Plant Formula

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

Lot No. 4 is part of the first stage of ZILART, a project of LSR company under the supervision of Yuri Grigoryan, who, as you know, determined both the master plan and the design code for the development of this part of the former machine-building peninsula. One well-known bureau was invited to design the first stage for each quarter. The lot of "Mezonproekt" is located on the northern border of the complex, which runs along Likhachev Avenue. If you count from the Moskva River, it is the third behind the houses of Sergei Skuratov and Yevgeny Gerasimov, in front of Sergei Tchoban's quarter. "Neighbors" on the diagonal - lots of "Urbis" and "Meganoma". The closest neighbor from the inner, southern side is the house of the Tsimailo, Lyashenko and Partners bureau: the architects of Mezonproekt often met with its authors, discussed the insolation, color and height of the houses. As a result, a volumetric-spatial roll call arose: lower houses are placed next to each other and continue each other, forming a low-rise building front along Shchusev Street, and the 14-storey towers of two lots echo.

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Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Situational plan © Mezonproject
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Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). General plan © Mezonproject

Another limitation was the design code governing the quarterly layout, height, ground floor heights and their social function. The code also defines the facing materials: 70 percent brick, 30 percent other materials; and colors: red, white, shades of gray; and dark binders of windows. LSR Group produces bricks in its own production, for ZILART it is often made by the author, according to the sketches and requirements of the architects, for the sake of the unique texture of the facades of each lot.

Mezonproekt proposed a strict, in some ways even brutal solution. The architects chose two types of bricks: one dark engobered with a gleaming surface that reflects the sky, changing color from black-brown to bluish. The second is neutral gray, rough and similar to dark sandstone. Together they create sepia-toned grisaille, old faded photographs or newsreels. Neutral shade, even dark.

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1/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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2/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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3/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject
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4/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject
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5/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject
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6/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject
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7/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject
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8/8 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Project © Mezonproject

The third material was porcelain stoneware: panels with a surface similar to corten steel, similar to old factory metal. This is the first analogy with ZIL. All the piers of the high, 6-meter first floor on the outside are made up of two "accordions" of this kind of rusty material: the lower one is higher, the upper one is shorter. The zigzag line is deliberately knocked down, as if the house is supported by two ribbons of some kind of mechanism. At the corners, the intersections become more noticeable, the feeling of an old device, reluctantly turning and then standing up with a grinding noise to take on the weight of the house, intensifies.

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Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru

Factory allusions are supported by visors: their wide and short blocks with a concave surface illuminated in the evenings resemble shapes with hot metal.

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1/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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2/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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3/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt

The theme, despite a certain brutality, is akin to showcase design, which requires either complete neutrality or a sonorous statement. Let us also notice its consonance with the modern context of ZILART: the first floors and the “tail” of the house-comet, lot No. 1, are covered with corten steel; we can see the corten zigzag in the inner case of lot No. 2. Lot # 4 continues the factory theme set by his colleague, Sergei Skuratov.

The third part of the memories of ZIL is inside and has a completely pictorial character: ceramic panels with images of trucks vividly remind not only of the plant, but also of Stalin's metro stations or the post-war VDNKh.

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1/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproject
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2/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproekt
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3/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproekt
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4/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproject
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5/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproekt
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6/6 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4): ceramic panels in the entrance areas © Mezonproekt

But let's go back outside and look up. Of the two shades, the architects act out a play dedicated to the relationship between vertical and horizontal, the two main antagonistic themes of 20th century architecture. It is known that the horizontal to some extent is a manifesto of the architecture of the avant-garde, a steam locomotive flying ahead, space and freedom. However, horizontal is also a feature of the metallurgical shop, rolling mill and conveyor - it is simply impractical to place them in a tower. The vertical, on the contrary, is the reception of Art Deco and classical architecture in general, the antagonists of the avant-garde. In the 20th century, this is what happened: as soon as modernism prevails, the buildings are made extended, the windows are tape or at least rectangular, laid on a long side. When modernism gets bored, the vertical growth of the towers is supported by the pilasters-blades, and the windows, accordingly, are pulled into a string.

And if in the XX century the vertical and horizontal are waging a positional war, one or the other prevails, now their struggle is increasingly becoming a subject of reflection. So the architects of "Mezonproekt" gave the floor to both of them on their facades. In their scheme, everything is explained: one 14-storey tower, at the corner of Golosov and Kandinsky streets (sic, the names of ZILART streets will not let you forget about the history of art of the XX century), - asserts the vertical. The seven-storey building along Shchusev Street cultivates horizontal, as well as two single-storey volumes that close the contour to the right and left of it. The house along Likhachev Avenue combines both themes, the lower seven floors are subordinate to the horizontal, the upper ones are vertical.

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1/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Axonometry © Mezonproject
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2/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Facade. View 1 © Mezonproject
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3/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot No. 4). Facade. View 3 © Mezonproject

The vertical tower vividly recalls the 1930s, the Moscow service station building (now the State Duma), and many American, especially Chicago, examples. A recognizable detail - vertically doubled windows separated by a thin metal lintel - leaves no doubt that Chicago is the main prototype here. A bay window returns us to the present, asymmetrically - two thirds below, one above - an embracing corner, unobtrusively reminding viewers of the number of the current century, so as not to get carried away by allusions.

