The residential complex "Baikonur" is being built near Gagarin Square, on Ordzhonikidze Street. Almost right next to it is the MARCHI dormitory, behind it is the Neskuchny Sad residential complex, built by Nikolai Lyzlov in 2008. Another residential complex - "Vavilova 4" will soon appear nearby, to the south. However, the high density of the surrounding buildings is not the only difficulty that City-Arch has encountered in this area.
The architects knew that there was a subway tunnel in the immediate vicinity. According to the documents, he was supposed to be three meters from the object, and such a neighborhood did not cause much concern. In fact, the metro turned out to be almost twice as close. In addition, a heating main and a high-voltage power line have been laid under the site. In a word, everything looked as if the circumstances did not leave the designers the slightest room for maneuver.
“The project grew out of constraints. As one of my colleagues said, when there are a lot of restrictions and you do not have a certain degree of freedom, it is very easy to work,”jokes the head of City-Arch Valery Lukomsky.
However, City-Arch dealt with the difficulties of the site quite gracefully. The heating main was removed into a collector, which was built into the minus-first floor of the house. There are three underground floors, and work is going on at a depth of fifteen meters, almost level with the metro tunnel. Therefore, it was impossible to allow the soil to move towards the metro by more than one centimeter, and for the enclosing structures of the excavation the architects used the technology of jet cementing - jet piles. The building was provided with vibration protection; it stands entirely on vibration elements. At the same time, a postponed installation was provided: after the main supporting system is completed, it is lifted with a jack and placed on vibration dampers in order to precisely adjust the desired height. They decided to change the type of vibration mounts to a more reliable one already at the stage of working documentation. However, the new elements did not fit into the original plan, so the lower floor had to be redone, which took almost three months. In the course of the work, the areas of future apartments were also redrawn, adjusting them, at the request of the customer, to new market trends. Apartments turned out from 45 to 123 m2.
It was originally planned to build two 18-storey buildings. Architects "City-Arch", having studied the geometry of the site and the features of the location of neighboring houses, came to the conclusion that it is impossible to solve the problem by standard means. Firstly, such a height would violate the norms of insolation of the Moscow Architectural Institute hostel. Secondly, two identical volumes, placed in a straight line, could hardly fit into the territory allocated for building. All these difficulties resulted in an interesting volumetric-spatial solution.
The residential complex "Baikonur" was made multi-storey: one part was lowered to the level of 15 floors, and the second was raised to 19. The plan of the house consists of two rectangles growing into each other, one of which, truncated, is turned at an angle of about 45º. The house, viewed from above, has an unexpectedly contextual resemblance to the MARCHI dormitory, which consists of two plates connected by a common angle, albeit stricter, without a turn.
The turn in this case helped not only to provide the necessary insolation and privacy for both the house itself and its current and future neighbors, but also allowed it to successfully fit into the urban environment. The nineteen-story tower has become the vertical accent that the councils like to call the dominant: it emphasized the angle between Ordzhonikidze Street and the passage leading to Vavilov Street. The turn sharpened the silhouette of the house and oriented it to the axis of the pedestrian route from the nearest bus stop on Leninsky Prospekt. At the same time, if a tall tower salutes the house of Nikolai Lyzlov, but a smaller tower forms a step necessary for a diverse silhouette: calculating the panorama taking into account the future of the residential complex "Vavilova 4", the architects were able to create a city silhouette, albeit inevitably dense, but still not devoid of pauses. …
The joining of the two volumes should not only be used, but also developed plastically. This is how an imaginary hinge appeared in the upper part - a triangular balcony with a graceful golden-colored support, from a distance resembling a docking "paw" of a house-mechanism.
But there was still not enough free space, "air". “I don't like it when an object is solved in such a way that there is no emptiness, no space. If there is a flow of the external into the internal, it looks much more interesting. Therefore, such a shift appeared when one volume organically intersects with another. Having a node of the first five floors and just such a shift, you can make any facade and use any material,”explains Valery Lukomsky.
The size of the site did not allow to add the necessary for harmony emptiness around the lower tier, but the architects of City-Arch found a way out. The volumes of the three lower floors of the 19-storey tower occupied by offices were gradually shifted to the south, towards Vavilova Street. Terraces for office employees were provided on their roofs; here it is partly (with trees in tubs) planned to compensate for the lack of landscaping. Thus, the house received a kind of "sole" - a visual support. Two slender white towers, deployed relative to each other on an imaginary hinge, are shaded by the dark titanium-zinc of the horizontal office terraces.
On the inside, the shift made space for a small but tall lobby in two-story space. A dark console, surrounded by a wide frame-TV, protrudes towards Ordzhonikidze Street, accentuating the entrance with a massive "visor". It is supported by four plates of granite pylons installed longitudinally, opening the entrance and partly even inviting, "pulling" inward, as befits a portal of this size.
Glass with illustrations and texts dedicated to space exploration will be attached to the longitudinal sides of the pylons with the help of spider systems - paying tribute to the neighborhood of Gagarin Square and the obviously inspired name of the Baikonur Residential Complex. On the lower plane of the visor-console, a drawing of the starry sky glowing at night will also appear. It is planned that the interiors of public areas will also play up the space theme in one way or another.
The building - and in modern architecture this is a common technique - makes its forced molded form part of the image, making it possible to feel the complexity of conjugations and even some tension in the contrast of black and white, horizontals and verticals growing into each other.
In addition to towers and terraces, another example of such angled sprouting is the dark zinc canopy on the northeastern corner of the small tower. It is intended to draw attention to cafes and shops on the ground floors, and in addition, to brighten up the path that passes here from the bus stop to the MARCHI hostel.
Equally important is the balance of horizontal and vertical lines. The length of the steps of the office floors is emphasized by a grid of relief stripes, which enhance their figurative resemblance to tectonic strata. However, the opposite voice immediately enters into force - thin vertical lines of wooden lamellas crush large planes of glass showcases. The white facades of the towers, whose design is subordinated to slender pairs of windows with rare but regular accents of golden ocher, are balanced by a horizontal grid of joints of large porcelain stoneware slabs, reminiscent of thin rustic wood. ***
Improvement became a separate topic. The miniature area left over from the building spot will not be fenced off - on the contrary, the architects have thought out a number of little things aimed at more actively incorporating it into the urban space. In particular, it is planned to improve the green area along Ordzhonikidze Street - now there are quite a few trees, although most of them are American maples. Mini-square remains urban and at the same time it becomes part of the residential complex, adding "air" in the literal and figurative sense. Another footpath will appear here, and the grass will hopefully take on a civilian look.
Here, in front of the pylons of the entrance, to which, as we remember, the nearest "folk path" from Leninsky Prospekt leads, a small square appeared. It was not even spoiled by the ventilation mine of the three-tiered underground parking, which had nowhere else to take out: the architects designed the mine in the form of a shiny glass ball - it turned out almost like a monument to a satellite - which is consonant with the space theme of the house. A monitor with useful information for residents will be installed on the surface of the ball. The ball stands on a neatly convex, round lawn hill, which is boldly, in the spirit of modern urbanism, cut by a student trail. The authors decided to make the pavement uniform, from one material, so as not to complicate the already small fragment of the urban space.
In a word, the project of the Baikonur residential complex has been worked out to the smallest detail. “If there are no details, then there will be practically no object,” explains the head of City-Arch Valery Lukomsky. At the Zodchestvo festival -2016, the project entered the top five.
