We talked about the project of the Wine house residential complex of the Hals-Development company in 2014, when the construction had already begun. The residential complex on Sadovnicheskaya Street is one of the early examples of cooperation between TPO Reserve and SPEECH, which divided the sections of a residential building in half for the sake of a variety of facade solutions: one of them, modernist, belongs to Vladimir Plotkin, the second is marked by latent ornamental classics, so characteristic of searches for Sergei Tchoban. In this case, TPO "Reserve" acted as a general designer.
If we talk about the place, then it is very quiet around, just incredible for the center of Moscow. However, in Sadovniki, on the Balchug Island, it is very calm almost everywhere, the very place for expensive housing. Prices for apartments here range from 7 to 10 thousand dollars per square meter, their area is mostly more than 100 m, often doubled, and half of the sections have already been fully sold. And the place is interesting - on all sides it is surrounded by buildings of the military department. To the north, on the left along Sadovnicheskaya Street, is the former Kriegskommissariat, built in 1780 according to the project of Nicolas Legrand, the "author" of Catherine's plan for the reconstruction of Moscow. Now it is occupied by the Headquarters of the Moscow Military District, in the courtyard there is a bunker from which the district is controlled, in 1953 Beria was executed there. On the contrary, there is the Investigative Department of the same district. On the other hand, on the right along Sadovnicheskaya Street, there is a low "old Kriegskommissariat" built in the 1740s; now its courtyard serves as a park for a military unit.
Finally, from the Kosmodamianskaya embankment, the Wine house is fenced off by a string of Stalinist residential buildings, which, surprisingly, were built during the war, from 1940 to 1945. They are covered from the embankment route by trees and, in turn, reliably cover the residential complex - in the nearest building there are 8 floors, and in the adjacent sections of the new complex - 7. Between the buildings, that is, behind the rear facade of the Wine house, a small courtyard with a passage closed by a barrier was formed, moreover, the 24x73 m rectangle adjacent to the residential complex belongs to him and is well equipped.
The complex itself occupied the territory of the winery of Peter Smirnov, from which it inherited the speaking name - "Wine House", and the red brick building of 1888-1889 stretched along Sadovnicheskaya Street; since the 1940s, it has been producing Kornet champagne. In the preserved building, there was a place for 41 apartments, its facades were completely cleaned of paint, and as part of the residential complex it was named Luxury loft.
The new sections of the Wine house are built, echoing their neighbor Legrand, in a strict rectangle, and are tightly enclosed around the courtyard. If the 19th century body had stood in the middle and had not been shifted to the left, it would have turned out to be a perfectly correct square, otherwise it would have been slightly asymmetrical.
However, the principle of classical "palace" symmetry is here, albeit a hint, but realized: the central section meets the entrance to the courtyard with a protrusion of a wide projection flanked by two vertical ledges on the sides. The scheme is completely palatial, the central risalit takes on the role of a "portico", although it is drawn, in a way, on the contrary: instead of a support-base, there is space under the console, instead of columns, there are piers between the windows, which, floor by floor, become thinner in the spirit of optical art, or - like the branches of a tree, striving to dissolve in the sky.
But the theme of a symmetrical representative "palace" -car is, of course, not the main one here. More important is a pair of handwritings of two famous Russian architects, united in one complex - the most popular technique of the 2010s, keen on finding a variety of "hands" within the framework of an integral building front of the historic city. Such conglomerates of facades sometimes differ in variegation, but this is not the case here. Everything turned out regularly and respectably, it is possible that the latent "palace" theme dictated something, or, more likely, the two authors have such a pronounced outlook on things that the very fact of the neighborhood-comparison set a gentlemanly restraint of tone. However, it is known that Sergei Tchoban and Vladimir Plotkin often work together on ensembles - for example, at VTB Arena Park, or at the Zapadny Port residential complex. But here not the buildings were divided, but the facades and sections.
Integrity is ensured by the general silhouette and approach to the height: the height of the house is reduced to 4 floors towards Sadovnicheskaya Street, forming wide steps of terraces with wonderful views. No less unifying role is played by the material - light limestone, which is now accepted in the city center as a material at the same time respectable and historical, although we know that there were almost no stone buildings in old Moscow.
On the SPEECH facades the limestone is a little more “classically” yellowish, on the TPO “Reserve” it is sugar-white in a modern way. However, in the project, the color difference was more noticeable, in reality, the first color is only slightly more beige; without peering, you will not immediately notice. In some places the stone "interpenetrates", which also provides unison. In addition, the second material, the black metal of wide bridges and thin gratings, is also common. The feeling is that both authors were careful to ensure that the dialogue did not develop into a resounding argument. And the dispute turned out to be emphatically graphic, even by sensations a little "paper", without raising the voice.
The facades of Sergei Tchoban gravitate towards classical schemes and proportions. Here, instead of consoles in the first tier, stone pylons are more common. Thin vertical windows, assembled in three, and rounded corners of the risalits remind of rational Art Nouveau and Art Deco. However, pure quotations of neither one nor the other, perhaps, can not be found: everything is passed through a certain prism of "metaphysics", the elements are schematized, although recognizable. For example, on the southern facade of the northern building, well-lit by the sun, we find semicircular notches - the “shadows” of the columns in the reverse relief. Frequent and thin vertical grooves on the pylons resemble flutes, although they are devoid of rounded profiling, plus many notches-panels, also mostly not simple, rectangular - all this refers in terms of generalization to the Italian 1930s.
