The private house, built by Roman Leonidov in Antonovka near Moscow in 2014, was from the very beginning intended for two families linked by kinship: the main wing for one and the outbuilding for the second.
The wings are connected by a line of single-storey garages, along which a covered gallery runs from the inside of the house, and are located at an angle of 120 degrees relative to each other. Thanks to this, the volume of the building is thrown open towards the adjacent forest, forming a spacious green lawn.
Such layouts, however, are typical for the projects of Roman Leonidov's bureau, even if this is not dictated by considerations of functionality: in this way the architect, fencing off the space of private life from the street and neighbors, provides future residents with maximum privacy. Planting a house on the site works for the same effect. “This is actually a very simple compositional technique,” explains Leonidov. - A very common mistake is when a house is “planted” on a small plot in the center, because then both the courtyard and the entrance are lost. You need to stand along the border: this allows you to win as much space as possible. In this case, too, the architect managed to achieve the optimal combination of the feeling of spaciousness and intimacy: for the residents of the house, their own microcosm was created.
Each wing of the mansion has two floors and a plinth; a small pool is arranged in the main building - the wall framing it with continuous stained-glass glazing protrudes forward in an expressive arc, and at the level of the roof, above the terrace, its pattern is repeated by an elegant semicircular strip of light wood. The combination of arched and straight lines is the main technique that determined the complex stereometry of the building, which seems to be composed of cubes of different colors and sizes, standing at arbitrary angles to each other and surrounded by wooden frames of terrace fences and pergolas.
The architect himself compares it to his very first project of a country house, built ten years before the mansion in Antonovka. “I wanted to play with very simple orthogonal shapes, adding a bit of arc plasticity to soften the overall rigidity of the structure,” he says. - True, in that project they were functionally more justified, although they were secondary from the point of view of composition. Here, the situation is the opposite: curved structural elements perform mainly a decorative role, but at the same time a rather clear emphasis is placed on them. Actually, it was they - the larch pergolas on the roof, the tin-covered roof, the undulating element in front of the entrance to the main wing - that formed the external appearance of the building, sharply distinguishing it against the background of other houses in the village. Even the fence was built according to a special project: built from the same larch wood as many of the building's elements, it avoids the feeling of monotony thanks to the continuous tape of windows in its upper part.
If we talk about associations, then the house in Antonovka most of all resembles a space station from some science fiction film. The volumes connected at an arbitrary angle, and the ribs-frames of the terrace railings, and the arches of the "solar panels" work for this feeling - and most importantly, the general feeling of lightness and penetration of light.
By the way, Roman Leonidov believes that a house is always a portrait of the owner, "painted" by means available to the architect. In this case, the mistress of the house acted as the customer, so in a certain sense it was from her that Leonidov "copied" both the general austerity of the architecture, softened by the almost sculptural femininity of the arc, and the noble restraint of the color scheme, composed of facade plaster in a shade of white sand, a warm shade of brick and light larch. It is not for nothing that the house got its working name by the name of the customer - Julia House.
The internal layouts are simple, logical - downstairs there are public spaces: living room, dining room, kitchen, upstairs bedrooms - and as comfortable as possible, as always with Leonidov. Both parts of the house are two-storey, but there is also a difference in levels in the main building, which is due to the need for technical support of the pool.
In the children's rooms, mezzanines are provided: according to the experience of the architect, children really like such a design, when the play and study areas are located below, and the sleeping place is above them. The flights of stairs are responsible for the vertical communication - in the main house there is a spiral staircase, in the outbuilding it is straight, but dynamic, with a complex interior volume and accent decor made of tinted oak slats.
The interiors of the wing were designed by Elena Orman. She recalls that no matter how much she came to the object, the house was always permeated with sunlight. Apparently, he was lucky with the weather, but the main thing, of course, was the setting up of the house on the site - solid experience in suburban construction allows Roman Leonidov to provide future residents with an optimal light regime at any time of the year. One way or another, Elena decided for herself that it was the light that would act as the main character of this interior. “Thanks to the good location of the house on the plot and the stained-glass windows from floor to ceiling,” she says, “the shadows fall in such a way that in a bright room they create a beautiful pattern by themselves and fill the space in such a way that there is no need to add special accents there - just add some details to complete the composition. So, in full agreement with the customer, the style of interior decoration was chosen quite simple, almost minimalistic. Both materials and colors are only natural, no plastic and stretch ceilings, even lamps or glass with metal, or gypsum.
In Leonidov's bureau, there is a strict axiom: as far as possible, the materials and colors of the exterior of the house should be used inside. Here, too, light wood and a shade of white sand "flow" into the rooms, creating the basis of the color scheme, against the background of which slightly brighter shades of accent walls stand out. This is also a natural wood, but with an expressive natural pattern: olive in the living room and kitchen-dining room, rosewood in the study. And for the subtleties of "taste", additional shades are responsible, which Elena compares with spices: here a little cinnamon, here a burnt orange, somewhere a sprig of rosemary, mint or a light scent of lavender is added … provides home owners who will certainly complement the premises with the details of their own lives.
