It all started when Kleinewelt Architekten invited Citizenstudio to collaborate on a project. The main idea was born easily and quickly - as soon as the partners met at the negotiating table. However, as it often happens, behind this seeming ease there was a serious preparatory work carried out jointly with specialists in historical, geographical and sociological research. In this case, it was especially important: the Northern River Station is a truly unique place for Moscow.
The station building with the surrounding park was built in the 1930s with a truly imperial scale inherent in that time. Its construction was timed to coincide with the construction of the Moscow Canal, at the opening of which the capital was first named "the port of five seas". Although at the time of the completion of the construction of the building and the berths, not only the sea, but also water in general was not there yet - the filling of the Khimki reservoir happened later - the station building, stylized as a majestic three-deck steamer with a "pipe" crowned with a five-pointed star, was already proudly towered over the future water area … He was matched by a vast park, planned according to the canons of a regular French garden - with a front parterre, parallel and perpendicular alleys, radial flower beds, numerous sculptures and fountains. Both the station building, recognized as one of the outstanding examples of the "Stalinist Empire" style, and the park around it are protected by the state as monuments of architecture and landscape gardening, which, however, did not prevent them from falling into decay and needing an early restoration.
The restoration work was based on the original project of the landscape architect Timofey Shafransky, found in the archives. “This is the first layer of the reconstruction,” says Sergey Pereslegin, partner of Kleinewelt Architekten. “We are restoring fragments of the park as they were at the time of their creation, discussing every step with experts and restorers.” But along with this restoration layer, the architects propose to endow the park with a completely new drama, which does not deny the heritage and does not overlap it, but complements, giving the whole history an unexpected additional volume.
The starting point was that same winged quote. The architects drew attention to the fact that the "port of five seas" makes Moscow a system of rivers and canals, thanks to which it is really possible to get from the Khimki reservoir to the five seas: the Baltic, White, Azov, Black and Caspian. They decided to superimpose the map of this waterway on the regular layout of the park, thus creating a new walking route. Technically, it looks like a wooden flooring, raised 30 cm above the level of the alleys, but in no way violates their system. By the way, the popular song of the 70s "How to see off the steamers" came to mind: "Slow sea waters are not like rails in two rows." “We formulated it this way for ourselves,” explains Mikhail Beilin, partner of Citizenstudio. - The strict, regular layout of the park with its parallel alleys is intended not for walking, but for the path. And sea tourism is a slow measured movement, and our route gives a person the opportunity to take a leisurely stroll, like in a seaside resort, and discover some new perspectives, new landscape images. " To emphasize their idea, the authors of the project propose to plant perennials in blue-gold tones along the flooring, which would create the image of ears and aquatic vegetation, in contrast to the festive multicolor in the spirit of the 1930s in the flower beds of a regular park.
The cafes and kiosks, gazebos and belvederes located along the route have received the names of real Russian cities and are located exactly in the locations of the corresponding geographical objects, and, for example, the arcade of the summer exhibition pavilion exactly repeats the course of the northern Vychegda River (not to be confused with the city of Vytegra, which on the map park is also present).
In the system of "annual rings" of the future park, immediately after the 1930s, there is a thaw of the 1950s - the time when its restoration was carried out, and opposite, on the opposite side of Leningradsky Prospekt, delegates of the Moscow Festival of Youth and Students laid the foundation of the Friendship Park. The authors of the Park of Five Seas project would like very much that in the future both landscape objects will be connected to each other - for this it is enough just to expand and equip the underground passage with ramps, which will take on the function of a kind of “temporary about th gateway "from the 1950s to the 1930s. The next stage of park architecture, which has earned the homage of the authors of the project, is the modernism of the 1970s, which, in particular, is focused on the style of the main restaurant overlooking the reservoir. The restaurant is called "Volga" and, of course, is located in the appropriate place on the walking route. It will be a completely transparent building with the most laconic plan and the possibility of multifunctional use thanks to sliding partitions; Considering that no new structures can be erected in the protected zone, the park really needs such an opportunity.
This is practically modern architecture; even more connected with the Moscow of the 2010s is the very spirit of the project, focused on the human scale, which is characteristic of our time. With a certain fantasy in the translucent silhouettes of small architectural forms inhabiting the park, it is easy to see something futuristic, right down to the details of spaceships, so that temporal and The axis of the project turns out to be directed even further into the future.
Although it is this reminiscence that the authors of the project hardly had in mind. The main starting point, which they were guided by when creating new objects, was, quite naturally, the station building itself - "Moscow" on the map of rivers and canals - and the few buildings preserved on the embankment, designed in the form of ship fragments. Following the postmodern tradition, the architects used all those archetypes that make up the originality of the main building, practically disassembling it into its component parts: the colonnade of station galleries scattered across the park with snow-white arches of large and small arbors, medallions decorating its facades were reflected in the through holes of the walls of the pavilions, healed as a separate life stylized decks, masts and pipes. It is easy to see a reference to the high arches of the central portals in the two-storey belvederes, which the authors of the Park of Five Seas assign special functions to: they are designed not only to provide visitors with a view of the water, otherwise covered by trees, but also to become visual dominants for the audience “on the other sides ": from the opposite bank of the reservoir and the steamers sailing along it.
The sports core of the park, conceived but not yet implemented in the 1933 project, was surrounded by the architects with an impressive snow-white arcade, in which it is difficult to recognize a banal hockey rink. And, of course, the greatest scope for imagination was opened for them by designing a children's town, where each object, from a slide to a sandbox, will be a separate "ship" with decks, masts, rope ladders and other joys of little sailors. Such a playground will certainly attract local residents to the park, who now practically do not go there.
But not only they, together with tourists passing along the alleys before boarding the ship, should become the target audience of the reconstructed park. The authors of the project are passionate about the idea of urban micro-tourism, which implies the appearance on the map of the capital of a sufficient number of attractive public spaces - each with its own atmosphere and emotional content - so that Muscovites would be interested in traveling within the framework of their hometown. If all goes well, the Park of the Five Seas with its unique geography and thoughtful drama will undoubtedly become one of the most attractive points on this map.
