The kitchen factory at the corner of Novokuznetskaya and Stary Tolmachevsky lane was built in 1932 - this fact, in fact, exhausts information about the origin of the building. Even the partners of the Kleinewelt bureau, with their programmatic scrupulousness in the study of the history and environment of their objects, did not manage, despite all the research, to find information about the author of the original project. If you think about it, there is nothing surprising in this: conceived as one of the strongholds of the grandiose all-Union program of socializing everyday life, kitchen factories were built according to standard projects developed not by single architects, but by large house-building factories. So, in a certain sense, we can say that the author of such buildings, including the building on Novokuznetskaya, was, pathetically speaking, Time itself. One of the authors of the project, Nikolai Pereslegin, believes that this is precisely what its value lies in. “This building is so typical,” says the architect, “that it doesn’t seem to understand to itself that it is an excellent example of constructivism. So we wanted to remind him of this."
And at the same time, the city - after all, the originally former factory-kitchen (which still managed to be a plant for the production of vitamins, and then a repository of offices of various sizes), given the dilapidated structure and the lack of protective legislation, was supposed to be demolished. The architects did not doubt that it was worthy of reconstruction, moreover, a careful reconstruction, which implies the preservation of the internal structure, and the facades, and general aesthetics. At the same time, the authors of the project wanted their object, while remaining constructivist in spirit and letter, to become a model of high-quality modern architecture - the same as constructivism could look like today if it were erected by highly professional builders from good expensive materials.
Fortunately, in terms of quality, their ambitions have successfully coincided with the tasks set by the customer, who wanted to get an office building of a high level of comfort as a result. However, from an engineering-constructive point of view, it was difficult to imagine something more distant from this ideal than the object of future reconstruction. The building has not only become dilapidated during its existence and has undergone all sorts of alterations, but it was also originally built very badly. The columns did not fall on top of each other, natural scrap metal was used as concrete reinforcement, the walls were erected from literally everything that was at hand, even a white stone slab with engraving was found under one of the columns - obviously from one of the destroyed Zamoskvoretsky churches in the neighborhood. So the architects, as well as the engineers and designers who worked with them, felt themselves, in the figurative expression of Nikolai Pereslegin, "neurosurgeons in the operating room." The result is a completely new structure integrated into the existing building.
In terms of the building, it looks like the letter "L" with a small rounded bulge at the base of the "leg", due to which a small courtyard is formed on the inside. The facade solution is based on the alternation of the uniform whiteness of the walls with large window openings, which at the corner of Novokuznetskaya and Stary Tolmachevsky lanes are assembled into single vertical blocks exposing all three floors. The project of the Kleinewelt bureau envisaged not only a return to the original façade plastics, badly distorted by subsequent chaotic alterations, but also a delicate enhancement of the contrast effect. For this, the window openings were framed with dark gray granite slabs, which protrude 25 cm beyond the plane of the wall. The same framing was received by two entrance portals, symmetrically located on both sides of the corner; between them and the vertical window frames were placed the logos of the United Carriage Company, which now occupies the building alone.
It was this "accent" corner, clearly visible not only from Novokuznetskaya, but also - through the continuation of Old Tolmachevsky - from Pyatnitskaya Street, that took on the role of an active organizer of this fragment of the urban space. This happens due to not only the external, but also - in a rare case - the internal architecture of the building, the compositional core of which is a four-level foyer with a grand staircase. This staircase was certainly going to be removed, increasing the office space at its expense, and it took a lot of work for the architects to convince the customer not to do this. The result is really impressive: of impeccable whiteness and equally impeccable proportions, staircases twine like a serpentine around a light column emanating from two skylights, and inside it, “rain” falls from thin black strokes of a grandiose chandelier along its entire height. A separate and important story is the railings: if the internal ones are made of the same white concrete as the entire staircase, then the architects chose a glass sheet for the external ones, so as not to even partially block the view of the street. The handrails are the same jet black as the light tubes. In the cold season, this mesmerizing graphic works powerfully to connect the interior with the city behind the panoramic windows. “We cannot make Moscow have more sun,” says Nikolai Pereslegin, “but we wanted to show that a cloudy winter day also has its own peculiar beauty.”
As for the actual working interiors, everything has been done here to create a high-quality space for business - rational, laconic, but at the same time cozy enough to make it comfortable for a person to spend most of the day there. The black and white graphics of the offices and hallways are enlivened by a large number of lighting scenarios designed for different working moments. Particular attention is paid to materials - wood, concrete, and metal are not only of high quality, but also pleasant to the touch; the issues of sound insulation and sound absorption have also been carefully worked out. For this project, Kleinewelt was awarded the Interni Design Awards in the Public Interior Design category.
Loving and appreciating the historical heritage is, of course, a good thing, according to the founders of the Kleinewelt bureau. It is more difficult to do so as to preserve it not in words, but in deeds: what can be left intact, what is necessary to reconstruct, what is hopelessly outdated - to recreate in the realities of the new time. It is this, we will not be afraid of this word, the mission they are trying to implement in each separate "sector of the front", in each of their projects. In the case of the building on Novokuznetsk, the mission was undoubtedly a success.
