Chaos zone
The legendary diversity of Moscow buildings is the result of a town-planning roundabout that lasted for many centuries, which in practice meant that each owner had the opportunity to interpret the given parameters of future buildings in his own way. Within the seemingly absolute values of the “red lines” and high-rise regulations there was always a backlash, which opened the way for an enterprising developer or an ambitious architect to leave the general row. There are enough examples of such an “exodus” all over Moscow - from the main streets to residential areas. What can we say about the industrial zones that encircle the city between the Garden Ring and the Third Transport Ring. The degree of heterogeneity of structural, height, functional and stylistic, with the general prevalence of the typology of barracks, is off the charts. And today this urban planning "mess" is in the focus of the closest attention of developers, which turns into a new chaos, in which prestigious business centers, creative clusters and residential complexes coexist with warehouse hangars, industrial buildings, residential buildings, underground car services and the ruins that did not survive the restructuring enterprises. In this situation, there is no need to talk about contextual architecture. The surrounding buildings do not provide the designer with any reference points from which to build. Everyone finds their own system and way to resist chaos with the help of architecture.
Optimistic associations
The northern part of the Danilovsky district of Moscow, bounded by Letnikovskaya Street and the bend of the Moskva River, can serve as an excellent example of the urban planning chaos of the capital's "rusty belt". The vast territory, like an old steam locomotive that needs to be fired up before it starts to move and slowly picks up speed, has begun to change for ten years, but individual successful projects cannot radically change the image of the "world in the backyard of the Paveletsky railway station." But this situation will not last long. Transformations, like a wave, are coming from the Garden Ring, and when the program for the reconstruction of the Moskva River embankments, with piers and new recreation areas near the water, is added to them, the district will turn into one of the most prestigious and rapidly developing areas. It is not surprising that discerning developers, who see twenty and thirty years ahead, are already initiating new projects of a privileged class on both banks of the river, one of which is a club house with apartments, designed on Letnikovskaya street by the APEX design bureau for Hutton Development, called MITTE …
The architects saw an analogue of Berlin's Mitte in the area, which is gaining the pace of conversion transformations - hence the name of the complex. Renowned all over the world for its creative, comfortable atmosphere and colorful environment, where residential and office buildings, shopping and entertainment centers are mixed, the district has gradually filled the gaping gaps in the development of East Berlin, which still carries post-war and post-socialist marks. These scars are gradually healed by the energy brought here by thousands of successful, talented and free-spirited people for whom Berlin has become an ideal place for business, creativity and education. The architects saw a similar potential in the chaos of Zapavelechye and, believing in the possibility of a Moscow repetition of the Berlin scenario (why not?), They suggested that the developer give the house this name, symbolizing modern ideas about the quality and comfort of life in a metropolis.
Corner house
Dreams about the possible prospects of the Danilovsky District and its current state are two big differences. And if on the neighboring Derbenevskaya street you can already see the dot-and-dash markings of the future full-fledged city quarter, then on Letnikovskaya the original town-planning chaos seems unshakable. The location of buildings and their dimensions vary in the most bizarre ways.
The only section more or less reminiscent of a street front is a series of three houses from the early 2000s on the even side of the street, directly opposite the site intended for the construction of the MITTE club house, and this neighborhood gave the architects of the company APEX the opportunity to create a model of the future development as it appeared. by analogy with the Berlin namesake. One or two houses along one side of the street is not a system yet. It is necessary to form a full-fledged profile of the street with a certain ratio of its width along with the sidewalks and the heights of the houses. The future club house will become the missing element, thanks to which a starting point for the next projects will appear - in fact, it will become an environmental “cornerstone”. Together with the house opposite, it forms a kind of portal or propylaea, opening the way to the future of the city, which will grow here if an optimistic scenario for the development of the area is realized.
Obvious logic
The specifics of the site significantly limited the range of planning and volumetric-spatial solutions. An almost square section along one of the lateral sides was cut off at a slight angle due to the “red lines” present on the base, indicating either the routing of the future highway planned in previous years, or the echo of plans for laying communications.