The greatest attention is drawn to the ornamental carving - the leitmotif of Sergei Tchoban's architecture, the answer to his own concept, voiced in the book "30:70", about the need to complicate the surface of buildings, work with decor and texture. In this case, she is the obvious heir to the thread.
houses in Granatny Lane, as well as there, supported by ornamental silk-screen printing on glass. But there are really a lot of ornaments, they are largely based on Byzantine prototypes, and are present in many materials. Stone carving in Granatnoye is different: from stylized, but fully modeled, to completely flat, located strictly between two surfaces, such as a rubber stamp or an engraving on linoleum, which does not pretend to be a relief. This last method, texturedly the easiest, has become the main one on the facades of the Wine house. Due to the high degree of generalization, prototypes are almost unreadable here, the groove winds endlessly, now tightly, now sparsely, only occasionally allowing one to recognize now the contours of the flower, now the cone of hop. Its goal - "loosening" the surface with lace - has been achieved, and flatness is probably a tribute to delicacy in dialogue.
Comparing the result with the project, we are convinced: many details, for example, ornamental lattices similar to the "Byzantine House", were eliminated in the process, the carving became thinner, and relief elements on the facades of the "Reserve" from the courtyard side disappeared.
As for the facades of Vladimir Plotkin, they, being, as we remember, in the same range, are in many ways, indeed, completely different, starting with the fact that they are often dominated by horizontal, and the windows are noticeably more asymmetric and subjectively mobile, especially on the facades of four-storey buildings overlooking Sadovnicheskaya. This is the main facade of the residential complex, its representation in the city, and on it, perhaps, the variety of solutions is especially noticeable. Here, four different buildings are lined up in a row, the second from the left is a brick building of the 19th century, next to it is the "fluted" section of Sergei Tchoban, the most "classic" of all.
Along the edges there are two sections by Vladimir Plotkin, they frame a dialogue of two historicisms, and therefore, they are probably subordinated to the theme of the frame - but not a simple one, but similar to the monochrome version of Piet Mondrian's composition: a grid of windows occupies the entire facade, laying on it like "tags" … The facades are smooth, white on them is whiter, black is blacker, and the glass seems especially black, without softening. This is one of Vladimir Plotkin's favorite counterposts: black and white.
At the same time, the new buildings from the street side also work in unison: all three modern facades hang over the sidewalk with deep consoles, while at the top they form, as we recall, three steps of terraces, a rare phenomenon in Moscow. It turns out a semblance of curious "noses" with which the new complex "looks" at the street - as opposed to a brick building, old, self-sufficient, having seen everything, both the war and the revolution. Vladimir Plotkin considers this part of the complex - a four-story one with terraces - to be the most expressive.
In the outer facades of Reserv, the piers become a little larger, but the windows - sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, sometimes angular - “constructivist” - alternate with asymmetrical liveliness. Here, on the outer contour, all openings received a black frame, and between them there were relief stone ledges, similar to the keys of electric switches, casting sharp triangular shadows and working on the imagery of the house-mechanism.
Since the "Reserve" got all four corner sections, its architects also got more of the external, outward-facing facades: a narrow strip in the courtyard corresponds to a wide front outside. But at the same time, Vladimir Plotkin owns a large facade of the central section, and now, after a little more careful consideration of the house as a whole, the role of the central projection becomes clearer: it is a link that unites two themes: the meta-classic, decorated with grooves, panels and carvings thin-boned and statuary, dating back to the 1930s - and modernist, contrasting dynamic, appealing to the ideas of the 1970s. Although if we talk about Mondrian, then the 1920s. The plastic contradiction between the two main themes of the 20th century, in fact, grows into the "white tree" of the central projection. This is the main chord, an attempt to unite the themes of classics and modernism, it summarizes the dialogue and it is not without reason that it occupies a central place.
All entrances to the entrances are arranged from the side of the courtyard, and the apartments on the first floors are provided with entrances directly from the street; on the first floors there was also space for public areas, a built-in kindergarten and commercial space on the street side. The courtyard is two-level, closer to Sadovnicheskaya there is a ramp to enter the parking lot, a little further - an inner square on its roof; the improvement was carried out by TPO "Reserve". In the park - a little more than ten rectangular flower beds, raised above ground level; some of them serve as pedestals for trees: maples, lindens and even cherries. One of the rectangles, closer to the center of the courtyard, is occupied by a small pool with a fountain. All the flowerbeds have wooden benches and brick sides. The paving forms a textured carpet: light stone slabs, bricks, grass spots and blotches of wood surfaces are combined here, transforming the courtyard into a kind of terrace, home and cozy space.
So there is a closer interaction of textures in the courtyard, which is not present on the facades, where the historical red brick and the modern white stone are emphatically divorced. There is brick “underfoot”, it is also found in the lobby space, where the main violin is played by a stone identical to the front one, but animated by splashes of wood and brick.
The parallelepiped of the ventilation chamber, disguised with an openwork lattice of corten steel, takes on the role of an abstract sculpture, separating the square from the entrance to the parking lot, enlivening it with a reddish spot, and also echoing the brick facades of the loft building.
Landscaping, parking, stone facades, moderate altitude - all this is determined by the high cost of the site "one traffic light from the Kremlin" and the outrageous class of housing. However, the architecture of such complexes for Moscow, as a rule, maneuvers between "conservative stylization with columns", which still happens more often - and "modern", which is less common, but it also happens. The choice is simple, one or two. Here is a completely different story - not only is Tchoban's ornamental architecture not a stylization, here a dialogue between two recognized supporters of different stylistic paradigms became, at the request of the customer, one of the plots of the building. The discussion turned out to be delicate - it is enough to imagine both authors to understand that it could not have been otherwise - but, admittedly, the formulation of the problem is interesting.
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