Archi.ru:
– What is the context of the complex on Rogozhsky Val, and what challenges did you meet?
Ilya Mashkov:
- For any site put up for a tender with a ready-made GPZU, there are two unshakable initial positions - its position in the city and the number of areas that investors want to see. And no practicing architect can do anything about it. On Rogozhsky Val, we had two versions to accommodate the required areas: quarter buildings and towers, but as a result we came to towers. At the same time, the courtyard of the house is formed by the adjacent buildings and the Museum of Retro Cars. In the quarterly layout, one of the problems is the corner section, because of the feeling of "window-to-window" and too large apartments that are forced into it. In addition, the site is frankly small for the quarter. Even if we had planned the house with the letter "P", the yard would have turned out to be very crowded. Therefore, towers arose, as a result, the minimum task - to achieve the required number of high-quality areas and their comfortable location on the site was achieved.
Of course, speaking abstractly, if 10-15% of the area is cut off from any object while maintaining the maximum number of storeys, the architecture will become better. The quality of the urban environment will improve. Eight to nine floors is the ideal height for living, at least for a European. I live on Kuusinen Street - this is one of the most comfortable areas of Stalinist development, and as a Muscovite I think that Moscow in residential areas should be exactly like this: no higher than eight floors with individual increases to ten. On this scale, the proportions of the courtyards are optimal, the density of the road network, enough sky.
They say that the density of nearby 5-6-storey buildings is the same as that of high-rise buildings, spaced far from each other, that is, in a historic city it is no less than in new districts. Why, after all, towers, and not, say, a variant of the same Kuusinen street?
- Indeed, it is possible to achieve the same density either by a close planting of low-rise buildings, or by a sparse planting of high-rise buildings. But, unfortunately, high-rise buildings are not sparsely placed, and with the adoption of new insolation standards this year, they are completely over-packed. Kuusinena Street is a town-planning ensemble, not a building of one yard. An appropriate context is required to decide on the nature of the development. On Rogozhsky Val, it was the towers that turned out to be appropriate.
In other words, is the typology of construction typical for a historic city not close to Muscovites?
- By no means, Muscovites love a low-rise, low-density center, but few of them live there, because the historical city, in principle, is small in comparison with the sleeping areas: only 1 million out of 15 million of the capital's population live in the center. A resident of a historic city is happy to put up with some of its inconveniences. For example, in Bolshoy Znamensky lane or in Vsevolozhsky lane, where we designed residential buildings - there are cramped courtyards, but left the apartment - and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is nearby, went for a walk around the beautiful quarter filled with Moscow Art Nouveau. Although a family that strives for comfort in a large apartment and, at the same time, is not ready to overpay for the historic center, they would rather buy an apartment on Rogozhka.
How to organize the composition of the building if the complex consists of two fairly large-scale towers? IN XX century this problem was cleverly solved by the authors of Art Deco skyscrapers or Stalin's skyscrapers. How is this done in houses on Rogozhsky?
- It cannot be said that first a complex of two towers appears, and only then a composition of them is organized. Everything happens at the same time. The process of shaping the future image is inextricably linked with the work on the floor plans: each apartment undergoes strict control by the developer and, if the layout does not meet the requirements of picky buyers, it will not be sold. We usually make 3-4 variants of planning decisions, until we are convinced ourselves and convince the customer of the quality of the solutions.
Regarding the appearance - for the House on Rogozhsky Val, the perception of the building from a distance of a kilometer is relevant. The thousandth scale is the first stage of quality perception. We managed to make a good silhouette, opening up, in particular, from the square of the Abelmanovskaya Zastava. Two towers from a distance are perceived quite interestingly: their neighbor on the one side is a low museum of vintage cars, and on the other side there are houses of a typical series. From distant points, our two volumes work in foreshortenings and "catch" the eye, breaking the monotonous buildings.
Then we approach the buildings and move on to the organization of the facade. The customer wanted us to match the so-called “Stalinist Empire style” in terms of busy decor. He proceeded from marketing research, from which it becomes clear what style people like. Of course, one can argue about the importance of such studies in architecture, but as Honore de Balzac wrote: "Architecture is the expression of morals" and our facade refers to classical motives: massive bottom, columns at the entrance, pilasters, blades, horizontal articulations, powerful cornice, ripping …
We presented three variants of the project to the tender committee of the customer, and one of them was accepted. The commission included professional architects, marketers and, of course, investors. It turned out very well. Now all the apartments have been sold, and many of the buyers are the indigenous inhabitants of the area. A meter costs from 270,000 to 315,000 rubles.
How satisfied are you with the quality of construction?
- I don’t know a single architect satisfied with the quality of construction. We conceived a building with a plaster facade, all the details were planned to be done using a different technology. But, the decision was determined by the tight construction time and the impossibility of plastering in winter, so it was decided to make the facade ventilated from FTP panels. It must be said that Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev's resolution on excesses, adopted in 1955 and leading to the domination of the builders, is still working. Until now, builders dictate a lot, even in a house where the cost per square meter is 300 thousand.
