The joint Audi and Mercedes-Benz dealership, which promises to become the largest in Europe, is being built for the Avilon holding as part of the Park of Legends cluster on the territory of the former Likhachev Plant. Even for ZIL, where now every object is an event, this building, or rather, the reconstruction of the former model workshop, will become, without exaggeration, a landmark. First, unlike other reconstructed workshops, where theaters, shopping centers and other public spaces are planned to be located, the model workshop is the only object in the legendary ensemble of Soviet industrial architecture that will preserve the memory of the territory's past purpose. It was in this building that new cars were once designed, here the final bodywork was carried out, from here they actually went for sale - even taking into account the difference between the products of the Soviet automobile industry and models of premium German brands, the continuity is obvious.
And secondly. In accordance with the general plan of the plant, developed in 1933 by the First architectural and design workshop of the People's Commissariat for Tyazhprom under the leadership of the Vesnin brothers, the model workshop located along Avtozavodskaya Street, which has now become part of the Third Transport Ring, together with the instrumental one served as a kind of front gate of the ZIL ensemble. It was from here that the main internal highway began, formed by the buildings of the main workshops of the plant, each of which is recognized today as a model of industrial constructivism. Since the planning structure of the plant, as a part of the architectural heritage, it was decided to leave intact, the former model workshop will also retain its ceremonial function.
The building of the workshop itself - like most of the other components of the grandiose ensemble - could not be preserved. Architectural historian Denis Romodin notes: “Unfortunately, the building was very worn out, since it had not been in operation for almost 12 years and was not mothballed. In addition, the purpose of the workshop was constantly changing, and the last reconstruction of the 1970s turned out to be disastrous for the building frame. Strengthening and maintenance of the building in the future was impossible."
The structure, after careful measurements, was almost completely disassembled using laser cutting, and its components were carefully stored right there, on the territory of the plant.
Kleinewelt Architekten was invited to tender for the development of the project after the previous building had been dismantled. The architects of the bureau intend, as far as possible, to use the preserved elements, integrating them into the structure of the new object. The technologies are very complex, the work of assembling the grandiose "designer" is laborious, almost jewelry, but the goal - the most honest reconstruction of the historical building - is worth it. The new facility will be a rectangular five-storey building with a six-storey ledge-pylon, along with which a mansard structure is supposed to be erected on the roof of the main building.
The new center for Mercedes-Benz and Audi will have showrooms, used car dealerships, and service centers, and all this in duplicate, which categorically, even in the smallest detail, should not repeat each other - this was the principled position of the competitors. brands. “Before, of course, we had to conduct difficult negotiations with customers, and with subcontractors, and with the approving authorities,” says one of the authors of the project Nikolai Pereslegin.- but what a really difficult dialogue is, we seem to have understood only now, in the course of coordinating projects with Stuttgart and Ingolstadt, where the headquarters of the automobile concerns are located. An insurmountable wall has grown between the competitors, and not in a figurative, but in the most literal sense: two parts of the building are separated by a blank firewall, and it will be possible to get from one showroom to another only across the street. Not a single detail inside will be repeated: if, for example, half of the Audi has a staircase in some place, then there will be an escalator in the possession of Mercedes-Benz, and no exceptions to this rule are allowed. The delimitation begins already from the facade, visually divided vertically by a wide notch along the entire height of the building; entrance portals are decorated, though in the same style, but in different, and even contrasting, colors, corresponding to the coloristic solution of the corporate emblems of the two brands.
As for the interior solutions, many different scenarios have been produced here, designed to present the cars to a potential buyer in the most advantageous way. Concern "Avilon" attaches great importance to effective presentation - just remember the dealership designed by the "Asadov Architectural Bureau"
Mercedes-Benz on Volgogradsky Prospekt. Here, at ZIL, the specificity is also in the fact that thanks to the extensive glazing area, the future showroom will be as open as possible to the city, more precisely, to the Third Transport Highway, a major highway, along which, if you do not take into account traffic jams, at high speed a stream of cars rushes by. “In this situation, our object, which we called for ourselves the“Place of the Best Cars”, will be perceived as a whole, like a kind of sculpture,” Nikolai Pereslegin believes. “At the same time, the eye of a motorist must have time to catch on to something amazing at high speed - for example, competently illuminated silhouettes of old and new cars”. According to the architects, such a thematic installation behind the restored stained-glass windows of the model workshop will be a worthy homage to the great past of the legendary factory.
