Architectural parade alle
It is a special honor and responsibility to design a building on the Garden Ring - one of the most prestigious highways in the center of Moscow. Almost every second building here is an architectural monument or a landmark. To manor houses, tenement houses of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, charismatic and brutal buildings of the heyday of constructivism and dilapidated "boxes" of steel and glass of the Soviet period, our time adds new exhibits that differ not so much in architectural merits as in ambition, attracting attention of connoisseurs of modern architecture and custodians of historical heritage. The recent heated discussions of the Oruzheyny tower at the intersection of the ring and Dolgorukovskaya street and the Moskovsky silhouette project from the star Dutch MVRDV showed how difficult it is to find the right image for the demanding context here. Both the clumsy stylization and the provocative architectural gesture, as it turned out, create too much dissonance in the “motley” development of the Garden Ring, which pleases few patriotic Muscovites. Any new construction or reconstruction project on the Garden Ring is considered by specialized authorities almost under a microscope and is coordinated with great difficulties. But for some projects, the crucible of approvals turns into a qualitative transformation and a chance to make a worthy contribution to the architectural collection of the Garden Ring. Everything is decided by the professionalism and methodology of working with the context of the architectural team.
Abnormal place
The story with the project of a business building that closes the perimeter of the triangular quarter between Sadovo-Spasskaya, Myasnitskaya streets and the eponymous passage could be called typical for Moscow design practice, if not for a number of anomalous circumstances. The happy semi-final (project approval and ArchGlass award) was preceded by a dramatic backstory.
First of all, there was not and should not have been at home on this site. A narrow strip only 10 meters deep, sandwiched between two firewalls, would be best suited for some stunted garden, stubbornly fighting with the gas pollution of the neighboring highway, which, as if in mockery, bears the name "Sadovaya". But precisely due to the exit to one of the main metropolitan highways, the value of the site as a place for placing "golden" office space was too great to be given for botanical needs. This is how a plot of only 0.02 hectares, anomalous in size and potential, appeared. In 2014, the Vektor company bought it from the Moscow government and ordered a project for the workshop of Sergei Tkachenko in Mosproekt-5. Promptly prepared project since 2015
several times was presented to the architectural council of Moscow, but could not overcome this "Rubicon" in any way.
The layout wasn't the problem. There were no difficulties with it, except for the catastrophically small depth of the hull (max. 7.8 meters) and a floor area of 230 m2, because of which it was necessary to issue special technical conditions justifying the absence of a second evacuation ladder. The Mosproekt-5 team proposed a competent and balanced solution, taking into account all the features of the micro-site, designing a rectangular five-storey building 24.4 m high and a couple of underground floors for a parking equipped with a robotic parking system.
Facades of the building became a stumbling block. First of all, the front door, overlooking the Garden Ring. With the rear facade facing a small courtyard cluttered with outbuildings and projections, it was also difficult, but not as tragic as with the main one. The prepared options, both radical in color and contextual, with embossed stone cladding, were not supported by the Arch Council. The search for solutions continued for about a year, but did not lead to anything. It was necessary to find some fresh image that could resolve the stalemate for the already anomalous area. The developer approached the Ostozhenka bureau with a proposal to finalize the project - a task more than suitable for the Ostozhenka team, which stood at the origins of the “contextual approach”.
Look around
First of all, it was necessary to take into account the geography. The site is located on the inner side of the Garden Ring and the main facade of the future building is facing north-north-east. Almost all day it is in the shade, the sun illuminates it in the morning and evening at the beginning of summer, and then with an oblique light, casting harsh shadows from any relief. This feature was not taken into account in the previous versions of the facade, and Andrei Gnezdilov went to photograph the morning sun on the facades of neighboring houses - to imagine what effect the light would have on the future building. What was needed was a technique that would turn the problem into an advantage, working equally effectively in the shade, in oblique sunlight, and in evening artificial lighting.
In addition, the building's surroundings could not be ignored. Within a radius of 400 m from the anomalous area, there are several unconditional architectural masterpieces: a skyscraper on the Red Gate by Alexei Dushkin, the southern pavilion of the Krasnye Vorota metro station by Nikolai Ladovsky, Narkomzem by Alexei Shchusev and, of course, Le Corbusier's House of Tsentrosoyuz. In the first sketches, the Ostozhenka team tried to reflect on the motives of neighboring monuments using similar materials and colors, but very quickly came to the conclusion that the very approach to developing the appearance of the “strange” building had been chosen incorrectly. According to Alexander Skokan, “… it was a mistake to make a real, normal house on this abnormal site. And draw a facade for him, like a real house. The plot and the house itself are so narrow that they look more like a theatrical scenery depicting a house. Therefore, it was necessary to find some adequate decorative technique for the facade”.
