One moment and 13 years of realization
Architecture is a lot like music and mathematics. It has a place for both ratio and creative insight that may come unexpectedly - then napkins and notebooks come in handy. Architects are happy to save the sketches of their projects, especially those that have been implemented. The sketches are reminiscent of a valuable and vibrant moment that was followed by hard months of design work to turn light lines into volumes of documentation, followed by years of construction thorns.
In the history of the Versis RC project on Nakhimovsky Prospekt there is the same “napkin” and a wonderful story that Alexander Rafailovich Asadov gladly tells - about how he rode in the metro and drew a schematic facade, axonometry and a fragment of a building from several horizontal blocks strung on a pair of vertical volumes; and wrote the word "Liner" over them.
From that moment on, a project began, which stretched out for thirteen long years and, as the Asadovs themselves like to joke, survived two economic crises. But even now, looking at the photographs of the constructed complex "Versis", one can feel the drive of inspiration, dynamics of forms and contrast of materials - everything that captivates the drawing on the surviving sheet.
Vertical, horizontal and other geometry
We talked in detail about the history of the creation of the project of the residential complex "Versis" in
article "Flying ship". The architects turned the disadvantages of the narrow section through which the collector passes into an advantage, or rather into an original volumetric-spatial system of two vertical and several horizontal blocks. And most importantly, they convinced the customer that it can and should be built. The main argument was the popularity of such an exclusive product as penthouses or view apartments on the market, of which in a complex of two towers with a height of 22 and 24 floors and three bridges hanging in the air with a length of 35 meters each could turn out to be a lot.
During the implementation of the project adjustments continued. The architects had to convince the customer more than once of the need for horizontal buildings. But this is already the specificity of our construction process, in which no one can ever be sure that the solution approved and agreed at all levels will be implemented exactly as it is drawn in the working project. As in the famous poem by Marshak about luggage "during the journey …" a lot of interesting things can happen to the dog. With projects, it happens all the time, but with such a complex and extraordinary complex as the complex on Nakhimovsky Prospekt, it happened several times.
During the development of the project, the initial approach to building a composition has changed. In the first sketch, everything was radically deconstructivist: glass blocks were strung on stone pillars, dematerializing the mass of the complex and dissolving it in the air due to reflections. And the verticals of the towers-pillars dominated the horizontal lines of the glass bridges.
In the project, the balance of power and the placement of accents have changed. The core became glass, the shell received a stone facing, perforated with square and rectangular openings and niches. “We set ourselves the task of creating a composition in which massive stone blocks would be held on a glass base,” says Andrey Asadov. The image has changed - vertical and horizontal volumes, glass and stone blocks have formed a single structure, where, like in the Jenga game, all the elements are equal and necessary to maintain the overall balance.
Aesthetics and economics
Two crises almost led to the abandonment of the most difficult from a constructive point of view, bulkhead bridges. But the customer understood that a rare architectural solution was able to ensure demand in the market, so they managed to continue working and implement the plan.
Together with the designers of the Institute "Promstroyproekt" and the firm "ISTOKSTROY", the architects have developed an ingenious scheme, whose additional advantage is invisibility. The bulk of the weight is taken by the floor-high metal trusses installed at the bottom of the "bridges". Outside, they are covered with a curtain facade, which is practically indistinguishable from the glazing system located above. To redistribute the loads, additional suspensions are used, connecting the top of the beams, about a third of the span, with the transverse supporting structures of the hulls two floors higher. They can be seen through the striped glazing of the bridge apartments. The designs instill confidence in safety, but to beat their brutal appearance in the interiors of apartments is the business of future designers.
In the course of implementation, some facade solutions were also clarified. At some point, it seemed to the authors that the scale of divisions was too large and it was necessary to split the volumes into smaller fractions. This is how niches up to 1.5 meters deep appeared, uniting groups of several windows on one or several adjacent floors. The enthusiasm for niches and consoles on the end facades, reaching 6 meters, almost deprived the facade of its integrity, so that some of them had to be removed from the working documentation. Until the last moment, work was underway on the proportions and designs of large protruding blocks located on the two upper floors of each building, which were supposed to play the role of a kind of lock about out stones”- accents marking the stop of the vertical compositional theme.
In most cases, the complication of the facade pattern was beneficial. For example, the lower part of the "bridge" cladding in the project was made of the same material as the cladding of the end cantilever protrusions. The architects, together with the specialists of the company that dealt with the facades, selected the materials in such a way that it is impossible to distinguish from the ground cladding with porcelain stoneware on vertical surfaces from cladding with metal cassettes on horizontal ones. The color, dullness and even the size of the cells are the same. But on the "bridges" the cladding is made differently - in the lower part of the horizontal block, gray metal cassettes are used, reminiscent of glazing in shade. It feels like the glass extends to the end of the wall and turns down. Due to this technique, it is possible to visually lighten the volume of the entire block.
Keep the tension
The history of the development of the project and its implementation proves that in order to create a real architecture, one moment of creative tension is not enough. It takes months and years, during which the author needs to keep the project in the focus of attention and critical rethinking in the same way that Asadov's team managed to do it. It is not surprising that the complex, designed thirteen years ago and not frozen at the construction stage only by a miracle, is still perceived as more than relevant and even futuristic in places. In some photographs showing sharp angles with the perspective of the bridge terraces going up and down, there is a feeling that it is quite possible to shoot a series about the future, such as where Bruce Williss will save humanity with the help of the fifth element.
The legacy of a glorious school
In the near-architectural circles of social networks, a game called "guess the prototype" is popular. Its essence, but not its meaning, is to find as many analogs as possible in terms of the volumetric-spatial solution for some new building or project by an eminent author. This entertainment, which camouflages the accusation of plagiarism under the competition in erudition, has only one value - they allow one to single out local trends and analyze their viability and compliance with the changes that world architecture is going through. Even more productive can be the study of historical prototypes created within the framework of one national school, and lining up in a certain line, each link in which marks a new stage in the development of a certain typology, the formation of a method or even a style. Sometimes these connections and references are easy to read, sometimes they are felt at some subconscious level, but their presence always speaks of the vitality and evolution of the national school.
When you look at the residential complex on Nakhimovsky Prospekt with its powerful plasticity, where the verticals of the wide towers argue with the horizontal rods of the inhabited two- and three-story bridges thrown between them, images of famous Moscow houses, with their otherness and remarkableness, have earned popular recognition in the form of names own: the house of nuclear scientists on Tulskaya or the house of Lebed on the Leningradskoye highway are too original and too correspond to the realities in which they were created in order to pretend to be the architectural "progenitors" of the new construction of the Asadovs, but it makes sense to see and evaluate the relationship. The authors admit that they absorb a lot and take associations with the masterpieces of Andrei Meerson, Vsevolod Voskresensky and Vladimir Babad as a compliment and confirmation of their belonging to the traditions of the Russian architectural school. And you can be sure that the complex on Nakhimovsky Prospekt will have its own name. What - so far one can only guess.
