The closed competition was held by the Vesper development company in 2017, the winner was Tsimailo, Lyashenko and Partners in collaboration with the French company Antonini Darmon, and they continue to work on the project now. The AB ATRIUM project, which we are talking about here, was one of the participants in the competition. ***
Third point
There are several districts in Moscow that are considered the most prestigious and desirable for buying apartments. Until recently, Ostozhenka was in first place, but it was gently pushed aside from the leading positions by Patriarshiye Prudy and Khamovniki. The latter have the highest rating and, at the same time, the potential for growth. Unlike the other two "points of real estate attraction" in the southwestern bend of the Moskva River, several factors cherished for the buyer were combined: transport accessibility, developed infrastructure, a relatively good ecological situation and the availability of recreational spaces. Add to this the territories freed from the remnants of industry, including those located along the Savvinskaya embankment, and you get an area where the activities of the Russian architectural elite will most likely be concentrated in the next 5-10 years. The actual trend is already evident. It is not surprising that a number of developers use the format of closed tenders, in which leading architectural firms are invited to participate to select concepts for the development of promising plots.
Express testing
Vesper, one of the developers that prefer to conduct custom tenders, invited several architectural teams in 2016 to find the optimal solution and test their preliminary marketing calculations. Realizing roughly what project could satisfy all the city's requirements and at the same time be in demand on the market, Vesper decided to conduct additional express testing of its perspective vision. After all, there is always a chance that there will be an even more effective and “salable” proposal that will increase the profitability of the project. The invited participants had to develop a concept in about a month, which would strictly adhere to the indicators for the area output and other parameters approved by the city. At the same time, it was possible to experiment with volumetric-spatial and planning solutions.
The number of participants in the competition included the ATRIUM bureau, which is quite familiar with the format of closed competitions. Anton Nadtochy comments on this practice: “I believe that the system of closed tenders is the most effective for customers, because it guarantees the best result in the shortest possible way. The customer invites the best teams who will not only offer a high-quality idea, but also be able to implement it. In this case, they receive concepts that show different author's strategies and often even outstrip existing market trends. In such contests, it is always interesting for us to show our vision, compare it with the opinion of our colleagues and compete for a real order”.
Not button accordion
A far from simple site was allocated for the future elite residential complex. Difficult both in terms of the history of the place, and in terms of the variegated environment and various obstacles to creating an ideal project.
First of all, the architects had to decide how to fit the elite housing into a complex in configuration area, hampered by existing buildings, among which were: a two-storey building of Mosvodokanal and a non-residential 4-storey building, fencing the future residential complex from the embankment; A 12-storey brick tower originally from the 1990s and a 4-storey building of the Center for Correction and Development, standing along the 2nd Truzhenikov Lane, and a whole scatter of 2- and 3-storey buildings of various purposes and preservation. To this "gentlemanly" burden was added a hefty relief with an elevation difference of more than 8 meters. After a methodical retreat from the borders, taking into account fire passages and insolation, a building spot was determined, forming an "L" -shaped building with wings almost equal in length, one of which ran parallel to the embankment, and the second went deep into the quarter. The inner space was set aside for a small landscaped courtyard. The entrance to the underground parking was from the top, from the side of the 1st Truzhenikov lane.
As for the history of the place, the main "theme" was set by the Moscow Bayan Factory named after the Red Army, which was located here earlier. From its workshops, little survived and did not represent prospects for use according to the conversion scenario. On the other hand, the literary component opened up a wide range of interpretations for the architects. Specialization, which is so rare today, due to its colorfulness, simply had to somehow affect architecture. The architects admit that the first attempts to convert the form of a musical instrument into a three-dimensional solution were unsuccessful. Playing the button accordion turned out to be more difficult than one might have expected.
Resort mood
The solution was found due to another key feature of the site - proximity to the river and the ability to make the view of the river one of the most valuable benefits for future buyers. To do this, the team decided to abandon the usual configuration of the building in favor of a composition that is more common and appropriate in completely different latitudes and with slightly different views. Instead of the usual vertical façade, a stepped structure appeared, moving in tiers into the depths of the site, which made it possible both to open the view of the river for the apartments, the side wing, and to create a system of open terraces that could be used by the residents of the apartments facing them.