This is how the idea of a screen appeared, separating the outside world with the rapid movement of cars along the highway and an endless stream of pedestrians from the inner measured existence of the inhabitants of the future office. This coexistence side by side, but isolated, with the effect of presence, but not wide open, found expression in the image of a canopy covering, but not hiding from each other, the outer and inner worlds, reacting to them and allowing the inhabitants of the building to regulate the degree of interaction. The birth of the image can be easily traced in the sketches, which show how a light curtain is thrown over the clear frame structure of the building, as if covered with folds from gusts of wind and rushing cars.
Glass canopy
The only material that could be used to create such a screen was glass. The question was what type of glass and what technology to choose in order to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum thickness of the structure.
A lively curtain-like surface, responsive to changes in the viewing angle, could only be provided by a double façade system with warm internal stained-glass windows and a structure made of rigidly fixed glass slats brought forward, which at the same time closes the interior from outside viewing, but at a certain angle of view, allowing to look outward with little or no interference. Moreover, the lamellas made it possible to orchestrate visual connections by placing the plates at different angles. The lamellas, like a fan, turn in one direction or the other to reveal the most advantageous views of the surrounding cityscape and the most beautiful buildings from among the neighboring masterpieces.
The lamellas are assembled into six horizontal ribbons. Moreover, in some places they will combine several levels, and on some, on the contrary, the general rhythm is suddenly interrupted, forming a row oriented in the opposite direction. It turns out, as it were, a tousled facade, in which part of the lamellas lies "against the grain". As a result, at first glance, it is not easy to determine the regularity of the breakdown of rows and the exact number of floors that are hidden behind the “waving” glass curtain.
The architects of Ostozhenka chose satin glass for the lamellas, treated by chemical etching. It is not transparent, but it lets in enough light, both in the daytime inside the building, and in the evening, with the artificial lighting on, outward, turning a small building into a luminous box.
The curtain resemblance is enhanced by the obliquely chamfered lower edge of the outer façade. Its sawn-off shotgun echoes the diagonal of the cantilever overhang above the automated parking passage. In the previous version of the project, the authors made the passage framed by columns, but the architects of Ostozhenka proposed a more tectonic and efficient option from the point of view of the work of supporting structures - with a cantilever signage of the upper level above the passage. Thanks to this solution, the load is not transferred to the outer perimeter of the site adjacent to the firewall of the building next to it, which means there is no risk of damaging the foundations of the “neighbor”.
Garden style
For the courtyard facade, Ostozhenka also proposed a new solution using glass in a non-standard way. The architects wanted to let in at least a little southern sun inside the narrow building, but the tightness of the courtyard did not allow the use of large areas of glazing. And office life, flowing between two glass facades, would easily turn into a kind of TV show "Behind the Glass". The balance of closeness and light permeability was found in the form of a uniform perforation of the rear façade with the help of small, only 70x70 cm openings, some of which are covered with frosted double-glazed windows, and some are left blank. The architects themselves saw in the resulting fine-mesh structure an analogy with park pergolas - trellises for climbing plants.
Unpredictable ending
The new version of the project developed by the Ostozhenka bureau, which included, in addition to the facades, a number of planning and structural improvements, successfully passed the architectural council in August 2017. The proposed solutions not only answered all the questions of a difficult area, but also provided an opportunity for the development of an idea at the stage of detailed design. But how the development will take place and whether it will be possible to preserve the found image, the authors of the approved concept cannot say.
Recently, development companies are increasingly starting to use the fragmented design method, hiring different organizations at different stages of work on a project. There are very few cases when one architectural bureau leads a project from the first concept to the detailed design and architectural supervision, and they are becoming less and less. This tactic that does not contradict the laws allows developers not only to save money by hiring teams of different skill levels to perform work of different complexity, but also opens up a wide scope for them to uncontrollably distort architectural solutions.
Time will tell what will happen to this project, whether it will become another typical example of architecture without an architect, or the notorious abnormality of the site will work positively and the constructed building will become an example of high-quality modern and author's architecture on the Garden Ring.
