Due to the proximity of the Business Center and active construction, the area in which the Kandinsky Bauhaus is being designed was named the Big City. On the contrary, across the river, a large-scale "Fili-Grad" is being built; residential complex "Heart of the Capital" adjoins the site to the left, from the west; on the back side of the plot there are an office center and a school - by agreement with the city, the developer will expand it. And finally, the territory on the right was built up in the 1980s with typical panel houses, which are not planned to be demolished, and the skyscrapers of Moscow City look at the site a little further away.
The proximity of the river, of course, makes the site attractive - looking ahead, let's say that the residential complex will receive its own fragment of a landscaped embankment. But the task was extremely difficult from an urban planning point of view. It is planned to build an overpass with busy traffic along the western border of the site - it will divide the territories of the "Heart of the Capital" and "Kandinsky". The plans for the construction of the highway have significantly reduced the area of possible development. In addition, the city regulation limits the building height to one hundred meters with sufficiently high expectations of the customer regarding the usable area of the project. All this made the project difficult - several architectural teams worked on it before the UNK project, but not a single concept was developed.
So the challenge was serious: an expressive, functional and cost-effective solution had to be found. Design a high-density development that has the value of a comfortable environment. According to the assignment, the building density, including the part of the territory allocated for the flyover, should have been 54,800 m2 per hectare - without the "cut off" western part, the density rises to 70,000 m2, which corresponds to metropolitan areas of the scale of New York and Singapore. Modeling of traditional formats for organizing space has shown that quarter and microdistrict layouts on this site give poor illumination of apartments facing the inside of the quarter, a dark courtyard, strong drafts and insufficient space exit. Both options had to be abandoned. Another, ingenious solution was found, which made it possible to eliminate the shortcomings of the first two and create an unusual architectural image.
“Although the quarter type of development, in principle, was able to meet many of the investor's requirements, however, the courtyard-“well”formed within the framework of this approach, a large number of apartments with no specific characteristics and guaranteed drafts in the gaps between the houses forced us to continue looking for a solution. - says Yuliy Borisov, head of UNK project. - As a result, the idea of super-blocks was born. Their prototype was 12-storey panel houses, which are built up on the territory on the right. Having arranged the blocks asymmetrically, practically scattering them like children's cubes, we got a composition of six vertical volumes, we laid one more flat and placed everything on a common stylobate."
The solution found made it possible to open the courtyard to the river, to endow almost all the apartments with specific characteristics, and the most important thing is that 25 floors with a two-part division in height look like two times 12, which creates the effect of a human-scale environment. The arrangement of the blocks also excludes drafts - in large, well-ventilated arches, the wind speed does not exceed comfortable values.
The created spatial structure, according to Yuliy Borisov, refers to the Bauhaus aesthetics based on simple, pure forms and mobile abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky. At the same time, some understatement and "destructiveness" of the architectural language "Kandinsky Bauhaus", the openness of the structure, which builds a dialogue with the context formed in this part of the city by the architecture of new buildings and white plates of residential buildings of the 1980s - refer to Japanese metabolism: its modularity, cellularity and mobility. To see this, just look, for example, at Hotel Sofitel Tokio Kionori Kikutake, Fuji Television Kenzo Tange, Nakagin Capsule Tower Kisho Kurokawa. At the same time, the UNK project managed to develop the ideas of metabolists, creating a voluminous, slightly ironic composition that combines the architectural past and the present of Moscow.
The idea of combining the new and the previous is supported by façade solutions. At the same time, the facades of the blocks are different. One echoes the ascetic style of Sergei Tchoban in "Heart of the Capital", the other points to the neighboring panel houses, the rest are visually richer, more complex, more effective, they contrast with the first two. The difference in the façade solutions of the blocks resembles what Sergei Skuratov did in the Garden Quarters, distributing the design of individual houses to different architectural workshops, the multi-façade that is popular in our time. The difference, perhaps, is that the facades for the Kandinsky Bauhaus were designed by the architects of one workshop. The materials on the facades are fiber-reinforced concrete and glass. There is no need to decorate such architecture, it loudly declares itself even without expensive wrapping.
According to Yuliy Borisov, the idea was for the blocks-houses to stand as if by chance, without any apparent logic. To do this, even sweeps do not obey architectural laws, but look like they were made by a child. In fact, randomness is not accidental, it interprets the well-known principle of the variable integrity of a traditional city, consisting of buildings of different, built at different times, but subordinate to a common approach and similar materials. In the house "Kandinsky Bauhaus" the axes are displaced, the blocks are picturesquely "scattered", and meanwhile their internal similarity, as well as the general "chaos" of the composition for all, become the basis for the integrity of the result.
The plate on the left side of the site serves as a screen against the noise of the future overpass. On the right is a VIP block located on a horizontal office space. The roof of the latter serves as another private courtyard for VIP residents. Under the retractable roof of this block there is a private public area with a swimming pool, just like in the best houses of the same New York and Singapore. Residential blocks inside are organized quite traditionally - some of them are sectional, others have elongated corridors. The yard turned out to be not very large, but cozy, its own, from it you can get to the embankment: to the park, to the river.
The project turned out to be difficult in terms of structural solutions - large spans, relief drops and, as a result, difficult work with parking and street retail, which is located along the perimeter of the common stylobate, where service enterprises will also be located. The stylobate also accommodates a large sports complex, including a 25-meter pool.
In addition, the project is unique in terms of its parameters: its height is 111 m - the maximum permissible according to the GPZU in this area, under the buildings there are five levels of underground parking, which required deepening by more than 15 m.
The customer "Kandinsky Bauhaus" is just starting to work on the Moscow residential construction market, and in order to sell successfully, he was ready to experiment. Well, as a result of this experiment, an object with an unusual spatial structure may appear in the capital, dynamically interpreting its steadily growing upward silhouette.