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1/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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2/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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3/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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4/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproject
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5/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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6/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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7/7 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru

In the horizontal case, the flute strips are turned over 90 degrees and the hatching connects the windows, emphasizing the ribbon direction. A technique that goes back to the sixties and eighties, as well as the zigzag of the interfloor stripes. The facade acquires volume, plasticity, strict rhythm and a clear resemblance to the modernist interpretation of horizontal. Two dark, flattened floors rise upward, similar to the adjacent vertical tower - either the superstructure, or the core of the house, surrounded by large pleats of light bricks.

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1/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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2/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) © Mezonproekt
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3/3 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru

So, two essentially opposite methods, belonging to Art Deco and Modernism, are brought to a common denominator: a simple embossed method of stripes-strings. The authors seem to be deliberately showing that the tumultuous twentieth-century debate about preferences is essentially a discussion of Swift's blunts and points. And if you reach a high level of generalization, then they can be added and subtracted, as in a mathematical formula.

In the third building, the addition takes place: at the bottom, the grooves are horizontal, encircling, above the seventh floor, vertical, pulling out - almost like two parts of the "plus" sign. The entire facade is subordinated to their strict count. In the upper part, the vertical is supported by glass-metal "capsules" of bay windows, similar to elevators - it seems, especially when viewed from below, that they have frozen and are about to go up or down. An interesting solution to the problem of "loggia thermometers" is to turn them into a part of the plot. Bay windows also become additions to the space of apartments: they protrude far forward, two meters from the plane of the inner wall, adding variety and serving as species "lanterns" due to their triangular shape of ledges.

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1/11 ZILART residential complex (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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2/11 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru

It must be said that the building facing Likhachev Avenue was much more plastic in the initial sketches and consisted of several ribbons of a large accordion made up of asymmetric triangular bay windows. So the whole house became, as in steam-punk, a sculpture of a frozen mechanism, some kind of giant truck. The zigzag itself, encircling the 7-storey building and triangular bay windows are echoes of this form, its remnants after significant "cleansing" and "pacification" by means of parallel-perpendicular lines.

Now the lines of the main plot of verticals and horizontals receive ornamental additions in places: somewhere these are strokes at the end of the tower, somewhere metal ornamental gratings of ventilation systems: vertical and horizontal waves alternate in them - this drawing has become a symbol of the building, it is repeated over the entrances.

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1/5 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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2/5 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru
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3/5 Residential complex ZILART (lot # 4) Photo: Archi.ru

A landscaped courtyard with laconic bevels framed by flower beds and emphatically high backs of wooden benches is open only in one place, from the side of Golosova Street. Here it is closed by a lattice with a gate and a wicket. According to the master plan, the streets of Golosov and Kandinsky, surrounding lot No. 4 on both sides, are pedestrian boulevards accessible only for special equipment; now wooden benches are being erected and sanded here, lawns with pine trees are being arranged. Shchusev Street on the east side is an internal road, Likhachev Avenue, laid on the site of an internal factory passage that once was here - a wide highway and the border of ZILART. In other words, it is quite quiet around, leaving behind the bars of the courtyard, you can safely walk. But the authors have foreseen another route, from the gate - to the courtyard of the neighboring house of Evgeny Gerasimov, from where it will then be possible to go to the left, to Kandinsky Street. If, of course, the gates are open - well, or available to residents by key - then this will be another way of developing the cohesion of space, stimulating its urban qualities and permeability.

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Residential complex ZILART (lot 4) Photo: Archi.ru

The layouts and arrangement of apartments are generally traditional, not euro and not studio, they are designed for the fact that even in a family a person needs their own space. One-room apartments start at 42 m², and in the 48-meter one there is even a dressing room. Two-room apartments are often large, 70 m or more², and in them, which is unusual for Russia, there are two bathrooms, as in 3- and 4-room; the size of the latter is about 120 m²… There are four to five apartments on the landings. The numbers of the entrances are laid out in front of them from the side of the yard with bricks and are clearly visible.

Compared to the neighboring buildings of ZILART, Lot # 4 is the least colorful, monochrome. He seems to be holding a pause, going into black and white cinema, reminiscing about the heyday of the plant. There were two such times: the industrialization of the thirties - although the plant appeared on the site of Tyuffle Grove in 1916, its heyday, of course, began in 1930-1931, with the launch of the country's first conveyor. The second period of prosperity - the sixties-seventies, the time of "austere style" and selflessness of the country, in a hurry to rebuild itself. The plot of the house is, in general, very clear and clearly spelled out in its architecture: the vertical tower marks the first heyday, the time of Art Deco and post-constructivism, even the Chicago analogies are great, since in the 1930s the plant was modernized under an American license. The horizontal body clearly indicates the 1960s - 1970s, the time of the thaw and, on the other hand, the time when ZIL produced tens of thousands of trucks a year and even refrigerators. The third tower summarizes the two themes. The house becomes a monument to the plant.

On the other hand, let us remember that "Mezonproject" is a bureau, one of the brightest specializations of which is associated with a modern interpretation of Art Deco. Therefore, in principle, it is not surprising that the architects decided to build their script on a tower that appeals to the thirties. But the solution turned out to be completely different: much less detailed, simple and somewhat harsh. Even the dustiness of not yet washed efflorescence suits him. An interesting solution. It definitely fulfilled its task: it added a bit of the author's statement to the developed scheme.