It was a serious challenge: how can the “wet” plaster facade with classical elements, conceived in the project, be converted into the curtain wall technique. When the contractor came and said that the panels should be laid out in such a way as to reduce trimming, we were shocked by how the huge black seams 8 mm thick, clearly visible on the light wall, would be combined with other elements of the facade. And we managed to "stretch" the building only because we designed the entire pattern of seams. In some places the builders did not follow the project, but these places are not very visible. Panels are now perceived as monolithic stones on the facade. Due to these seams, the facade has not lost, but acquired a powerful architectonics that supports the rest of the elements.
It is important that the dark granite on the ground floor has been preserved. The opportunity to touch this stone gives a feeling of solidity and stability of the building. There were different options, it was possible to defend the Karelian Elizovsky stone. It's a bit of a pity that it was not possible to make the first floor higher, but due to the dark rusticated stone, it gained the proper mass.
The first floor is granite, then there is a ripping on fiber cement panels, then there is a busy decor of the lower tiers. Above - a lighter facade, which ends with a completely light part with a cornice. The black-and-white photograph clearly shows the articulations of the upper cornice and the panels of the pilasters, as if they were made of stone. In fact, the cornice part is made of glass fiber reinforced concrete. I can't say that the proportions turned out to be absolutely perfect, but in general, I think it worked out to withstand the house at a high level both when perceived from distant points and when approaching.
In the complex on Rogozhsky shaft, materials play an important role. What materials do you think are preferable to make buildings more durable? Is it possible here to rely on the experience of architecture of the 1930-1950s?
- In Stalinist architecture, plaster rustication, tiles, large granite were used (I really love torn granite - as, for example, on the high-rise on Barrikadnaya), ornaments and, of course, cornices were actively used. The bulk of the walls were faced with non-format tiles, not "brick-like", but more square proportions. But now such a tile is not made anywhere, we were looking for. And how to fix it? Previously, it was glued to a brick. She herself is like a brick, has a fairly large thickness. This is considered an expensive pleasure: a standard interior wall, clad with virtually unformatted porous clinker bricks. Now our project is being built at ZILart, completely finished with clinker bricks on a metal subsystem - an expensive pleasure.
Recently Sergei Tchoban and Vladimir Sedov wrote the book “30:70. Architecture as a Balance of Power”, which argues that the facades of modern architecture should be built from appropriate materials in order to age nobly. What do you think of it?
“There are two concepts regarding the aging of modern facades: either we make a durable facade that is nobly aging, or an" exhibition "facade that can be easily changed in 15-20 years. In different places of the city, you can do it in different ways. Any modern subsystem allows you to remove panels and put new ones. The Japanese build this way. The stainless steel subsystem has a safety margin of one hundred years. It does not disappear anywhere when you remove the panels from it and put on new ones. But plaster, by the way, does not always age well, it needs to be repaired.
In any case, it is necessary to design a building taking into account its entire life span, including the aging of the facade. Now 4D design is the norm: in the project, they immediately lay down an estimate for the decommissioning of a building. Much depends on the extent to which all participants in the development process understand this. Buyers of apartments pay money, the developer builds. It's good when people have paid to live in a building for 200-300 years and have received such an opportunity, it often happens the other way around. The period for which the building is designed, the period until the first major overhaul, in particular of the facade, must be spelled out in the equity participation agreement.
But so far the society does not feel the acuteness of this problem. Otherwise, buyers would have approached the choice of an apartment more responsibly, looked at what the facade was made of, thought how it would age. Perhaps they would have asked this question to the developer, and he would have thought ten times before changing expensive material to cheap and quickly deteriorating. But society does not have such a request. Frivolous residents of the Russian Federation receive frivolous housing.
However, at Rogozhskoye, a frame with a large margin of safety and quite maintainable was used, which is always a big plus for a hinged system, how it will age - time will tell.
In the same book by Choban and Sedov, it is said that modern architecture often lacks the cut-and-shadow design of the facade. How did you solve the plastic of the wall in the house on Rogozhskoye?
Absolutely agree. The more shadow play, the better. The complex on Rogozhsky is successful in this regard, the work of chiaroscuro is active. The minimum difference in the profile of the wall is 20 mm, and the maximum, the projection of the cornice, is one and a half meters, the work of light and shadow on our facades is used to the maximum.
The criterion for the quality of the facade, it seems to me, is the time it takes to look at it with pleasure. Of course, it cannot be said that we designed all eye movements along the facade, except as a joke. But in fact, adding or subtracting something during the development of parts, and even during installation, we thought about it.
Our team has a professional look, with a good, so to speak, "observation". We tried to make the architectonics of houses on Rogozhskoe harmonious within the framework of a complex functional task. The houses are built, and it seems that there is no need to twine them with ivy.
