It is proposed to build a multifunctional complex with residential apartments on the site of an existing car complex located opposite the Kitezh office center. The latter hangs over a long gallery over one-sided Kievskaya street, coming close to the fence of the plant. A large volume of the Ibis hotel approaches the eastern border of the territory of the motor depot, behind it there is the Evropeyskiy shopping center and Kievsky railway station.
In such an environment, the designers of Flat & Co proposed to build a complex with a total area of 159 thousand square meters. As one of the authors of the project said, initially, back in 2009, it was planned to build a shopping center on the territory of the auto plant. Then the functional concept was revised, while the authors tried to preserve the general compositional solution with the ray structure of the location of the buildings.
The site has a small relief difference - up to 3.5 m from west to east. To smooth it out, the complex is placed on a stylobate, clearly inscribed in the boundaries of the site. Only the gas pipeline zone is left undeveloped. It was decided to give it to the urban public space. Four extended volumes rise above the stylobate, their narrow ends turned towards "Kitezh". The height of the entire complex does not exceed 41 m.
According to the presented concept, the new multifunctional complex will accommodate 32 thousand square meters of retail space. Shops and retail are planned to be located both on the ground and underground. In addition, a parking lot will appear on two underground floors. A small office block for the needs of the car complex will be built in the southwestern part of the stylobate, and its upper floors will be occupied by apartments. All four extended buildings are allotted for housing. The lack of a full-fledged courtyard area is compensated by the arrangement of small green courtyards on the operated roof of the stylobate. The buildings face a small round square with a fountain in front of the central entrance to the complex from Kievskaya Street. The park zone is also designed on a section of the street - from the Kievsky railway station square to the Mozhaisky shaft. Additional landscaped pedestrian zones are designed to connect the multifunctional complex with Bryanskaya Street, which borders the block from the south.
The authors presented several options for the volumetric-spatial solution. So, in one of them the residential buildings look like smoothly outlined elongated petals, in the other they are presented as faceted volumes with panoramic glazing at the ends. An alternative proposal is the perimeter building of the site. Instead of a transparent composition with free-standing buildings, a large "mono-volume" with terraces appears here.
The presented project raised a lot of questions among the council members. Most of them related to the transport scheme and the unaccounted for urban planning situation. So, Yuri Grigoryan doubted that the pedestrian routes in the direction of Bryanskaya Street take into account the boundaries of land tenure. Sergey Kuznetsov explained that during the working review, the authors were recommended to study the quarter, understand the real situation and try to find an opportunity to connect the new complex with the environment. Instead, the designers have painted an idealized picture that cannot really be realized.
Andrei Gnezdilov said that the difficult urban planning situation with the system of dead ends and fences in this place had developed a long time ago. The car depot has always been an isolated territory, and it remains so in the presented project. The complex does not solve the problem of permeability, but exacerbates it. Without proper planning of the entire quarter, without new transport and pedestrian connections, this site cannot be built up, Gnezdilov is convinced. Council members agreed that such a large-scale development will create an additional traffic load. Considering that the site is surrounded by one-way streets, and such points of attraction as the railway station, the Evropeyskiy shopping center and the Dorogomilovsky market operate nearby, this, in the opinion of the council, could lead to a traffic collapse.
As for the complex itself, the council members also identified fundamental problems in it. Its functional content raised doubts, since both trade and hotel functions in this part of the city are presented in abundance. Sergei Tchoban expressed the opinion that such a megastructure would not function. According to him, it is not viable: there is no operator ready to work with such a scale. Such hotels in Europe have not been built for a long time. The last illustrative example is the demolished Rossiya hotel. The building in its present form looks more like the office of a giant corporation, Choban is sure. It does not correspond to the scale of the surrounding buildings, which is approximately three times smaller than the proposed one. As a possible solution to the problem, Sergei Tchoban advised the authors to reduce the scale, divide the complex into several blocks, provide for separate entrance loops, and provide easy access to buildings: after all, there is no such access now, and to get to the hotel part, you have to go through the entire shopping center.
A similar position was outlined by Yuri Grigoryan: “The authors painted very beautiful pedestrian spaces on someone else’s territory, but on theirs they scored everything with a stylobate,” he commented on the project. - In my opinion, a simple sculptural composition of detached houses should be made here. Small hotels do not require large investments. They can be implemented in stages without stopping the activities of the auto plant. The quarter would thus receive a completely new quality. You hold in your hands the key to this part of the city, which until now has developed very chaotically. " In addition, Yuri Grigoryan proposed to return Kievskaya Street to the city: now "the passage under the arches looks humiliating."
Vladimir Plotkin agreed with the arguments of his colleagues. In spite of the fact that the work, according to Plotkin, is done “masterfully” and stylistically bright, it does not solve the urban planning problems of the site. The centripetal composition with an orientation towards the backyards of the hotel and Kievsky railway station looks extremely dubious. The lack of a town-planning accent is replaced by an artificially created landmark - a small round square.
According to Alexander Kudryavtsev, this site requires a completely different solution. He is sure that the passage, transit space between Kievskaya square and Dorogomilovsky market cannot be completely blocked with new buildings. Kievskaya street after the construction of "Kitezh" and so partly lost its urban character. Before building such a large complex, the authors, according to Kudryavtsev, should conduct a survey of the territory, understand its capacity and potential.
Summing up the results of the discussion, Sergey Kuznetsov noted that the project requires serious improvements. The authors were recommended to look for other planning and compositional solutions based on a deep analysis of the territory.
