The section between Zatsepsky Val and Kozhevnichesky Proezd remained the last undeveloped industrial area along the Shluzovaya embankment of the Moskva River. In the late nineties, part of the shops of the Parizhskaya Kommuna factory were rebuilt into office centers and a hotel; in the 2000s, a business quarter with the House of Music and the tower of another hotel appeared opposite. For a long time, the area next to the car services located closer to the Garden Ring was empty, but just a couple of years ago, the construction of another modern business center was completed here. The Moscow government, actively undertaking the "return of the embankments to the city", put the Shluzovaya "on view", promising to improve it in the coming years - with all the ensuing bike paths, benches and linden alleys. And only the site directly behind the business center, bounded on the fourth side by the residential buildings of Kozhevnicheskaya Street, retained the status of an industrial zone.
So the place that was occupied for a long time by the buildings of the cloth factory, which had not been functioning for a long time, turned into a "tasty" site for the placement of a new residential quarter. It is convenient to travel by all means of transport and on foot, near the river, within a stone's throw of the historical part of Zamoskovorechye, from all sources of possible disturbance: the Paveletsky railway station and the Garden Ring - various buildings around the perimeter protect. However, the authors of the project deliberately moved the new buildings away from the border of the site in order to be able to build an additional "green fence" with hedges, rows of trees, lawns and sports playgrounds.
In the newly built projects in the center of Moscow, the so-called public spaces are becoming the subject of a separate close study and admiration. The competition of “club houses” in haute couture architecture has actually sunk into oblivion, and even small areas are being developed from the point of view of not maximum density in an attractive “shell”, but a high-quality environment inside and out. In this case, the area of the territory - 1.6 hectares - turned out to be large enough to form a cozy quarter, provide for the arrangement of the landscape along the outer perimeter, and conceive the courtyard in the form of a garden. Cars have no place here - they immediately go to the underground parking. Instead, there are fruit trees, a rose garden and a fountain. The Dutch designers from Hyco Verhaagen GmbH must make sure that the plants in this garden change color all year round.
The international team on this project is generally impressive. Responsible for the volume and layout is David Walker, the owner of his own architecture bureau in London, who started his career at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill: for many decades she has been building some of the most "breakthrough" skyscrapers in the world. Although in "I'M" they talked about buildings of a different scale: both buildings, the first of which - in the form of two "hammers" arranged side by side - is elongated conditionally along the Zatsepsky shaft, and the second, similar, but one of the "hammers" without a "handle "- along Kozhevnichesky proezd - are 6-7 floors high. And if architects are usually busy solving the problem of visually reducing the height, then there was, rather, the opposite task: to "stretch" the buildings up a little more, to enhance the feeling of security. And since the stylobate is “pushed forward” to reduce it, then Walker, on the contrary, “cut through” the gallery from the inner side of the quarter in the first two levels of the buildings. Double protection - psychological and physical. Moreover, the psychological one is even more important and stronger due to a simple, but such effective technique: walls and vaults are faced with green glazed bricks. You walk - greens on one side - and greens on the other.
Facing clinker bricks of the German company Hagemeister will become the basis for the imaginative solution of the complex facades. The facades were created by the Dutch bureau MLA + headed by Markus Appenzeller. For the three "contours of visibility" of the quarter, he proposed three options for the facades. "Parade", with access to the Shluzovaya embankment and Kozhevnichesky proezd, are finished with warm bricks: at the bottom, beige, above the chocolate - shade. Other external facades are made of deep red bricks. And finally, inside the block, the walls of the buildings are warm-beige again.
The drawing of the facades is the same everywhere: the cells of the grids of windows (and all of them are panoramic!), Which are adjusted, as in a ruler, are decorated with "copper" lattices of balconies - both flat "French" and "ordinary". However, despite the seeming simplicity of the solution, with proper lighting, the facades of both buildings "come to life" and become plastic and textured. This is due to the complex coloring of the bricks, be it red, chocolate or beige, and the so-called “melange” effect, when elements slightly different in tone, forming a single surface, generate color overflows. The production of these "brick graders" requires a special molding and firing technology - a relatively small family-owned factory, Hagemeister, has been producing it for years. And now these products are used in many domestic projects, where decorative brickwork is provided on the facades.
And finally, the fourth international company involved in the project is the Aedas bureau, which, among other things, has extensive experience in the design of luxury hotels. It is no coincidence that Aedas specialists worked on the interiors of common spaces at I'M - in addition to the spacious lobby with waiting areas for guests, this is the notorious "club house", the Clubhouse: a kind of representative space for residents that can be adapted for events of any format. Located on the first floor b about the largest of the two buildings, it occupies 250 m2 and includes a reception area, a library, two offices and a multifunctional hall: if necessary, it becomes a meeting room, banquet or, say, a home theater. To the already diverse infrastructure of the quarter: a beauty salon, a fitness center, a coworking area, a coffee shop, a medical center, a bank branch, a kindergarten - this adds that very man-made and individual "cut" for which, in the case of brick, people go to Germany. In the case of modern Moscow housing, perhaps, it is no longer necessary to go far. There would be money.
For the facades of the I'M complex, three types of clinker bricks of the 240x115x71 format by Hagemeister have been selected: Meissen light honey shade; red-yellow sorting Hannover; complex brown-gray palette Werne.
The supply of Hagemeister bricks for the I'M project is carried out by Firm KIRILL JSC.
