On the northern outskirts of the historical part of Yekaterinburg, near the Bolshakov park on March 8 street, there is one of the most famous abandoned buildings in the city - an emergency clinical hospital, recognized as a regional architectural monument. The hospital was built in 1932, its architecture is interesting by a combination of avant-garde and neoclassical techniques. The arcade of thermal windows, crowning the complex five-storey buildings, columns, stucco moldings and greenery of neighboring parks make the building more like a “sanatorium-resort institution”. In the 2000s, the hospital was disbanded and the building was abandoned. Until now, it stands open, without protection and conservation, survived more than a hundred fires and overgrown with dark urban legends in the spirit of the existence of a room of time or several underground floors.
In the near future, the building and the site will be
again put up for auction, but this time there are those interested: developers are preparing pre-project proposals for the auction, one of which is the concept of the OCA bureau.
The architects were faced with the task of transforming the site with an abandoned hospital into a residential area, which was accompanied by a number of difficulties. Firstly, the customer's request was 75,000 m2 living space, which turned out to be difficult to place within the site, because the building of the monument is located in its center and "branches" with numerous buildings.
Secondly, the architects themselves set a limit for themselves - to preserve the chamber scale of the monument and not to overshadow it with new architecture. Finally, this part of the city lacks the necessary infrastructure for residential buildings: kindergartens, schools, normal roads and thoroughfares. Instead, the future houses will be adjacent to medical institutions, outbuildings and a blank fence, which the Novotikhvinsky monastery is going to build when it buys out several buildings. As the architects admit, they themselves are not completely sure whether the city will withstand the sudden "throw-in" of housing in this place. However, they offer a comprehensive and well-grounded solution for all of these tasks.
Monument
From the monument, in essence, only the facades have survived, which must be preserved, everything inside is destroyed. Therefore, the layout will be completely changed, the architects will adapt the contours of the building to the new residential function. OSA looked for any possibilities of sealing and at some point even planned several extensions to the old building - on the same scale, but with neutral, "background" facades.
But since the facades cannot be touched, there is only one "loophole" left: in the northern part of the building there is an extension of the 1990s, which has no value, it can be clearly seen in the aerial photograph. If the extension was demolished, then in its place it would be quite legitimate to "expand" the monument with a new building. This will not only give additional square meters, but will also allow to complete the composition of the building, having received a system of chamber courtyard spaces.
New architecture
In addition to the historic building adapted to the new function, two more types of new residential buildings will appear on the site - high-rise towers and, as the architects themselves call them, “urban villas”.
The towers take on the main loads for TEPs, allowing them to preserve their historical scale throughout the rest of the site. Therefore, they chose the north-western corner - the farthest from the square, but closest to the roads and other city towers. Going through the space-planning options, the architects came up with an array of three "fused" sections, made up of large block-plates, between which rather large spaces are preserved.
The first five floors, which correspond in height to the hospital buildings, are faced with light-colored stone. Everything that is higher strives to be light, unobtrusive, to dissolve in the air. For this effect, the "strings" of the lamellas work, behind which the solid glazing is hidden, as well as slots with inverted arches, in which terraces and conservatories can be placed. The same arches connect the new building with the historical one, responding to the expressive rows of thermal windows, and in addition endow it with metaphor - the heavenly gates, cathedral portals, the bends of the harp and the metaphysician of De Chirico quickly come to mind. They support the aura of mystery that the hospital building undoubtedly possesses: as a place not only abandoned, but also preserving the memory that life here once met death. Most intriguing is the portal arch of impressive height, which forms the place of docking with the hospital building and opens the entrance to the courtyards.
The third type of housing is urban villas with a height of four to seven floors, which, on the one hand, overlook the Bolshakov square, and on the other, to the new pedestrian street and the buildings of the monument. For urban villas, the architects have developed two options for facade solutions: they can be completely revetted with light stone, which will emphasize the higher status of this segment of housing, or use the same slats as in the towers, which will make the buildings look like park pavilions. In each case, the old building of the former hospital is put at the forefront - the new architecture should not "interrupt" it.
For the same purpose of uncovering the monument, gaps were made between the urban villas - ceilings on the second floor, which create courtyard spaces isolated from the pedestrian street - covered and open, with an entrance through the corridors of the second floors. "Gaps" are made with an orientation towards a round square in the park, the architects used it as the main axis from which one can see the most beautiful views of the hospital, and from which one can get to the pedestrian street.
Commercial premises will be located on the ground floors of all buildings, and a kindergarten will open in one of the urban villas.
Between architecture
To integrate a new residential complex into urban life, the architects offer several solutions. On the north side, you can buy out neighboring plots, which are now occupied by outbuildings. If they are demolished, it will be possible to organize a square in front of the high-rise massif and make a turning circle, work with the driveways, since this place is the only connection of the complex with the city. Also from the north is the Novotikhvinsky monastery complex. There could be made another pedestrian street overlooking the temple architecture, about which the OCA bureau was negotiating, but the monastery nevertheless wants to fence itself off from the hustle and bustle of a large residential complex with a fence.
An important part of the concept is the pedestrian street that will stretch between the urban villas and the former hospital. The architects note that “the facade of the historic building was designed not for frontal perception, but for the glancing pedestrian. The street allows you to slowly and appreciate the building from the best angles."
The space of the street is not simple, it has several levels: a raised promenade and several courtyards that cascade down to the underground parking. The street, like the parking lot, is accessible to everyone, not only to the residents of the complex.
The version of the new fragment of the urban space, proposed by the architects of the OSA to Yekaterinburg, turned out to be dense and very diverse, rich in functions, perspectives, and meanings. Here, old and new, private and public, status and democratic, even underground and above ground, coexist freely, without depriving each other. A place that - if the project is implemented - may be able to attract people, attract by the unusual structure and non-uniformity of the plot contained in its urban space. An example, perhaps, is rare not only for Yekaterinburg, but for the whole country.
