Crenellated Terraces

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

The plant is located on Derbenevskaya Street, next to the Novospassky Business Quarter, which was transformed from a cotton-printing factory into a class B office center in the mid-2000s. A pretty ensemble of red-brick industrial architecture built at the beginning of the 20th century according to the project of Traugot Bardt for the fabric factory of Emil Tsindel. In 1924, the territory of the Tsindel factory was not just given to the Soviet cotton-printing factory, but was divided - a large building of the dyeing shop on Derbenevskaya Street was transferred to the then newly created Mosavtosteklo plant. The plant is successfully operating, produces glass of various types, including architectural, tempered, with electric heating, with silk-screen printing and with built-in diodes. Pavel Andreev has known him for a long time, at "Mosavtoglass", in particular, they made colored stained-glass windows according to the drawings of Elena Markovskaya for the ceiling of the atrium in "Children's World". Now the production has moved to the city of Dolgoprudny, and it is planned to place research laboratories in the building on Derbenevskaya - for which reconstruction was required.

A long five-story brick building with large windows stretches along a quiet two-lane Derbenevskaya street. Its business-like laconic architecture reveals interesting details that connect the building with the beginning of the 20th century, the time of styles is no longer "pseudo", but "neo". Particularly good are the flattened, recessed into the wall "half-columns" and roller skirting of the windows, uniting the third and fourth tiers (not only now have they learned to change the proportions of facades, connecting two floors into one with the help of window openings). Inside there are characteristic cast-iron capitals. But the facade is now rather sloppy, and the courtyard is built up with late barn-type temporary huts, including sand-lime bricks.

Реконструкция комплекса зданий завода «Мосавтостекло» © Архитектурная мастерская «ГРАН»

The project is subordinated to the GPZU, which stipulates the preservation of the parameters of the building, its height, building spots and the volume of useful areas. So the art of the architect in this case was to clean out all unnecessary, leaving valuable (although the building has no status), and to find ways to compensate for the area of outbuildings intended for dismantling in the yard. This is work within a very narrow framework, a kind of maneuvering.

The authors proposed to clear the shallow basement of the building, equipping there one tier of parking with two symmetrical ramps on the side of the yard, and adding a small above ground eco-parking with a lawn grate in the yard, between two small preserved buildings. There was also a place for landscaping: paving, trees and, in some places, round benches around them.

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1/3 Reconstruction of the complex of buildings of the Mosavtosteklo plant © Architectural studio "GRAN"
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2/3 Reconstruction of the complex of buildings of the Mosavtosteklo plant © Architectural studio "GRAN"
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3/3 Reconstruction of the complex of buildings of the "Mosavtosteklo" plant © Architectural studio "GRAN"

Half of the first floor is devoted to public functions, a cafe is conceived here, the reception part of the space adjacent to the street facade is double-height, that is, it captures part of the second floor. Here, in front of the street, in the central part of the facade, there is a pit with stairs on both sides: in it, occupying a small part of the underground parking area, shops can be located. On the sides of the cafe on the ground floor, both laboratories and showrooms of "conversion" products can be located - the plant, in particular, produces and sells double-glazed windows. If necessary, these premises will receive entrances directly from the street.

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2/5 Reconstruction of the building complex of the Mosavtosteklo plant. Section 1-1 © Architectural studio "GRAN"
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3/5 Reconstruction of the building complex of the Mosavtosteklo plant. Section 2-2, 3-3 © Architectural studio "GRAN"

Above, the premises of the research and experimental divisions of the plant will be located, since the structure of the Bardt factory building with two rows of cast-iron columns allows both open space and partitions.

The most interesting solution went to the upper tier, which is quite usual for reconstruction projects of the old industrial. After clearing the attic, there should be a place for one and a half floors - in fact, it was in this part that all the compensations for the areas of the buildings being dismantled in the courtyard were found. But since it was impossible to lay more square meters than in the GPZU, the upper floor acquired a curious jagged structure: ribbed "mansard" ledges alternate with terraces where employees can go out to rest while observing the surroundings. The emphatically modern superstructure, on the one hand, is obviously modern, on the other, it continues the building quite logically and delicately. Two colors are conceived to choose from: brown oxidized corten steel or dark gray titanium-zinc, and according to Pavel Andreev, he is leaning towards the second, contrasting option: "from the necessity" of subtracting "areas, it turned out, in my opinion, an interesting architectural solution", - says the architect.

The striped vertical rhythm of the superstructures continues in the facades of the fully renovated small buildings and forms the second theme of this small, by Moscow standards, complex. The first violin here, of course, is played by the building being reconstructed itself: the brick, of course, is planned to be cleaned and covered with a hydrophobic compound, and now the white lintels will be made black. In principle, the concept of reconstruction fits well with the trends of the last ten, and maybe more, years, although it has two "personal", and perhaps related to new trends, features: firstly, the plant does not move, making room for offices or housing, but remains in place, albeit in the person of its engineers and designers - thus preserving the functional diversity of the city. Secondly, the proposed superstructures carry all the features of the architecture of the last years: they do not sharpen the contrast and even enhance the "classical" verticalism, but at the same time they look fresh, not hiding their current origin. The ensemble is easy to read, clear, but solid. It is even curious that this decision, in essence, was the result of a reaction to many constraints that needed to be taken into account in the project.