about the competition and site of the First Exemplary Printing House
“The ultimate goal of this project is quite ambitious,” says Nikolay Pereslegin, one of the partners of the Kleinewelt bureau. “We wanted to create, perhaps, the most comfortable environment and an unrivaled residential complex in Moscow.” The grounds for such serious ambitions lie not only and not so much in the material sphere. In the former printing house of Sytin, the authors of the project saw the architectural embodiment of Russian culture in all its “flourishing complexity” (Konstantin Leontiev), one might say, its maximum concentration. This made it possible to add one more factor of “emotional comfort” to all the premium factors of an expensive residential area with an excellent location.
Having thus determined the grain of the concept of their project, the authors with unyielding consistency embody this scenario in every element of its structure, from the plasticity of the facades to the music matched to each building, and lines from a literary work to each apartment. The buildings of the complex - in accordance with their character, time of construction and specific location - were named after the pillars of Russian and Soviet literature. Lev Tolstoy, Gogol, Mayakovsky, Blok, Yesenin - almost all the members of the respected Areopagus once visited the printing house, and Yesenin also worked there as a proofreader for some time. The building where the young poet's workplace was located is named in his honor - the building overlooking Valovaya Street, by the way, is the earliest of the historical buildings and the only one designed not by Erichson, but by Fyodor Rybinsky and Phlegont Voskresensky. Like other participants in the competition, the authors of this project intervene minimally into its architecture, leaving the facade and structure of a tenement house of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries practically intact, emphasizing its beauty with careful restoration and only slightly increasing the volume of the attic from the side of the courtyard to create full-fledged penthouses. “For us, this approach correlates with the perception of Yesenin as a poet, whom I personally love for his subtle ability to see seemingly inconspicuous fragments of the surrounding reality and reveal their inner beauty,” says Nikolai Pereslegin.
The name of the most, perhaps, the most powerful figure in Russian literature - Leo Tolstoy - in the project received, of course, the main building of the former printing house. The architects propose to dismantle a part of the courtyard extension, where Tolstoy merges with the renovated building along 2-nd Monetchikovsky lane. Such a solution allows them, firstly, to obtain materials for the most authentic restoration of the historical street facade, and secondly, to free up space for the construction of the Sytinsk printing house museum, which is conceptually necessary for the authors. The free space formed above the one-story volume of the museum makes it possible to open additional window blocks for apartments in both buildings.
In accordance with the terms of reference, the “Soviet” superstructure, which today forms the fifth floor of the main building of the printing house, was proposed to be dismantled and replaced by a floor that would meet both the new typology and new requirements for the building's appearance. The authors of the project are planning here spacious penthouses with access to terraces, shading the continuous glazing of the facades with sliding panels of perforated copper. Here, at the corner of Pyatnitskaya and 2nd Monetchikovsky, they propose to place the most luxurious apartment in the complex, which, by the way, also does not remain without its own name - "Pierre".
In the fourth, most chamber building, standing inside the courtyard, the architects saw a touching provinciality that reminded them of the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - not the one who is "The Inspector General" and "Dead Souls", but the romantic Gogol of the times of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka." A certain reference to Ukrainian huts can be seen in the lining of the attic, designed over the current roof: the complex surface of crushed limestone is combined with smooth slabs of floors and roofs of similar color, but contrasting in texture, and echoes the white horizontal skips and framing of windows on the historic facade. At the same time, plastically, the attic is solved in a very lapidary way - it is a simple rectangular volume with vertically elongated windows, the rhythm of which corresponds to the breakdown of window openings on the lower floors.
It is difficult to imagine a more contradictory literary neighborhood than Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Mayakovsky, nevertheless in the Kleinewelt project they stand literally side by side. The name of the poet of the revolution was given to the building on the 2nd Monetchikovsky lane, which is being built on the basis of the existing frame. In the rhythm of window niches and cubes, breaking the monotony of a long and low building, something akin to the famous "ladder" of Mayakovsky's poems is really read.
The light stone facing the facade contrasts with the "Tolstoy" brick, but with the next building, connected to the "Mayakovsky" two-storey passage at the level of the second and third floors, they are obvious relatives, although the latter is darker, stricter and somehow "disciplined." This is "Blok" - a new building, which completes the block from the north side, at the corner of the 2nd and 3rd Monetchikovsky lanes. To avoid any comparisons with "spirit and mi and fogs”, the authors in this case themselves determine the programmatic work that inspired them: not just Blok, but the poem“The Twelve”, a harsh, difficult thing, devoid of any intellectual softness. At the same time, the architects also made a start from the poet's appearance - an aristocratic elongated face, a frock coat buttoned to all the buttons with an invariable bow tie or neckerchief … The role of the latter in the project is played by thin vertical brass inserts, emphasizing the rhythmic knotting of large blocks of gray basalt.
As for the courtyard space, then dance also joins the community of literature, music and architecture. The landscaping concept is dedicated to Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons", and the four courtyard spaces flowing into each other are dedicated to the four seasons. Produced by the authors of the project, the plot assumes a lot of various scenarios of pastime, from noisy games to secluded relaxation in the shade of trees, and they came up with a lot of all sorts of inventions - here you have a pond lined with silver mosaics, an open-air cinema, and a ship from "Scarlet Sails", and alley "The first ball of Natasha Rostova" …
Even this listing shows how much the authors were passionate about the project, how much emotion they wanted to put into their architecture. “This project is really about love,” Nikolai Pereslegin admits. - It is impossible to compare the love for different writers and poets, and we wanted to give the future residents of our complex the opportunity to choose - what atmosphere, what legend, what way of life is most in tune with each of them. It is in this that we see the highest degree of comfort available to a modern person."
