The residential complex ASTRA has received many awards. Indeed, the thing turned out with original ideas and a clear plastic embodiment. Moreover, it does not feel a provincial scale. Anton Barklyansky was born in Perm, studied in Yekaterinburg, but managed to work in well-known Western and Moscow bureaus. And Perm itself at the time of the governorship of Oleg Chirkunov was an outpost of modern architecture and urbanism. Both the Dutch masterplan KCAP, the international competition for the museum of contemporary art PERMM with the participation of Peter Zumthor, and other events have created a nutritious information context, where ASTRA fits in with its Dutch-Scandinavian flavor.
SYNCHROTECTURE architects believe that there are three points to be proud of in ASTRA Residential Complex. The first is urban planning: to build a fairly large residential building in the historical center, embedding it in the existing panorama and maintaining the volume of living space specified in the TOR. The second is social: to keep the site accessible to all townspeople, which will delight them - for this, pedestrian streets are arranged along the historical passages.
Anton Barklyansky: “The first and main question that we faced was urban planning: how to put something big in this place? Then we were interested in what this place will give the future residents of the house and what it will give to the residents of the city”.
The site is located in the center of Perm, on the site of the former "Black Market", so named because it had to be cleared of waterlogging. The city center plan was drawn up in 1784 by the architect Ivan Lem (who worked in the Commission for Buildings of St. Petersburg and contributed to the spread of the regular cities of Catherine's classicism throughout Russia). In old blueprints, it looks like Manhattan: the correct neighborhoods divided into lots. Two historical buildings of the late 19th century by architect Vasily Potapenko are inscribed in such a quarter, forming two sides of it. These are architectural monuments. Initially, there were shopping arcades with a perimeter bypass: shops on the first floors, offices and warehouses on the second. In Soviet times, a printing house and a tobacco factory were set up in them, the entire territory of the quarters was occupied by outbuildings. The courtyard facades were built up, many arches were laid, brick walls were painted over.
Anton Barklyansky: “In any case, a monument for a developer is an encumbrance. Reconstruction is more expensive than a new building, but the customer was ready for it. We opened a perimeter bypass, restored openings and adapted buildings to meet today's evacuation requirements, provided additional stairs, but so that they would not be visible from the outside. The drawing of the devitrification was restored. We led these passages from beginning to end, insisted on careful restoration of the brickwork - we followed the process at all stages."
The reconstruction of the passages increased the value of the territory. The main task was to build a residential building between two passages and a brick office building from the 1990s. Taking into account the fact that this is a historical area, not far from the Transfiguration Cathedral with a bell tower (a monument of federal significance), a landscape-visual analysis was made. “With the center for the protection of monuments, we checked the points where it is impossible to block the panorama of the city with a view of the cathedral,” says Anton. And here the main find appeared - the silhouette of the roof.
“There are sloping roofs of passages, and we are gradually moving upwards from them, maintaining a dialogue with history at the expense of the roofs of a residential building. This form is modern, but it has a clear dialogue with history. This is a very cool idea. The silhouette appears on the diagram as the designation of the city on road signs. Moreover, this is a traditional city with a cathedral spire towering over it. Pitched roofs in a historic city generally look better than flat ones. And here, which is unexpected, they also gave the optimal output of the area. This means that many will be able to go further along this path.
The multi-slope roof of the ASTRA residential complex turned out to be ambivalent: when viewed from the city, it has a clear connection with the silhouette of historic roofs, when viewed from the courtyard, with the silhouette of rocks. The roof structure is made of concrete. To avoid leaks at the folds, the architects provided for drainage and heating measures for the roof. The roof itself was supposed to be in the plane of the facade with a small drainage channel around the perimeter. The removal of the roof was not planned, but it appeared, as it happens, in the process.
The facade is tiled with tiles of several sand shades, which creates the effect of a living natural surface.
The courtyard resembling a clearing among the rocks is the highlight of the project. It was conceived with trees, the green of which would be reflected in completely (!) Glass facades. It turned out to be an architectural and natural space for meditation. In Norway, in the evening after work, people sit silently and look at the forest - this is a national tradition. Trees and geoplastics have not been (yet) done, but the mirrored facades visually enlarge the small courtyard by means of endless reflections. In addition, the roof line of two opposite parts of the house does not coincide in shape, and in the reflections these silhouettes are bizarrely broken. In order to free the courtyard from cars and drive cars, including firefighters, only from the outside of the building, the architects carefully thought out the layouts, bringing all the apartments to the outer perimeter. Apartment layouts - from studios to two-room apartments with roof terraces and dormer windows.
So, in the residential complex ASTRA there are several important ideas. A multi-slope roof, which can be patented as "Barklyansky's skyline", splitting the volume into several parts of different heights, a courtyard-oasis without cars with mirrored facades and valorization of the territory. The main thing seems to me to be the roof.
The image of a building with a pitched roof, but a modernist plastic facade is quite viable and could become the mainstream of our cities. Because such buildings have a historical memory, and they escape the symbolic poverty of many modern buildings. It is no coincidence that SYNCHROTECTURE bureau used pitched roofs in another Perm project related to the historical environment. Houses with pitched roofs could form the very fabric of the city that modern architecture has not yet succeeded in. And there is a tendency.