The house could be positioned on the resulting trapezoidal area in different ways (in the form of a cylinder, a prism with rounded corners, a triangular block, etc.), and all of them were investigated, but a logical and rational approach prevailed. The choice of the designers settled on the version of the L-shaped body with one beveled corner, facing the unfulfilled highway and forming a spectacular accent in the volume in the spirit of an "iron house".
In order not to lose useful area, the building is as close as possible to the boundaries of the site. Only along the oblique side it was necessary to retreat 4.2 meters in order to provide the required fire passage. Another indent from the perimeter, this time on the two upper floors, at the level coinciding with the eaves of the building opposite, was required to build a more harmonious urban planning dialogue.
Maximum combinatoriality
The planning solutions of the L-shaped building could be considered quite traditional if the architects had not included in the project a number of solutions aimed at optimizing the use of the floor area and taking into account the changing needs of buyers of this kind of real estate.
The original way of placing the stairs inside the staircase and elevator node is not immediately striking. According to safety requirements, the house should have two stairs, but on the plan it seems to be one. In fact, inside one staircase there are two staircases with cross flights, each of which is designed to serve the residents of one of the two "wings". A rare for Moscow and Russia in general, the type of two-flight staircases was nevertheless managed to be coordinated with the developer (thanks to three-dimensional visualizations and the argument about saving space) and with the Ministry of Emergencies (thanks to the current regulations).
Here, in the block of the staircase and elevator node, in the inner corner of the house there is a technical balcony, from the outside that looks like a meter-long gap in the facade shell. It is designed for the installation of outdoor air conditioner units.
On both sides of the L-shaped corridor in the center of the building there are apartments, whose area varies from 27-28 m2 for studio, 45–48 m2 for a two-room block and a little more than 60 m2 for a three-room apartment. In addition, the buyer is free to purchase several blocks and combine them with each other. The largest apartments are located along Letnikovskaya Street and on the upper floors, which offer the best views of the architectural dominants of the Danilovsky District. A distinctive feature of the layouts of residential blocks is the inclusion of the kitchen in the common areas, and in the most compact apartments the kitchen is located in the walk-through corridor leading from the hallway to the living room. By sacrificing a separate kitchen, the architects were able to allocate more space for the sleeping area in the form of an alcove with a full bed. Until recently, such a prioritization could shock and alienate the buyer, but for the target audience of the MITTE house, a good sleep is much more important than culinary experiments at the stove, especially since the modern generation of business and active people prefers to order food at home.
Orderly facade
With all the rationality of the approach to urban planning and planning decisions, the architects allowed themselves to experiment, and quite radically, with the facades of the future house. As is customary in APEX, several (actually more than 10) variants were tested, exploring the possibilities of rhythmic organization, plastic deformation and stylistic adaptation. Some of the options played on the neighborhood with industrial facilities with their characteristic red-brick architecture; some were decided in accordance with modern trends in the design of club houses. Varying window sizes, French balconies instead of loggias, adjusted glass-to-wall ratio, high-quality finishing materials and so on, but the main efforts were directed towards finding a structure or module that could correct the visual perception of an almost cubic volume and give it elegance with a recognizable personality, but without external affectation, at the junction of the Moscow architectural tradition and the stylistics of the new Berlin buildings, which may seem a little boring to some, but at the same time it is guaranteed to form a harmonious environment.
The chief architect of the project, Sergei Senkevich, believes: “We try to use facade mesh in many of our projects. Perhaps this is how the school of Vladimir Ionovich Plotkin manifests itself in me, for whom I worked after graduation and to whom I am incredibly grateful. And I am sure that designing in one module does not limit the architect, but, on the contrary, gives him freedom and at the same time guarantees a high-quality result. This technique always works with any architects, no matter what school they have behind them."
