The site in the very thick of the Khamovniki district, right opposite the Mandelstam Park and the Trubetskoy estate, is definitely a tidbit, but only if it is presented correctly. After all, literally through the house - "Garden Quarters", with modern and memorable architecture, developing infrastructure and high-quality environment, promising all 33 pleasures: a pond, a landscaped inner quarter, multi-level green courtyards. What can be opposed to such a gorgeous handsome neighbor and his life "on a grand scale"? Only an aristocratic existence as a detached house, inside a closed "club" - and with small permissible areas and heights, club housing is the most obvious solution. In this case, the developer is not selling meters, but the format: privacy - in the very center of the city. And if we draw an analogy between a populated quarter and a bustling “royal court”, then the club house is obviously “chambers”.
They should have all the amenities: a pool, a fitness center, commercial areas that could cover the needs of residents for services and - at the expense of rent - their costs for maintaining the house itself. Even apartmentography in such a situation is not so important, although the project cannot be blamed for ill-conceived layouts. But above all - the architecture must correspond to: both the format and the "retinue" that makes the "king".
So the customer announced a creative competition - also "club", closed, for the elite. The payment for "membership" was a serious, albeit familiar to the architect, challenge: the dense surroundings made strict requirements for the future building in terms of lighting, insolation, and compatibility. In order to fulfill them and at the same time to organize a convenient entrance to the house, the architects of "Gran" developed an elongated section in depth, deciding the building in the form of two volumes strongly offset relative to each other - so that they almost do not overlap each other. At the same time, the distant building is 5 floors higher (13 versus 8) and is connected to the near one-story stylobate. In addition to all public, technical and administrative premises, including offices and a swimming pool, it houses a spacious entrance lobby.
The entrance area from the outside is no less spacious and covered by a powerful console. The large "visor", which has already become part of the "corporate identity" of the head of the "Gran" workshop, Pavel Andreev, also captures the nearest entrance directly from Trubetskoy Street, which leads to the office part, and glass doors hidden in the depths, in the stylobate, to the private and main residential part of the house. You can get here by turning with Trubetskoy - along the end of the neighboring “wavy” building. And moving in the same direction and turning left, you find yourself at the entrance to the underground parking.
On one side of the house is the headquarters of Alexei Vorontsov's bank, built in the early 1990s. And the "wavy" house is nothing more than a relatively new
residential complex of Sergei Tkachenko, the fruit of an experimental search of the 2000s. Also not the most "modest" neighbors. However, according to Pavel Andreev, he reacted to their architecture only by making the windows of most apartments "looking" at them only by kitchens and bedrooms. The main rooms offer views of the park ahead - almost like those of the residents of New York Manhattan. Or back - also to the park: the one that the architect proposes to arrange for the developer himself.
Thus, the exploited roof of the stylobate is, first of all, taking care of the residents from above. Although exits to the roof and green area are provided from both residential sections and the entrance lobby. The windows overlooking the makeshift park are located at a height of at least 2.5 m from the level of the roof, so that those who like to wander on the roofs will not disturb others. However, true fans of “walking at heights” would definitely choose one of the penthouses crowning each building. Only here are covered private terraces, where there is a lot of air and sun, although from the outside they look like ordinary floors with panoramic windows.
This is the case with everything in this house: the authors, following the principle of "closeness", packed in a laconic "box" all the numerous functions, technical solutions, including stairs and equipment underground and in the upper part of penthouses, and, after all, meanings. But they made it so that this "insides" had the ability to "break through" out - through an unexpectedly graceful ornament on the frame, which appears when the backlight is turned on (it can be both metal panels and Corian ribbons); through the outrigger balconies that appear on the sides, through hatches in the terrace roofs through which trees sprout, and the sky streams back inside.
