The residential complex is being built in the southeast of Moscow, on a 2.4 hectare site - 700 meters from the border of the forest park of the Kuskovo estate. However, the palace-museum and its Big Pond are located in the opposite part of the park, so the house will not disturb the historical panorama. The immediate surroundings of the residential complex are five-storey buildings, immersed in greenery, including brick Stalinist ones, interspersed with microdistrict buildings of a higher number of storeys. The Ryazanskiy Prospekt metro station is a 20-minute walk, and the Plyushchevo railway platform is 10. In the near future, a new metro station, Okskaya Ulitsa, is planned to be opened in a 15-minute walk.
The task of designing a large residential complex on a relatively small plot with insolation restrictions was not an easy one,”says Ekaterina Gren, Chief Architect of Olimproekt Group. The client wanted to see a bright architectural concept that does not conflict with the environment, taking into account modern trends in residential construction. According to Ekaterina Gren, in the process of difficult work, the architects managed to find a solution that could satisfy both the customer, and future residents, and residents of neighboring houses.
The complex consists of eight residential sections ranging in height from 12 to 19 floors. They form a semi-enclosed courtyard open to the northeast towards the park. The front of Mikhailova Street is formed by three 12-storey sections - here, along the entire facade on the first floor, a public space is planned with cafes, shops and an open promenade along the street in front of them. The typology of city shops is generally familiar to the nearest environs. at ge: they are available on the first floors of the Stalinist five-story buildings and the stylobates of later 9-story buildings, but the new residential complex should instill in the area a newer, modern type of saturated public space on the ground floors.
Two 19-storey buildings stretch into the depth of the site. The eastern building is connected to the building along Mikhailova Street by a wide isthmus-hypostle. Its green roof will become a small additional square, and the pillars will be clad in black polished granite. On the contrary, in the western building, there is another entrance to the courtyard: a compact narrow passage that functionally duplicates the eastern "propylaea" - this is important, because, as is now customary, all entrances to residential sections are located in the courtyard, so that the entrance to the courtyard is also the entrance into the house.
The Ryazansky Prospekt metro station, as well as the Okskaya Ulitsa, is located to the east of the house on Mikhailova Street - so the eastern facade is planned to be a kind of "ceremonial" one, and since it is from this side that the main flow of people from the metro will move, here is the main entrance to the courtyard. For the same reason, the outer front of the eastern building, like the first floors along Mikhailova Street, is given over to cafes and shops. This is the "city facade" facing the bustling Ryazansky Avenue.
However, another advantage of the site is that with good transport accessibility, it is not squeezed between the street routes. The closest neighbor from the "front" eastern side is a typical building of a polyclinic overgrown with bushes; to the narrow and quiet 1st Institutskaya Street - 65 m. From the opposite, eastern side to Lukhovitskaya Street, even further - 180 m; here the closest neighbor of the house is a three-story building of the former medical unit. From this side, the entire territory up to the street is included in the sphere of influence of the residential complex, and a transition zone is conceived here - a kind of quiet courtyard through which it will be possible to walk, without crossing any tracks, to a football field, a playground and a library. There will also be a guest ground parking of a residential complex with a grassy lattice covering. On this side, a built-in kindergarten for 124 places with an area of more than 2000 m2 will be located on the first two floors of the northeast building.2.
The private courtyard, closed to private cars, is located on the roof of the underground parking and is landscaped. Thoughtful zoning made it possible to combine playgrounds with a developed landscape, an abundance of greenery, a sufficient number of benches and even a lilac garden, which in spring can make any part of the city magical. A shallow strip of water - a miniature artificial river - forms in the main part of the courtyard a semblance of a short boulevard, helps to nontrivially divide zones among themselves and saturates the space with emotions. In the corner, where the southern and western buildings meet, the "river" ends - a small square is formed here - already without greenery, but with a sculpture. The entrances to the underground parking are not located inside the courtyard, but outside and at a sufficient distance from the windows, so that the exhaust will not poison the courtyard.
“In addition to urban planning issues and the search for a volumetric-spatial solution, we needed to stylistically fit the complex into the existing environment,” says Ekaterina Gren. “As a result, a strict and respectable image of housing has emerged, restrained in the plasticity of volumes and refined in the decoration of facades”.
Indeed, the genre of a residential complex does not imply a large-scale volumetric-plastic game by definition, and the architects focused on texture, color and details, combining two types of facade "matter": white fiberglass concrete and cream clinker. The clinker is reserved for smaller volumes, 12-storey; in height, they, therefore, have something in common with the scale of neighboring panel houses, and in terms of material - with the brick of Stalin's five-story buildings. Three sections along Mikhailova Street and visually continuing their plates, "cut" into the body of the higher courtyard buildings, are faced with clinker. "White" matter is given over to higher volumes and is subordinated to the horizontal, rows of windows gravitate towards ribbons; however, this is offset by the latent classics of enlarged and laconic flutes in the walls.
The theme of two materials, which is important for the complex, is supplemented and united by openwork inclusions of ornamental panels, which are present in both colors, forming a deepened "inner" layer of facades along with glass windows and inserts of dark porcelain stoneware. The theme is picked up by the forged metal balconies projecting forward - grilles for air conditioners, from a distance, similar to French balconies. They protrude deeper than is necessary only for air conditioners: the facades are endowed with a quite noticeable depth of the surface, carefully traced and sculpted. The balconies can even accommodate small flower beds, the authors of the project believe.
All apartments have balconies, and 3-room apartments have two of them. There are 685 comfort class apartments in total. It is planned to sell them "with partitions for finishing", that is, without repair. Among the popular innovations are bathrooms with windows; in some apartments kitchens are combined with living rooms; storage rooms for residents are provided in the underground part. The entrances to the sections are located at the "zero" level, so no steps or ramps were needed - they do not clutter up the courtyard and do not need to be "overcome" at the entrance.
Thus, LCD embodies many of the topical "signs of the time": attention to detail and the desire to comprehend the context; landscaped courtyard without cars; developed public space on the ground floors, well-thought-out walking routes, skillful use of the advantages of the surroundings.
Some things can also be noted that are not here. The fashion for bright pixelated facades broke out, and, fortunately, quickly passed; on the other hand, the architects also found ways to deal with the "thermometers" of loggias in the comfort class. It turned out that it is enough to deepen the loggias into the space of the apartments, interpreting the outside as windows - this allows you to work more freely with the plastic of the facade. The image in this case balances on the verge of respectable Art Deco: hence the metal, openwork inserts, vertical module and flutes - and modern decorated architecture. Perhaps we are now witnessing the birth of a certain branch of Moscow Art Deco in the 21st century: versions of this style have been looking in the city for 20 years already, there have been many unsuccessful attempts. The new version is quite modern, restrained and at the same time meets the needs of the market, which wants to get a large, but "decent-looking" house. It must be admitted that the architecture of residential urban buildings developed in a similar way in the 19th century: architects, to the best of their skills, responded to the demands of the growing market; then, by the beginning of the 20th century, all the techniques were perfected almost to the ideal. Now we are witnessing the same process, but on a different scale, consonant with the standards of a rapidly growing metropolis.
The developer promises to put the LCD into operation in the second quarter of 2019; active construction is underway on the site.
