So the panel moved from the dusty corner of the warehouse to the façade of one of the most interesting houses in Moscow.
*** The general partner of the Hagemeister factories in Russia is Firm KIRILL JSC. Kirill is a leading supplier of facing and building bricks, as well as ceramic tiles, clinker and clinker tiles. The assortment of the company includes more than 1000 brick options of different colors and textures. Recently, Hagemeister and Firm KIRILL have launched a joint program of Regional Representatives.
