The Arch Council, which gathered on June 19, returned to its traditional place - a hall refreshed after renovation in the building of the Moskomarkhitektura. Only one project was considered, but with impressive volumes and no less significant location. As stated in the regulation on the council, it is precisely such large-scale and important urban planning facilities that are its main task. The territories by the river - since the competition took place and the concept of the development of the main waterway of the city appeared - are always considered. Residential complex "Beregovoy" at Beregovoy proezd, ownership 2B - just such a case. Plus, Beregovoy falls into the development area of the so-called Big City - so far we have only heard about its existence as a promising idea, but now, as Moscow's chief architect Sergei Kuznetsov said, from the next meeting, the results of this “deep elaborated concept "will be taken into account when considering all involved projects:" With the next project on the river, we will add to the discussion the concept of the Big City. There is little new, it is a summation of what has already been developed. Today it is clear that this place has the maximum prerequisites to become the "Moscow Manhattan", in particular, it is a good supply of transport, plus there are options for strengthening and developing its accessibility … ".
As a matter of fact, the location of the object - on the river, opposite the Shelepikhinskaya embankment, in the area of the Big City - determined both its volumetric and visual characteristics. It is clear that with the volumes declared by the investor under 300 thousand m2 architects were looking for high density solutions. In addition, connected by an elevation of 100 meters, on the one hand, and the size of the site, on the other, they had to save every square meter of territory. In general, we did everything we could. The Archcouncil almost unanimously considered that they had coped.
The concept was presented by the developer - Ivan Grekov, head of the KAMEN Architects bureau, the successor of the architectural dynasty of Vadim Grekov. As it turned out during the meeting, a student of both Evgeny Assa and Sergei Skuratov, who managed to work with Stephen Hall.
Plot (area according to GPZU is 52 400 m2) belongs to the industrial zone of the aircraft plant №22 named after Gorbunov, until recently the plant named after Khrunichev was located here. It is quite regular in shape, but delimited into two long strips stretched along the river - the one that will be occupied by the residential complex on the shore, and behind it the same investor - the Glavstroy company - plans to build two schools with a sports core. An extended "river facade" is an absolute plus of any project, but in order to place on this strip a fixed density of 50 161 m2 (the total area of the complex is 313 358 m2) the architects had to go through about 100 options before coming to the final one. Roughly speaking, the plate, if we imagine the density in the form of a simple rectangular volume, was divided into sections and arranged in a chain, arranging “flowing”, that is, spatial breaks, both from the side of the river and from future schools.
By "dragging" the river to the maximum possible depth inside the site, the architects managed to ensure that all apartments received excellent views. Thus, two courtyards were formed inside the complex, although you still cannot name the quarterly layout, and this green space will organically "splash" onto the comfortable embankment, which is being worked out within the framework of the city program. The current section will be a continuation of the Filevskaya embankment. The front of various public functions on the ground floors will, of course, be highly developed, and especially towards the river. Building 4, for example, will include an entire polyclinic with a multidisciplinary health center. Additional public spaces will appear on the roofs - the project provides for the construction of both private and public terraces, although the very possibility of the successful functioning of the roof oases caused distrust in the council.
The facades of the complex reflect the wave motive, the authors believe, although the aviation theme of the Gorbunov plant is perhaps even more clearly present, since anodized aluminum resembles aircraft steel. The facades are unified on the basis of a repeating module: the wall sheet is divided into three zones and, due to the displacement of the façade guides and "squeezing" them out to a fixed distance, a wavy plastic is achieved. True, it is the same for all volumes of this multi-component organism, and this uniformity among members of the council, for example, Evgeny Ass and Sergei Skuratov, could not but cause a replica. But, which is typical, today's arch council is rarely fixed on the facades. Gone is the era of discussions about taste preferences and battles between connoisseurs of turrets and fighters against "flatordia". Basically - and this time too - the town-planning part is discussed, but sometimes, so to speak, in the "rescue mode" of the project, curators from the council are allocated for strengthening the authors who have already failed at all. Sergey Kuznetsov remembered this, noting that this practice also brings results. But in this case, this was not required.
Meanwhile, if we consider the Arch Council as a showcase of current architectural activity in the capital, then looking at young architects who are already working on such a serious urban planning scale and doing it very confidently, one can only rejoice at how much the situation has changed since 2013. Moreover, there was a feeling that the architects were working not in spite of, but together with the customer - in any case, according to Ivan Grekov, the customers are satisfied with the project and are already “taking the queue for apartments”. By the way, the composition of the council itself has gradually changed by eighty percent (for the latest change, see.
here), Vladimir Plotkin, Evgeny Ass and Andrei Gnezdilov and Vadim Grekov, who joined later, remained in it. Until the previous council was completely bronze, Sergei Kuznetsov gradually brought in architects of the "middle generation" who had gained weight and experience in the last decade. These are Yulia Burdova, Alexander Tsimailo, Timur Bashkaev. In addition, Sergei Skuratov and Alexander Asadov finally appeared in the current council of architecture, and the result only benefited from this, because without these names the showcase of modern architecture would, of course, be incomplete.
As for the urban planning part of the project under consideration, as Alexander Asadov said, the authors squeezed out of the site everything they could, and the council as a whole agreed with this assessment. Rather, the architect had a question about land surveying into two long stripes. Sergei Kuznetsov agreed that the earlier architects are, in principle, introduced into the project, that is, already at the stage of development of the PPT, the better, but the reasoning - how to land a boundary - is always a controversial issue. Therefore, in this case, it is not obvious that a mistake was made. But the height, recorded by the GPZU of 100 meters, in the opinion of the chief architect, could be challenged, especially since the visual landscape analysis carried out makes it possible to raise it quite painlessly.
On this, in particular, Sergey Skuratov stopped in his speech: “I am very pleased that my student has reached such a serious urban planning scale, but here he clearly lacked the architectural will and experience. With such a building density, the customer had to reach other altitude indicators, dominants of 150, maybe even 200 meters, and for this it was necessary to do a serious urban planning analysis. This would make it possible to increase the amount of undeveloped land and the permeability of the project, so as not to have enough dense and rigid urban blocks …”.
The redistribution of volumes, by the way, would help to solve the problem with a “lack of space circulation” - both Alexander Asadov and Andrey Gnezdilov paid attention to it - in other words, one “courtyard” turned out to be much more enclosed by high-rise buildings (up to 27 floors) than the second. In the present project, where the maximum altitude is chosen, it is already quite difficult to make additional "punctures". Looking at the absolute unevenness in the distribution of density in two adjacent areas - housing estate and planned schools, Timur Bashkaev added to the topic that it is high time to look for options for working with the territories of social and public facilities on the new legislative basis - “otherwise we will run into such a situation, that it will be quite difficult to increase the density and develop.
Evgeny Ass stayed away from the discussion, the visual language of the project was not close to him: “This glittering paradise, entirely made of glass and aluminum, causes me, to put it mildly, anxiety,” said the architect. However, no one doubted that the project itself was worked out very efficiently. So, voicing the opinion of the council, Sergey Kuznetsov expressed his approval for the authors.