As a result of the search, an interesting structure of two shells was formed: the outer one - a massive brick lattice - and the inner stained glass system, clothed in a frame of metal lamellas in bronze for protection from the sun. The distance between the outer edges of both shells is only 1.5 meters, but visually it seems larger, due to the promising brick portals and their double height. In addition, the perception is affected by the increased depth of up to 2 meters of open galleries on the ground floor, leading to public spaces. Due to the resulting canopy, the need for visors over the entrances has disappeared, with the exception of one, which acts as an accent over the main entrance to the club house.
The resulting structure echoes the facade solution of the building opposite and vaguely resembles concrete "frames" and anodized stained-glass windows of buildings built in the 70s-90s of the last century. Thanks to these associations, the perception of the house is changing, its Berlin-style restrained architecture gets a fair share of the "Moscowness" necessary for the context.
Two shells, brick and stained-glass, are waging a gentlemanly struggle for primacy on the facades of the house. Five out of six facades are dominated by a brick shell. Nevertheless, the internal openwork facade constantly breaks through the mass of the brick wall, now with vertical ribs, now with thin lines of metal frames of windows and fences of French balconies, now with belts of decorative screens covering the interfloor ceilings, in order to eventually break out on the last two floors and on the beveled corner in all its muted brilliance. The facade that opens around the corner is completely at the mercy of glass and metal, and only after the next turn, on the walls facing the courtyard, massive brickwork reappears in a slightly simplified format, without promising portals. To knock down the monotony of the alternation of openings and walls, the architects added "meat", leaving a couple of blind areas on the sides of the far end facade. Like a huge white cloak, the brick wall "wraps" the whole house, leaving only the "crown" of the upper floors gleaming with old gold open.
White rehabilitation
The use of white on the façade of the clubhouse, as opposed to the ever-growing fashion for dark shades, is partly a tribute to the image of the "Berlin guest" and an echo of the environment's echo of the neighboring house. Color non-conformism is supported by an even more radical experiment in the choice of material for the facade decoration - the architects settled on brick. It would seem that white brick in Russia is hopelessly discredited by a huge number of structures made of its silicate version, decorated with the art of nameless bricklayers in the form of carefully laid out inscriptions "Peace - Peace", patterns such as "checkered", "herringbone" and other "flowers" on the pediments. But in the case of the MITTE clubhouse, both the architects and the developer relied on the quality of the concrete hand-formed brick produced using the Wasserstrich technology and its unique features. Due to wetting with water at the stage of molding, the brick acquires a light texture and "liveliness" of the outer surface. The masonry from it turns out to be very even, but at the same time not monotonous. This brick, as conceived by the architects, will work especially effectively on perspective portals of window openings on the main facade of the house. The overall perception of a home will be exactly the same as its class. The quality of materials (brick and anodized aluminum in bronze) will neutralize stylistic references to Soviet modernism, creating an image of both European-style restrained and Moscow-style rich architecture for buyers who have learned to appreciate not only a location, but a really cool product.
Bonuses
For the same sophisticated buyers, the architects have come up with two more original bonuses, which in the future can claim the status of a new trend in Moscow real estate. Small (only 90 m2), the architects proposed using the space of the courtyard as a public living room and a recreation area.
And on the rooftop, continue this story and set up a small garden, arrange seating areas, an amphitheater and place equipment for watching movies on a retractable screen.
Of course, Moscow is not Berlin, not Barcelona or Milan, but some elementary joys of life in the city should be available to Muscovites. So why not make communication between neighbors or with family and friends the norm in a cozy courtyard with a small garden and a gazebo with a barbecue area, which could be booked for a specific time and not worry about household trifles? Not making it a common practice to watch a movie or party on a rooftop? The way of spending leisure time, which has become so popular thanks to open-air cinemas in Moscow parks, can "come" to your home and become another great occasion for communication between neighbors.
It is difficult now to say for sure whether the architects' dreams of reviving this area will come true. The only thing that inspires optimism is that they did everything to ensure that a possible future would be embodied in at least one separate house. After the first successful experience, there is a chance that other projects will catch up. This is how the stories of dozens of prosperous neighborhoods and districts in many cities and metropolitan areas of the world began. Maybe it's time to create your own Mitte in Moscow?