For more than half a century, the view of the Milling Passage has not been pleasing to the eye. In the sixties, the Melkombinat No. 4 was erected here. The gray concrete bulk worked properly, but over time it fell into decay - the last grain reserves were taken out four years ago. Since then, the territory, entangled with rusting railway tracks, was empty, individual buildings were rented out on random leases, and it seemed that an atmosphere of hopelessness reigned here for a long time.
At the same time, the site is included in the "Big City" area and has excellent infrastructure. It is separated from the skyscrapers of the Business Center by the Third Transport Ring, the Shelepikha metro station will open 600 meters away, and the MCC stop of the same name and the Testovskaya railway platform, from which you can get to Tverskaya Zastava Square in seven minutes, are located very close. The embankment of the Moskva River is also just a stone's throw away: just walk through a couple of rows of five- and nine-storey buildings. Between them, at the very edge of the water, there is an old tower. This is a technical structure that was necessary in order to unload barges and transport grain to the elevator. It was decided not to demolish it, but to keep it as a kind of obelisk to the past of the Milling Passage. The tower will remain the only reminder of the industrial area. The entire territory, where the Melkombinat was formerly located, will be occupied by a new quarter.
The site was conditionally divided into three large parts. The southern one will be given for municipal housing: it is planned to relocate people here from the dilapidated houses of the Kamushka district, which is almost directly adjacent to Moscow City. Apartments in the other two will be put up for sale, and among them there will be very small in area - from 28 m2… Now the construction of the first stage is underway, which will house about 77 thousand square meters of housing. But, if the project is fully approved in its current form, then ultimately this figure will more than triple.
“We have received the task in a finished form. It was known to be housing. It was known that resettlement facilities for residents of the Kamushki quarter would become part of this housing. The area has already been spelled out in the document of the Moscow government. Our task was to translate all this into concrete spatial solutions,”explains the chief architect of the project, Valery Kanyashin.
The idea to build up the site with the same skyscrapers was immediately abandoned. The object, built in a single architectural theme, would look too monumental and would destroy the dominance of the Moscow City complex. In addition, this option was not suitable due to insolation norms: a wall of skyscrapers would block the access of sunlight to nine- and five-story buildings on the embankment and along Shmitovskiy proezd. As a result, the silhouette of the complex turned out to be complex and, at first glance, absolutely spontaneous: with high and low parts, gaps, various facade solutions and house heights ranging from 11 to 175 meters. This made it possible not only to maintain the best insolation and natural lighting regime, but also to create an interesting environment reminiscent of an established residential area, which was built up not at once, but for decades. Facade materials support this game. They are contrasting, with different textures: clinker bricks, ceramic slabs, fiberglass concrete, nickel-plated sheets, steel panels, stained-glass structures - the variety emphasizes the individuality of each building.
“The houses are different, and at the same time, none of them is revolutionary: somewhere we have already seen all this, something is familiar. Thanks to this, a person does not find himself in new circumstances, but in normal, calm and already experienced ones. This makes it possible to create the atmosphere of a place that already has a history,”says Valery Kanyashin.
A characteristic feature of the development is residential courtyards, raised above the ground to a floor height, thereby emphasizing the privacy of residential spaces. At the level of residential yards, there are adjoining territories with kindergartens and playgrounds. Although the stylobate height is significant, about four meters, it will not feel like an obstacle. The courtyards are planned to be landscaped and landscaped so that they will become indistinguishable from ordinary ones, and it will be easy to get into them: on an escalator or an elevator through through lobbies, but at the same time transit pedestrians will hardly find themselves in them. For passers-by, the presence of such stylobates is not felt in any way. They perceive the planes of the facades: somewhere one-level, and somewhere above 50 floors.
Another difficult circumstance is the very high building density. However, each skyscraper has a dedicated lower part of two floors, which from the height of a person's height is perceived as ordinary city facades - these are office premises, shops and entrance groups of residential sections, where stained glass structures and high-quality ceramic slabs will be used as decoration. Diagonally, starting at the metro, the residential complex will be cut by a boulevard: it will stretch over the underground route of the metro under construction, from the Shelepikha station deep into the quarter. The boulevard smoothly flows into a small square with a low public building, which, paying tribute to the past of the place, the designers conditionally named the Moulin Rouge - the Red Mill. It should become a kind of point of attraction for the quarter: here you can equip a cafe, place clubs of interest, and in the warm season, equip a terrace with tables. Thus, the trajectory of movement through the residential complex completely repeats the logic of movement in the natural urban environment. The proportion of residential space and retail space is exactly observed, so nothing should be empty: as you move away from the center - which in this case can be considered a metro station - the number of stores will gradually decrease in exactly the same way as it happens on the streets of old European cities. It is thanks to the details that the environment of the residential complex in Mukomolny Proyezd is designed to be intuitive and proportionate to a person, even despite the height of the buildings and a small area.
