In Kadashi, the construction of the Mecenat residential complex of elite real estate was completed, the design of which began more than ten years ago and was accompanied by heated disputes, especially until the moment when the investors entrusted the complex to the famous Moscow architect, representative of the paper architecture movement and the special mention laureate of the Venice Biennale Ilya Utkin.
We talked about the completed project of the Maecenat residential complex in Kadashi quite recently: in 2010, the previous version of the complex was banned by the mayor Yuri Luzhkov himself, and the search that began for a more delicate and scaled solution ultimately led to the fact that Grigoriev's sausage factory became a source of imitation and inspiration, by the time of the mayor's landmark decision, it was almost destroyed for the sake of new construction. A building has survived from the factory, stretched along the western border of the site, between the residential complex and the territory of the parish of the Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi, built, like its lost brothers, of red brick in the style of industrial historicism: with large windows and fractional, but not rich brick decor. The façade of the sausage shop and the gate on 2nd Kadashevsky Lane has been largely restored in its historical forms.
-
zooming 1/3 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
-
zooming 2/3 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
-
zooming 3/3 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
The building, gates and facade of the store take on the role of an urban artifact - the material remnant of Grigoriev's factory, which was built here during the period when the Kadashi retained their industrial and merchant importance. The memory of the factory also formed the basis for the imagery of the buildings of the new residential complex "Maecenat" - not only dictating the very low height of the houses and their row urban arrangement with their ends to the main inner street, but also becoming a source of inspiration for the brick facades of all the "urban villas" that were inherited from factory buildings are decorated with niches-widths and brick consoles.
For the cladding of the buildings of the new complex, English facing bricks were chosen.
IBSTOCK Bristol Brown A0628A is a dark brown color, which allowed the architect to achieve coloristic unity, on the one hand, outlining the similarity of LCD buildings with historical prototypes, since the basis for the facade solution was also the "brick style", on the other - significantly emphasizing the difference between new buildings and volumes from the old ones.
This distinction is very important, not only from the point of view of the Venice Charter, which prescribes to distinguish genuine parts from new inclusions, but also from the position of the "placement" of the complex itself - as historical as it is, it is also new, and we feel it: about greater clarity, somewhere even dryness, lines, smooth surfaces of the walls, enhancing the quality of crystallinity and "composure". The complex turned out to be neat, uniform, austere and slender, largely thanks to the brick. That, it must be admitted, favorably distinguishes it from the historical Kadashev buildings, which, for all its charm, are more characteristic of patchiness and variegation - and historically they were characteristic of it, one must think, even more so than now.
The new English brick acquires a special piquancy where it directly joins the old Moscow one. For example, the restored and Moscow-style painted facade of a sausage shop is attached to the dark brick end-screen, which carries it as a decoration, and in this combination the author's scenography manifests itself - Ilya Utkin emphasizes the deliberate "hanging", museum quality of the restored facade, not reproduces the entire contours of the store, although one must think it was quite possible, but emphasizes the proximity of the old and the new.
The neighborhood of historical and modern bricks in a large factory building, which has lost part of its risalits, also restored in English brick, turns out to be no less shading: the buildings "grow" into each other, and they are definitely different. Here, too, there is a collision of honest, accentuated joining of fragments of different times, but the comparison is no longer taking place with painted, but with peeled genuine bricks of the 19th century; the difference is enormous, and on it, in many ways, the artistic value of the complex is built, built on reflections on the fate of the urban environment of old Moscow. Here you understand: it is very good that Utkin chose a dark brick, which is noticeably different; with a red brick it would definitely be “wrong”.
Brick, taking on the role of a dark background, also emphasizes the organizing role of light contours - sandrids over windows, vertical frames of entrances and a basement. These elements could not have existed in the inexpensive factory architecture of the 19th century, and in the architecture of the new complex they bring a note of elegance more characteristic of Art Nouveau than Historicism, and emphasizing the residential character of the houses.
-
Image 
zooming 1/4 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
-
zooming 2/4 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
-
zooming 3/4 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
-
zooming 4/4 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi / architect Ilya Utkin Photo: Yulia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
The texture of the IBSTOCK Bristol Brown A0628A brick is twofold: from a distance it seems almost smooth and even gleams a little because of the many quartz sand inclusions, which is why it reacts well to the sun, literally “lights up” from each ray.
Close up, a heterogeneous and porous structure is evident, grains of sand alternate with miniature caverns, creating a natural and lively texture, good for being close to historical monuments. Moreover, deep cutting of the seams with a gray mortar in this case is a reasonable choice: the seams form a graphic disciplining pattern, and the gray color echoes the metal of balconies and roofs, avoiding an excessively warm shade.
One of the important features of English brick is that with a relatively high water absorption of about 10%, it is frost-resistant almost like a dense European clinker: experience shows that brick from England can withstand up to 300 freezing cycles without any damage and is suitable for the Russian climate. In addition, it must be admitted that the English origin of the brick of the IBSTOCK concern, which is brought directly from the UK, in itself gives the Kadashev complex, for those who know, a bit of British gloss.
IBSTOCK bricks are widely used not only in England, but are also supplied to European countries and even to other continents - to Japan and the USA, and now, thanks to Kirill's logistics, to Russia. Delivery time - from four weeks.
The general partner of IBSTOCK factories (Great Britain) in Russia is Firm KIRILL JSC.
English brick is presented in a very wide, as a rule, saturated color range. Yellow, red-brown, even blue-black shades can be considered traditional for different parts of Foggy Albion, the color can be uniform or variegated. The British still use field firing, in which the kiln is erected for each batch, and the final product has a variety of color shades. There are handmade bricks at the IBSTOCK factories, which are made by bricklayers in the old way.
Thanks to its own logistics system, KIRILL was able to make all the variety of IBSTOCK bricks available to the Russian consumer, and English bricks will become uncontested for those who consider English quality to be the standard and do not accept compromises.
The assortment of the KIRILL company includes more than 1000 variants of bricks of different manufacturers, different in color and texture.
