The old part of the city of Ufa is located in the bend of the Belaya River; the factories evacuated to the city during the war formed, ten kilometers north of the historical part, a large industrial zone around the Stalin (later Chernikovsky) district, which took shape in the 1940s. The city turned out to be like a dumbbell laid between the Belaya and Ufa rivers. Its "handle" is the Oktyabrya Avenue, which connects both parts, historical and industrial, built up with five-storey buildings with rare interspersed with late towers, stadiums, parks. A railway line stretches two kilometers along the river bank, separated from the city by fragments of forest.
On one of the large square plots with an area of 1.3 hectares between the avenue and the forest, the Prospekt architectural bureau completed in 2016 the construction of the first stage of the 4 Seasons business class residential complex. A residential tower with a separate name Idel-tower, a business center and other buildings of the second and third stages will be located closer to the avenue, their construction has already begun.
The first stage - a sectional house with an L-shaped plan - occupies half of the site on the border with the forest, behind which is the river. Two neighboring quarters consist of five-story buildings - it is not easy to fit into such an environment a 24-storey building with a maximum elevation of 79.6 m, and the authors took the path of different heights, turning the silhouette of a plate elongated along the forest into a kind of two-prong, whose bevels echo the contours of a nearby one, at 200 meters, the house "Parus". The contour of the house resembles an animal, the "head" of which looks towards the old Ufa, and the tail - towards the industrial city. Two sections facing the avenue and adjacent to five-storey buildings - 6 floors each (not counting the stylobate); all together allows to smooth out the contrast of altitude: it turns out that not a “giant box” was placed in the context of a low city, but rather a “mountain”, an alien volume, but bright, attracting attention. Or, to be more precise, even a “cut of a mountain”: following the logic of modernist architecture, the house consists of two plates “glued”, as can be seen at the ends, with a deepened vertical line of glass - a reception reminiscent of the “Tourist's House” on Moscow's Leninsky Prospekt. The corridors of the end section go here.
However, the house pays tribute not only to the methods of modernism, but also to modernity: hence the slightly beaten rhythm of the facade grille and colored inserts in red and yellow ocher, which are thickened in the lower floors. This color, as well as white, as well as the silhouette, is suggestive of grief; and not even natural, but about the mountain of some material brought by river or rail for the Ufa factories.
The architects used silhouette bevels creatively - they placed terraces on them: 12 on a high bevel and 3 more on a small one; not all of the upper apartments got terraces, only half. To prevent neighbors from seeing each other, the terraces were covered with deep lattice metal canopies-lamellas, which also protect from the sun. At this height, overlooking the forest and the river, the sensations should be thrilling. Moderate quarters: from studios to 3-room apartments; all are sold out.
In the lower part, the house is arranged according to the rules of business class: 3 tiers of underground parking, on its roof there is a courtyard with rich geoplastics, of course, prohibited for cars except for maintenance. You can enter the entrances both from the street and from the courtyard; the two-story lobbies look impressively high from the street side. Inside, the lobbies are divided into two levels, allowing you to go down to the parking lot and exit to the courtyard level. From the courtyard you can go directly into the forest: there is a wide, "inviting for a walk" staircase in the north-western corner of the house. It starts from the passage between the mountain house and the 6-storey building.
As for the shops on the ground floors, they are conceived as two or three lines, on the line of the avenue, where there are more visitors. But in the first floors of the plate, a children's medical center is planned.
The residential complex is large by Ufa standards, it inevitably rises above 5-storey buildings and even uses it skillfully. By Moscow standards, however, the house is small: for example, the square of "Aquarelle", built by the architects of the "Ostozhenka" bureau in Balashikha, as well as "Avenue, 77" by Vladimir Plotkin in North Chertanovo, is ten times larger. In this case, we seem to be faced with a skillful projection of the topic onto a smaller city. The house presents itself as large, although in fact it is large in its surroundings, in the near Moscow region it, perhaps, would be lost. And this, presumably, is the best way to react to the context - to correctly comprehend yourself in your place.
The building was awarded a "silver sign" in 2016 by Zodchestvo.
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