Working in a dense urban environment - and the streets between Nizhnyaya Maslovka, Butyrskaya and Bashilovskaya have long been formed - this is always work with many restrictions. But when a house is “inherited” with already embedded “genes” of building spots and number of storeys - but at the same time with a number of pronounced “congenital defects” - this is work with restrictions at a qualitatively different level. When it is necessary to perform a high-precision surgical operation on a living, growing "organism" - a house under construction - and hope that there will be no complications.
In the case of the RC "Caramel", the situation was exactly this: construction began, the location of the house and the yard was fixed, and it was required to deeply rework the project without changing the configuration and number of storeys. ADM architects completely reconfigured the two basement levels and the first floor, took over the function of the general designer, redesigned the P and RD stages, passed the examination and received the AGR. And a miracle happened: even at this stage, the architects managed to get rid of "congenital defects" by changing both the structure and, in some way, the ideology of the complex.
So, if, according to the old project, the entrances were from the inside of the house, and there was free access to cars through the courtyard, then in the new version there was one central entrance with a spacious lobby. The entrance here is organized from the outside, and you can go either to the closed courtyard, or to one of the two elevator groups, each leading to its own section of the house, or to shops that occupy a significant part of the first floor and "look" with windows and entrances to the street. As for the cars, immediately from 2nd Kvesisskaya they enter the two-level underground parking, and the yard is closed for them.
It remained to find an acceptable solution for a concrete ramp at the rear border of the site - being combined with ventilation chambers and other technical rooms, it turned into a large-scale structure more than 3 m high and almost 10 m long - such a volume “ate up” the yard space almost completely. The architects integrated it into an artificial hill, planted with lawn and trees, allocated part of the concrete surface for playgrounds, flower beds and recreation areas with benches. And we got a two-level courtyard with active, interesting geoplastics, saturated not only with functions, but also with impressions associated with the height difference and the effect of hilly terrain. The courtyard not only did not disappear, but also acquired additional emotional value, turned into a walking terrain course slalom.
However, perhaps the main problem that the architects had to face is the balconies, which were originally laid in almost every apartment; At the time of the project's revision, the apartments were already being sold and we had to work “on the fly” - first of all, to get rid of the well-known effect of “thermometers”, into which glazed loggias built one above the other are added, giving the buildings of our cities a kind of easily recognizable flavor. Despite the fact that it was impossible to move the loggias, Andrei Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova managed to largely neutralize the effect - or at least divert attention from it.
"Plastic surgery" was carried out on several "fronts" at once: in the plane - by alternating transparent and opaque surfaces of different widths; in volume - protruding elements of different scales, from a basket for an air conditioner to a vertical block of balconies. And, finally, along the entire facade - due to colors and textures: thin large-format ceramic slabs of various shades of fawn color, similar to limestone, create a grisaille-half-tone watercolor background,making the plate at home really look a bit like a giant crayfish neck candy and justifying the gastronomic name of the complex. On glass loggias, they turn into fragile, almost white lintels, confidently lining the arrays of glass. Here, on the loggias, the floors are combined in two, and a different rhythm arises - as if one house grows through the other, as if there are two genocodes, one denser, the other completely "Gothic".
Finally, this multi-layered but clear structure is punctuated by inserts made from aluminum slats in all shades of chocolate - from white and milky to dark bitter. They hide the air conditioners at the loggias, forming a checkerboard rhythm of alternating inserts designed to bring down the vertical. The same stripes decorate separate drawers for air conditioners, scattered on the walls deliberately asymmetrically, also for the sake of revitalization and avoiding excessive predictability. On the facades of the house, the slats are responsible for the horizontal: fractional, decorative, saturated with color like a good scarf. They balance the vertical, which definitely prevails here, since it is responsible for the qualities of harmony and grace necessary for a modern home. The slenderness is kept on the lines of the loggias, on the vertical proportions of the windows, which, while observing the standard fire-prevention 120 centimeters between the floors, received gray inserts covered with striped silk-screen printing in the lower part, "pulling" the outline, especially for a view from a distance. The walls are interpreted as a wide lattice of lintels between the openings, which also serves for the visual fitness of the building. The vertical line is emphasized by the frequent grilles of the yard, which in all other respects support the graphics of small slats.
Needless to say, ADM are masters of such rhythmic bel canto, multi-layered, volumetric-graphic facades, where the main task is to stay on the verge of a strict grid that keeps the volume within the framework, and picturesque asymmetry that adds dynamics and life. In this case, it is obvious that the task was to "shake" the boring predictable volume, but typically, the architects could easily resist the temptation of excessive liveliness. Well, and besides, it is easy to notice that the solutions used here are related to the architecture of the Hilton Duble tree hotel on Leningradsky Prospekt: the same combination of picturesque spots with fractional graphics of lines, the same play of openings, now wide, now narrow, the same difficult but logical node of verticals and contour lines. But there was a different scale and function, different materials, there were limestone and ceramic slats, here wall ceramics and aluminum slats. But the set of techniques is close, which is completely normal: the authors develop their approach, apply it to a new problem.
So from a banal skyscraper with monotonous rows of balconies and a potentially uncomfortable territory, "Caramel" has turned into a business class complex with all the consequences: a recognizable architectural appearance, a green courtyard without cars, an open first floor, underground parking and apartments with panoramic glazing from 54 up to 228 m2… And no complications.