Such structures are typical for seaside resorts. This is how most hotels are built, for whose clients it is important to be able to spend part of their rest sitting on the terrace overlooking the endless sea. For Moscow's realities, the view of the grayish waves of the Moskva River and the prospect of the industrial zone along the Berezhkovskaya embankment and further, with the bulk of the City, propping up low clouds, is quite comparable and competitive with the view of the sea. In any case, the architects of the ATRIUM bureau thought so and relied on the resort type of architecture, especially since in the arrhythmic zigzags (hence the name of the house Z-House) and the steps of the terraced building, with a great desire and imagination, one can see an analogy with the folding button accordion furs. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Collection of bonuses
As a result of the imposition of history and literature on geology, with additional pressure on the economy, a logical and living system of a tiered building has crystallized, in which each element, including the main spatial, planning and facade solutions, is dictated by the desire to provide future buyers with the maximum set of preferences associated with the location of the complex. and the opening views.
The wings of the complex are angled slightly more than 90 degrees in order to give the residents of the side wing apartments a wider view of the river. The same purpose is served by small glass bay windows, obliquely protruding beyond the plane of the facade on the outer and inner sides of the side body. Inside, they appear on the upper floors, where the main panorama opens over the lower part of the longitudinal wing.
The staircase and elevator nodes of the main building are concentrated along the inner facade. It is oriented to the southeast - in a normal situation it would have been left for living quarters, but in this case the authors preferred to concentrate auxiliary and communication zones here in order to free the external view facade from them.
In the design of the facades, brick cladding and glass stained-glass windows are combined. The balance between them is determined, again, by the species characteristics. The best views get the most glass. Facades facing neighboring buildings are content with parity between brick walls and two-story narrow stained-glass windows, periodically replaced by glass bay windows.
To compensate for the loss of the river view, the two outermost apartments on the first floors of the longitudinal building are made in a format similar to a townhouse. They have their own entrance from the street, two full floors and separate terraces above the stylobate.
The basement of the complex is designed in such a way as to visually and spatially connect the courtyard with the outside "world" overlooking the river and embankment. Playing on the difference in relief, the architects raised the main volume of the complex above ground level, leaving as supports most of the first floor of the main building and a small communication block with a lobby and two staircase and elevator blocks of the side wing. The space between the main volume and the stylobate is used as public and recreational areas. The direct connection between the embankment and the courtyard is a wide staircase, spectacular enough to pretend to be a background for memorable photographs of new residents before moving in.
Vera Butko explains the idea of walking through the house in the following way: “We wanted to bring air, light into the composition and connect the courtyard with the river. Thanks to the passage through the main wing, we got a space that is both protected and open to the outside. A person walks under this roof with huge consoles and can go down the stairs to the street. From any point we see the passages to the river, thus avoiding the feeling of isolation, cut off from the embankment."
The load from the outer corner of the complex, which seems to be hanging in the air, is borne by a single column, finished with polished white stone, due to which it almost dissolves in a huge space enclosed between a brick-clad stylobate and a ceiling faced with glossy white panels. The unusual combination of bricks on the facades with light gray and white finishing materials gives the complex lightness and even sophistication, reminiscent of London quarters with their invariably white window frames framed by picturesque brickwork. Large stained-glass windows play an important role in this façade play of materials. For them, the architects proposed clarified glass with a slight mirror effect.
When you look at the visualization of the complex built into the panorama of the embankment, it is striking that the new house does not violate the already established building system. The first line of the Savvinskaya embankment is overlooked by houses with a height of 9–12 floors. Their diversity and lack of a single height dimension does not allow us to speak of an ensemble comparable, for example, to the development of Frunzenskaya Embankment, but some kind of rhythm can still be seen here. The solution proposed by the ATRIUM bureau maintains this general rhythm, but at the same time gives a deeper development of the composition due to the high-rise part moved away from the front line and lowering the tiers to the neighboring one.
brick tower.
