The station "Rzhevskaya", which got its name from the railway station of the same name, will open on Rizhskaya square, between the station and the metro station "Rizhskaya", with which it will be connected by an underground passage. This place is historical and, in a sense, significant: once here, at Krestovskaya Zastava, there was one of the entrances to Moscow. Now, instead of Kamer-Kollezhsky Val, the square is crossed by the Third Ring, but the difference between its inner and outer sides is still clearly visible: on the one hand - old Moscow: Maryina Roshcha, Suschevsky Val, Gilyarovskogo Street, on the other - railways, industrial buildings, departure the highway of Prospekt Mira, which turns into the Yaroslavl highway. The red-brick water towers of the architect Maxim Geppener with an openwork bridge between them, which stood here until the 1930s, have long been demolished, but even now the entrance to the inner part of Mira Avenue is framed by the towers of Stalinist buildings standing on both sides of the street. So the concept chosen by Blank Architects as the basis for the project - “Gateway to the City” - fits perfectly logically into both the historical and geographical context.
This concept received its material embodiment in the form of one of the most ancient architectural archetypes, perfect and universal in its simplicity - the arch. Even Arches: in relation to the Blank Architects project, I really want to write this word with a capital letter. The symbol of entrance, invitation, greeting, this element is repeated many times in the interiors of platforms and lobbies, it rhythmizes the space and encloses the lion's share of the interior design. The shape for the arch, if viewed in a lateral section, has been chosen rather complex, curvilinear. “On the one hand, we wanted to make it high and expressive,” explains one of the project's authors, Tatyana Leontyeva, “on the other, we had to adapt to the existing structure: the height of the passage between the platforms cannot exceed 2.5 meters.” Therefore, the arches face the platforms with monumental portals - higher to the central one, lower to the side ones - and between them there is a smooth bend, the vivid expressiveness of which the viewer will be able to appreciate only on the street, where the same form is enclosed in a glass box of the ground pavilion, like a museum exhibit, a city sculpture, which, in essence, is.
For the first time, Blank Architects is faced with designing at a depth of sixty meters underground, as well as with the genre of transport architecture in general. And this became a serious challenge and an interesting experience for them. “That's why we love contests,” says Magda Kmita, partner of the bureau and one of the authors of the project. "They allow us to try ourselves in completely new formats of architecture for us - hotels, schools, museums or the metro." They approached the matter seriously - they read a lot of special literature, drove through almost all the stations of the Moscow metro, thoroughly studied the world experience. From the point of view of technology, we managed to successfully master some things, some - for example, the aforementioned limitation on the height of the passage between the platforms - pushed to unexpected decisions, some remained annoying restrictions. The authors of the project still regret, for example, that due to the complexity of operation, it turned out to be impossible to somehow decorate the walls and ceilings of escalator groups, although from the point of view of the time spent by passengers there, this zone seems to be one of the most attractive. As for the interior design, it was immediately decided to make it minimalist, with little or no decor. If in this case we can talk about some sources of inspiration, then for Magda Kmita the favorite Moscow metro station is Kropotkinskaya with its monumental “Ancient Egyptian” colonnade, and Tatyana Leontyeva adds Falcon and Airport to the list of “exemplary” ones. “They all have a very simple design without being too decorative, but with repetition and reinforcement of a single architectural element that is beautifully illuminated and creates rhythm,” she explains. “We were striving to achieve the same effect in our project”.
The main theme of the project is echoed, echoing and intertwining with it, the motive of the journey, inspired by the railway station standing on the square. The architects propose to paint the walls along the rail tracks with images of landscapes, but indistinct, blurred - as they are seen from the windows of a fast-moving train. The theme of the track is supported by lines on the floor in the lobbies, reminiscent of railroad tracks and at the same time serving as a navigation tool. Convenient navigation is what the Moscow metro still lacks, according to the authors of Rzhevskaya. They paid special attention to this issue in their project, and along with the obvious things - scoreboards, inscriptions, information points - an important role is assigned to intuitive navigation. Therefore, for example, exits from the main platform are decorated in different ways. The western one, through which the exit to the city, that is, to the station, is carried out, is marked by a large, wall-to-wall, interactive multimedia screen, reminiscent of the train timetable. The opposite end glows with a warm yellow light - this is the transition to the Rizhskaya metro station with its "amber" pylons, which is also located on the orange line.
With the programmed laconic decor, a special role, including in functional terms, is assigned to lighting design. And here, too, the bet is on intuitive reactions: for example, the authors of the project propose to change the intensity of the illumination of the arches on the platforms as the metro train enters the station. Thanks to this, even on the escalator, the passenger will understand that he should hurry - as now we are guided by the growing sound, only more reliably, because it is clear from which side the train is approaching. And passengers arriving at the station, going up the escalator, will gradually find themselves in an increasingly lighter space: this technique emphasizes that we are moving towards the street, towards daylight. In underground lobbies, the direction of movement will be prompted by the turn of the arches through which passengers exit, relative to the direction of movement of those entering: thanks to this, the flows will be clearly separated.
With extensive experience in the construction of shopping centers, architects of Blank Architects know how to attract people to their objects and interest them in order to delay as long as possible. The metro station, of course, has different tasks, not to say the opposite - here it is necessary, on the contrary, to optimize traffic as much as possible. Nevertheless, the authors of the project did everything to ensure that the few minutes that a person spends at the Rzhevskaya station were not only comfortable, but also emotionally rich. Looking at the blurry landscapes behind the arched windows, following the junctions of the "railway tracks" on the floor, watching the change of numbers on the media screen, even the always hurrying morning passenger will be able to get away from worries for a while. According to Magda Kmita, it was important for them - to make sure that even a person who uses this station every day could discover something new for himself every time, so that each trip becomes a little journey for him.
The basis of the color scheme of the station was an exquisite combination of gray marble walls and stainless steel, with which the arches are decorated, with a warm shade of "rose ash" in the granite floor covering. According to the terms of the competition, finishing materials were to be made in Russia. Initially, this presented some difficulty, but in the end, the authors of the project were able to turn it to the benefit of the case - they got acquainted with new companies, studied new possibilities of the stone, in order to choose as a result the most durable, resistant and anti-vandal materials, which in the conditions of busy traffic a metro station is an absolute must.
The station's ground pavilion, which is located on the territory of the park, sandwiched between two highways, is inscribed in a small rectangle measuring three by six meters. “We decided to make the walls completely transparent,” explains Magda Kmita. - We have so many different types of architecture around - the Rizhsky railway station, the rotunda of the Rizhskaya station, and the Stalinist buildings on Prospekt Mira - that we did not want to add another strong accent. Therefore, we kind of “dissolved” the pavilion in space, emphasizing only our arch”. The authors of the project would like to make the park itself, which is almost never used today, to make it more lively - in their project they propose an improvement scheme with the installation of benches, lanterns and the planting of additional greenery around the perimeter. True, neither the TOR, nor the budget of the future improvement station of the adjacent territory envisage, but Blank Architects always try to look at the project as a whole, not limited to the terms of reference. ***
Recently it became known that the project of the metro station "Rzhevskaya" from Blank Architects - as, by the way, the proposal for "Sheremetyevskaya" - was included in the short list of the World Festival of Architecture WAF-2017. We are waiting for results, but more importantly, the project is not far off: if everything goes according to plan, the first trains will pass through the Rzhevskaya station in early 2020.
