The residential complex Time is being built in the Solomensky district of Kiev - behind the train station, not far from the center: 5 km from Khreshchatyk and 15 minutes by car. There are quite a few Stalinist buildings in the district - both five-story buildings and palaces with columns - but to a greater extent it is filled with post-war micro-district buildings from 9 to 16 floors. Now, in this mixed context, taking advantage of the proximity of shops, two parks, a railway station and the city center, various developers are building several large residential complexes with a height of 25-27 floors; they form here a new layer of the city, the capital-high-rise.
Time LCD also works with this scale, whose construction on a 0.37 hectare site along Metropolitan Vasily Lipkovsky Street has already begun. Previously, there was a two-storey building of baths of the 1930s and, in the depths, garages; the site as a whole was cluttered with squatter. At the same time, it is convenient for new housing: a gym and a supermarket are nearby, two city parks and several universities are within a 15-minute walk.
The complex, designed by ARKHIMATIKA, consists of two buildings on a common stylobate, each with three sections of different heights. According to the architects' credo, it belongs to a hybrid typology: with a quarterly corner it closes a private courtyard, closed from cars, arranged on the roof of a parking lot from the street, and at the same time remains open and “sprouts” with four towers - all this makes it possible to compensate it, by means of a volumetric-spatial game, to the scheme: an eight-storey, urban-scale "base" and a higher "superstructure".
All marks and levels, meanwhile, are not arbitrary, but calculated with great care based on the context. Eight and nine-storey buildings of the 1960s - 1970s on the opposite side of Lipkovsky streets dictated the first line of height: this is the corner building facing the street and uniting two towers; the same line of eight-storey height can be traced in the building, stretched out with a line in the back of the courtyard. The facades of this “basic” contextual level are brick-built, and by this they also echo the surroundings. The highest towers of the complex are located at its edges - they are white, 25 floors each. In the central part of the L-shaped complex in the plan there are 2 "compromise" towers, with brick facades, 23 and 13 floors each.
The second theme is light and views. The best panoramas here in the south are views of the outskirts of the city, beams, ponds and the private sector; in the west - to Solomenskaya Square and the city beyond; and in the east - to the center towards the Dnieper. LCD Time faces all these three sides with facades - "TV sets"; the windows here are French, in the floor, the zigzag surface consists of triangular bay windows. “According to our plan, the creases of bay windows on the facade will establish eye contact with pedestrians and passing motorists, passing or driving past the complex, the angles of refraction will change, creating a kinetic effect,” says Dmitry Vasiliev, co-founder of ARCHIMATIKA.
The shiny surfaces of bay windows-accordions are brought forward by consoles, which turns them, when viewed from a distance, into a kind of houses-periscopes, observing the surroundings. Other facades, mostly brick or white, lend materiality to the volumes and contrast with glass zigzags, emphasizing and framing their brilliance.
A separate plot is connected with the layouts of the apartments. ARCHIMATIKA has developed and uses its own standard of high-quality apartments, in which the efficiency of each square meter is calculated: without unnecessary walls and corridors, with minimal pedestrian "runs" inside, optimal door arrangement and wall length for furniture arrangement - in a word, so that all space paid by residents used with full dedication and was comfortable,and there were no “ballast meters”. The architects named such apartments PRO - and calculated that in ZhK Time there are a total of 97% of them, with the exception of a small number of areas, which are not fully optimized due to the need to fit them into the volumes of the buildings. We agree that this is a very good indicator of the number of "advanced" apartments.
In addition, apartments with sloped roofs with mezzanines and "sloped ceilings" are planned on the upper floors - they face one facade as two-storey ones, and the opposite one as one-storey ones. These are penthouses.
Another variant of the exclusive offer - apartments on the ninth floor of an extended courtyard building with spacious open terraces; it's warm in Kiev, and the open terrace can be used for a long time.
But more than a multi-tiered volumetric composition, attention is drawn to the terraced courtyard, arranged on the roof of the parking lot. Moreover, we note that the parking is located not only under the yard, but also under the passage along the eastern border of the complex. In the two lower tiers of the 13-storey building, there is a 140-seat kindergarten for sleeping with its own playground on the roof, but also with access to the zero level. Its appearance was stipulated in the regulations for the development of the territory, the kindergarten will be open to all residents of the area, - the architects clarify.
The arrangement of the three-tiered courtyard is quite fascinating: in the gap between the two buildings there is a hanging ramp on round metal supports and a staircase to the second tier and below, to the level of the surrounding streets. Here, in the alignment between the houses, a certain spatial node is formed with a hinged passage, a staircase and even a round window downwards - an antiaircraft lantern that illuminates part of the parking lot. There is a public garden with a small amphitheater.
Places of quiet rest are separated from the volleyball and children's playground by elevations of geoplastics, in the elevations of which it is planned to plant not only bushes, but also trees.
The exhaust ventilation of the underground parking, the authors emphasize, is brought out to the roof of the upper floors, and will not pollute the air in the yard. Some of the playgrounds and sports grounds are located below, at the zero level, and are equipped with a flock of round gazebos. From the side of the street, cafes and shops are planned in the stylobate. However, very close, in a low but long building of the 1930s, there is a large shopping center.
In a word, a lot of what is necessary for a modern residential complex is taken into account here: a developed multi-level stylobate, whose substructures and transitions make an almost "Roman" impression; greenery, the silence of the courtyard fenced off from the street; apartments of different sizes, including special ones, both bunk and equipped with terraces. Plus modern facades, floor-to-ceiling windows, triangular bay windows, careful calculation of views of the surroundings. Not to mention the location of the house, although in the Soviet part, but not far from the city center. All these qualities add up to a rather fascinating puzzle, which is quite consistent with both the declared business class of housing and modern ideas about a comfortable city and its levels, from the lower stylobate to the high-rise.
