Residential complex "Severny" is being built on the territory belonging to Moscow, but it is already located outside the Moscow Ring Road, if you go in the direction of the region - then on the right hand of Dmitrovskoe highway. The surroundings here, as befits the nearest Outskirts of the Moscow Ring Road, are colorful and almost completely new, but surprisingly, harmonious in places. Again, if you look to the north, the mega-boxes of the shopping and entertainment center and multi-storey typical panel houses will remain on the left, 3-storey townhouses of the Severnaya Sloboda residential complex and even individual houses of the cottage village surrounding the preserved fragment of the park of the Arkhangelskoye-Tyurikovo estate prevail on the right. whose security zone determined the low scale of construction * (… “recently, when digging a foundation pit for another house, builders found a marble statue of a Greek goddess in the ground”).
Construction is being carried out here on two separate sites: to the west and to the south of the present Khlebnikovy, or "Severny", forest park. We do not know anything about the western fragment, and the architects of DNA ag are working with the southern territory stretched between Landau Boulevard and the forest park - in two stages: the first, which has already been built, comprises quarters 7 and 8, located to the west, the second, the neighboring quarter with working title 9.10. Quarters 7 and 8 are completed, the construction of quarter 9.10 begins.
DNA ag was invited to work when all the volumetric parameters and even layouts of apartments for quarters 7.8. were determined - in fact, in order, as it often happens in our time, "to draw the facades." The architects liked the surroundings and the given scale - the houses were supposed to be built with an average height of 8 floors, a comfortable urban scale. However, the architects expanded the scope of the task as much as possible.
From a conditional "draw facades" the task turned into a full-fledged architectural work with redesigning layouts and creating an individual image despite all the limitations, incl. on a budget: work with the plastic of the walls so that the appearance of the volumes becomes the basis for a comfortable urban environment around the boulevard, where there are three floors on one side and eight on the other. Crush the surface so that the eye has something to stay on. Think over the difference between the two block-quarters, but so that their related similarity is also obvious. And the most important thing is to apply truly architectural solutions in the comfort-class genre, taking the appearance of houses (and also, in part, their layout) out of the circle of despondency of typical monotony. “It's not about the visual improvement of the class, or rather, not only about it,” the architects say. We wanted to understand, including for ourselves, how purely architectural, planning, but above all plastic means, being very strictly limited by both the approved volume and the budget, it is possible to create a decent architecture and an environment that is not similar to what we have become it is customary to associate it with the comfort class."
So, the 8-9-storey brackets of the quarters are stretched along the boulevard, and their "legs" from the side of the courtyards end with 14-storey towers. “In the usual comfort class, there would be blind ends, even if the house is not typical and not panel, but with a monolithic frame, as in our case,” says Konstantin Khodnev. - This is a stereotype, a deaf end is not needed - we do not have a deaf end. Some apartments received windows in the bathrooms - which also had a positive effect on the variety of layouts. " The apartments are small but quite varied: from studios to three rooms. The architects added a number of improvements, such as the aforementioned windows in the bathrooms or, say, some rooms here have two windows - and the proposal was successful, the apartments sold quickly, blocks 7 and 8 were built faster than planned.
Echoing the towers, the planes of the 7-8-storey facades alternate large projection plates with ledges, hinting at a street made up of different houses. Here, however, there is no popular copy of a fractional city from different facades-sections: at the bottom, the protruding plates grow together into a common stylobate, forming a street front with cafe / shop windows.
The facades are faced with fiber cement panels, which was part of the constraints. For quarters 7.8, the architects of DNA have chosen a respectable "warm" white and brown color scheme: terracotta panels are reminiscent of ceramic ones, and white is universal. It turned out two main materials: white facades in a large rhythm are rather horizontal, on the facades of the first floors they are covered with relief zigzag verticals. Terracotta facades - on the contrary: on a large scale they gravitate towards the vertical and combine two floors, in small ones they are covered with panels cut horizontally and resembling rustication. The bodies are inverse: in one, white matter comes forward, in the other, on the contrary, forms a background, which emphasizes their pairedness, the connection between them.
All courtyard facades of houses are flat, white and without protruding plates, this is the internal matter; white color allows you to visually expand the semi-enclosed space a little; besides, the courtyards are facing north, and every bit of daylight caught by the white background is useful to them.
In an effort to overcome the stereotype of glass "thermometers" of loggias, typical for comfort-class houses, DNA AG deepened the loggias, making them look like French windows from the outside. Only rare and single bay windows protrude forward, not lining up from the vertical; they are marked with bright or, on the contrary, “wooden” inserts.
Another visual stereotype is a consequence of the regulations: it is assumed that the distance between the windows is at least 1.2 meters. In order to make the so-called "French windows" in the floor, it is necessary not only to hide heaters from the same floor, which is quite expensive, but also to develop a special STU - which also implies expenses incompatible with the conditions of the comfort class. So, unable to make the French windows for real, the architects depicted them on the outside with recessed dark gray metal strips and air conditioning boxes.
“Plasticity is developed both on a large and a small scale, especially if you look at an angle along the street - both projections and grilles for air conditioners - all together form a rather powerful rhythm. We managed to avoid an undivided plane, which creates a feeling of "cardboard", - continues Daniil Lorenz. "A person feels that the house in which he lives has volume, materiality."
Indeed, the type is - it must be in the heads. Social (or simply not too expensive, as in this case, the project is quite commercial) housing with unique elegant architectural solutions, which we admire in European countries, in fact, is quite affordable and depends on the determination of architects to work conscientiously in this not too expensive segment … “It must be admitted that such projects are starting to appear now, but when we started working with Severny, there were almost no such projects,” explains DNA ag.
Here, in addition to individually detailed architecture, deliberately aimed at avoiding standardized solutions and even visually "tightening up" the class of housing, rare conditions have developed in their own way and, as a result, a unique space. Natalia Sidorova calls it partly urban, partly suburban. And compares with European cities, where the small scale of individual houses can coexist with townhouses and "multi-storey buildings, but not too large, comfortable scale."Indeed, a wide boulevard - which, perhaps, will be improved - separates three-story houses, and in some places two-story cottages and an eight-story front with shops on the ground floors. The architects compare the resulting atmosphere with the Sokol village and its surroundings - which is really rare for Moscow, these are not 25-storey anthills in the fields. The example is indicative in many ways. Many experts are now talking about such an urban scale in connection with renovation projects: we would have six to eight floors of the basic building with rare accents of towers. They say they say, and the architects of DNA AG have already built one such example. Not that he was completely alone, but he is one of the few. Nearby, the construction of the 9.10 quarter has begun, generally based on the same principles, but with a slightly colder and more contrasting black and white color scheme with green accents.
