UP-quarter "Scandinavsky" is being built three kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road, to the north-west of Mytishchi, on the territory of the village of Borodino (not the only one, I must say, the Russian namesake of the famous village). From the metro station "Medvedkovo" here - 15 minutes by bus. And although Mytishchi, as you know, is already built up quite densely, here, outside the capital's satellite, the situation is different: villages filled mainly with cottages and forests, of which there are a lot of preserved ones, prevail. If you look more broadly, then from the Mytishchi Borodino - 6 km to the Pirogov reservoir, near the Khlebnikovsky and Pirogovsky forest parks, but the closest is the forest belonging to the "Mytishchi forestry". As you can see, the place, despite its proximity to the Moscow Ring Road, is quite green and - due to the proximity of the famous "Pirogovka" - almost a resort. Several shopping and entertainment centers have been built and are already under construction nearby. It is not surprising that the FGC Leader developer company chose it for the construction of a large residential complex belonging to a new housing format recently introduced to the market by this company: formally it belongs to the comfort class, but it has a number of pleasant additions. The Swedish bureau Semrén & Månsson was invited for the design - hence the name "Scandinavian". However, the bureau also employs Russian architects.
So, on 12 hectares of territory stretched from south to north along the Ostashkovskoye highway (by the way, it leads towards the Pirogovskoye reservoir), at a distance of 40 to 90 m from the highway itself, the construction of two out of four residential buildings has already begun, generally designed for 80,000 m2 apartments. All of them are included in the first stage of construction. Within the framework of the second stage, it is planned to build two more buildings, a kindergarten and a school.
“It should be a small town, completely self-sufficient,” says Maria Broman, chief architect of the project at Semrén + Månsson. Three large sectional buildings are designed as open-plan blocks. “As you know, neighborhoods have become a trend in Moscow,” the architects comment, “but in Sweden they never seem to have lost popularity. So, in a sense, it is also a Scandinavian trait. " However, as you know, the "clean" version of the quarterly layout is suitable for houses with a height of no more than 6-8 floors, so it is quite logical that in this case the layout is mixed. The frames of the quarters are open, the height of the sections varies from 8 to 16 floors, making the silhouette oblique. Underground parking lots are planned under three blocks of the quarterly layout. In front of the end of the third building in the direction of the highway, a 16-storey tower-accent is put forward, whose slightly sharpened southeastern corner "looks" at the highway. Behind it is a two-story sales office - together with an open guest parking, they form the image of a residential complex from the highway side.
Further north, the highway is separated by plots of other owners. And I must say that in this case, such a separation from the highway is a rather fortunate circumstance. "Scandinavian" is more focused on its own inner boulevard, which begins at the tower of the 4th building in the south, and stretches inside the complex, forming its inner axis. The boulevard is open to cars, but only cars of the residents of the complex and their guests. It divides a number of residential buildings of the first stage and the space given to the second stage: two residential buildings, a kindergarten, a school and a stadium. In addition, closed parts of the quarters face the boulevard and form an urban-type development front along it - with cafes, shops and - this is stated separately - beauty salons on the ground floors. There are no arches in the houses, but the entrance lobbies are designed through: you can enter from the street, you can from the courtyard, or go through, which significantly increases the porosity of the complex and shortens the paths. The entire territory will be guarded, so there is no need to be afraid of strangers.
It is also important that a small grove is almost close to the first stage under construction, and in the northern part there is a small pond that exists now. A path leads to the pond in the landscaping project, which is accessible to all residents. Thus, it turns out that the axis of the public space of the UP-quarter "Scandinavskiy" is stretched between the grove and the pond, which should provide a variety of impressions.
Working with the facades, the architects sought to “personalize” the space: the sections are not only of different heights, their facades are designed in different colors - a restrained “North European” tone, with variations from white and gray to yellow-beige and brick-red. The actual method of imitating a city street has not been brought to the limit, however: the facades are laconic and subordinate to a common theme. “We had a kind of 'toolbox' of elements: windows, balconies, colors. We mixed them, and each section became individual, - explains the project manager Maria Broman. - It seems to us that it is important for residents when they realize that they live in this, for example, a brown house. And second, personality is important to scale. This gives the impression that the complex is a little smaller than it really is."
The reduction in scale is partly due to the fact that the upper and lower floors are solved differently than the facades of the main part. The houses have a brick basement, and from the side of the boulevard it is three-tiered and offers the eye of the walker a comfortable urban scale: a showcase plus two floors. But the height of the basement varies, as does the design of the upper floors: in building 3, they are only highlighted in color, and in buildings 2 and 1, which will be built later, the upper two floors are united by a sloping, metal-clad wall, which makes them look like a somewhat exaggerated attic. The mansards sometimes form a step-elevation, and sometimes alternate with indents of modernist terraces, which also helps the authors form the illusion of a spontaneously developing city street. Inside the attic floors, bunk apartments are conceived.
The tower of Building 4, which, as we remember, is located closer to other houses to the highway, differs quite significantly: it is completely devoid of the light retro flair that can be felt in the houses-blocks, and if the blocks are restrained-conservative, then the tower is rather restrained-innovative. Its facades are "enveloped" in a mesh of a relief white lattice - thin edges, now condensed with vertical beams in the area of stairs, now sparse, make the volume slender and graphic. The gray color of the recessed planes forms a background - all this is a bit like the Renaissance technique of decorating sgrafitto facades, only in a much enlarged form.
The authors paid a lot of attention to the improvement. Trees on the boulevard, playgrounds, flower beds built into benches - all this has become a "gentleman's set" of our time, like courtyards closed to cars. The pedestrian zone - the lower parts of the facades, entrances - is worked out in detail, which is designed to make the direct, akin to tactile, perception of space by people comfortable and emotionally saturated. In addition, all sorts of pleasant things are provided - in the entrance areas, for example, not only strollers and a guest area, but also places for washing pets' paws after a walk.
The sellers call apartment layouts "typically Scandinavian": with square rooms and built-in wardrobes. Apartments - from studios to 3-room apartments, all have a loggia, either recessed or glazed protruding forward. Boxes for air conditioners are attached to the loggias - by the way, their grilles, similar to wooden ones, decorate the facades well. In sectional houses, small corridors are inevitable, but in the tower the layout, according to the authors, turned out to be especially Swedish: without corridors, with a large kitchen-living room, from where you can immediately get into the bedrooms. All apartments have no load-bearing walls or columns, which will facilitate possible redevelopment.
Obviously, such large apartment buildings are rarely built in Sweden. But if we talk about the reality of Russian cities and especially the Moscow region - it is being built up with large residential complexes, and any attempt to improve their appearance, to build a space akin to the urban space inside - is already remarkable, how remarkable is the development of the market towards the ideas of UP-blocks, the meaning of which, even based on name, is to slightly "raise" a certain class of housing.
