A large residential complex with the romantic name of Green's "Zurbagan" is planned to be built on the edge of Voronezh, on the left bank of the river of the same name, which is overflowing with a reservoir here. The historical center of the city is on the other side, the right, the left bank is industrial and panel, but the site planned for development is located to the north of the core of the old industrial zones. To the north of it there is a sand spit, where it is planned to build a children's yacht club; by the spit, to the north, beyond the bay, a typical array of the Lazurny residential complex is growing, a huge and boring panel. The actual territory of the residential complex "Zurbagan" occupies about 20 hectares and is grouped along the arc of the bay, the length of which is about a kilometer. Along the water, at a distance of 150-200 m from the coast, there is Dobrolyubova Street, now built up with houses of the private sector. The sandy coast itself is quite wild, overgrown with trees and riddled by ruts from fishermen's cars. The area is called Koldunovka, or Otrozhka - after the name of the settlement, known since the 17th century.
“Today it is, to put it mildly, not the most prestigious area of the city, but it has great potential. - In the future, the territories adjacent to the river are subject to reconstruction and development, and the improvement of the coastal area is designed to launch this process, create a new point of attraction here. We have tried to preserve the existing landscaping as much as possible by organizing green “islands” with trees on the embankment. The result will be a landscaped slope that will connect this area with existing public spaces and infrastructure.”
The silhouette of the complex, proposed by the "Close-up" company, in contrast to the microdistrict being built in the neighborhood, is not typical at all. He resembles New York or Chicago, although most of all Dubai, but he does it contour and non-literal - rather he refers to the image of towers by the water as something textbook. She outlines recognizable archetypes without pointing too much to them: here is an art deco Chigak couple, here is a modernist plate with large dark spots - it already makes you think about, say, Rotterdam. Here is a string of sections of different heights and different colors, interpreted as towers sticking together, and here are towers sharpened by pitched roofs like giant pencils, and here again - three "Wright" parallelepiped skyscrapers, but slender and black, and here is a mirror pair of two triangular houses - "sails ".
Each theme colors its part of the complex emotionally and associatively, setting a change in impressions and ideas, but in a generalized way, that is, not like Las Vegas, but as a set of signs that make you compare what you see with something familiar - you get a kind of alphabet of town-planning images. given to us in sensations.
Associatively sharpened towers are lined up along the coast, blocks with lower growth are grouped further, beyond Dobrolyubova Street "on the mainland", they are long-term development plans. “Due to the topography of the territory, the central quarters of residential development are fundamentally divided into two levels: the upper one, facing the embankment, and the lower one, adjacent to Dobrolyubova Street,” says Sergei Nikeshkin.
All houses are installed on stylobates that group them. Using the elevation difference in front of the river - here it is about 10 meters - the architects of the "Close-up" organize the stylobates along the coast so that from the outside they are immersed in the slope, and here the main underground space is occupied by parking lots, and the inner contour facing the water, given over to public and commercial spaces - cafes, shops and other rental areas that form a boulevard along the water, saturated with urban functions.
Private courtyards of residents are planned on the roofs of the stylobates, and you can enter them from the side of Dobrolyubov Street from the ground level, and going forward, we will find ourselves one floor above the embankment.
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zooming 1/3 Section 1-1, buildings 1 and 2. Zurbagan residential complex. The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 2/3 Section 2-2, buildings 1 and 2. Zurbagan residential complex. The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 3/3 Parking plan at elev. 0.000. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
Since the front of the building is not continuous, there are driveways leading from the city side, and a street in front of the houses is provided, but the pedestrian spaces are spacious and allow enough umbrellas and cafe tables to be placed in front of the windows.
There remains a place for trees and lawns, and the paving is decided in such a way that it is mainly urban and goes to the water with a stone cut, like the Venetian embankments, that is, it is high enough - but in many places it is interrupted, surrounding islands of a more natural nature in a circular contour: for sandy beaches, of which there are several, and for groups of existing trees, which the architects propose to preserve during construction.
With the embankment, we get the same thing as with the silhouette of houses - a typologically multi-component structure; she does not have one face, on the contrary, walking, it will be possible to be on one level, then on another, then observe the river from a stone elevation, then be on a green bank under a wilted one or go barefoot to the edge of the water on the sand.
In the deep bends of the stone part of the paving, there are transitions from the “upper” embankment to the “lower” one, sometimes their steps turn into an amphitheater facing the river and to the west, so that one can admire the sunsets. By the way, the authors take into account both the river panorama and its romantic “sunset” orientation of the territory, open more windows to the river, and even draw in the glass of evening houses, in addition to the internal apartment light, the external orange sun, which creates a very charming illumination.
Other benches on the undulating edge of the embankment, on the other hand, look out onto the city boulevard in front of the houses. As a result, the winding, rather than straight line of the stone embankment not only allows the integration of natural elements into it, but also helps to alternate impressions.
So, interaction with water here is not only contemplative; you can come closer, and also in different ways, not only go to the beach. In the central part, a city descent with stairs along the edges is conceived, further - a pair of piers protruding forward. A pier is planned. But in addition, the authors proposed a half-ring paved with wood for walking right above the water.
Returning to the architecture of houses proposed by the authors of the "Close-up" - it is conceived to be modern and diverse, and the concept of "modernity" in this case includes not only the laconicism of straight lines and the notorious lack of stylization, but also elements of a more relevant approach that takes into account the desire of a person to recognize the angles, saturation of textures, comfort for the eye. This means: light and dark volumes alternate, often in pairs, although not always. For the facing of the volumes, which respond with “conservative” sloping silhouettes to their central location within the complex, the architects proposed multi-tone bricks, for houses on the edges of the territory - fiber cement, which imposed another plot on the chain of images: differences between the center and the periphery.
The facades, on the other hand, are made up of thin walls with alternating rhythm, supported by the arrangement of grilles for air conditioners, the loggias are deepened, although sometimes glass bay windows are pushed forward by one and a half meters. The height of the windows is visually increased by dark inserts - a regular, albeit slightly "waving" mesh is obtained, somewhere sparse, somewhere reinforced at the corners, the houses are translucent in a modern way, but without boring vertical pairs of windows: the lattice everywhere corresponds to the floor division.
All this hyper-scale diversity is focused on the silhouette of the complex from the river - from the side of historical Voronezh it should look expressive, first of all, not monotonous, for which both the different frequency of pauses between volumes and alternating contour plots work. The panorama unfolds before the eyes of the beholder a story, a series of stories open for reading from a distance, in a landscape. I just want to add: unlike the neighboring panel areas, both old and new.
For the time being, we can consider the apartment building of the complex only on a few examples from the central part - two-section houses, outside treated as a pair of towers with a pitched end.
The ground floors are divided between public spaces for home residents, commercial rentals, and residential apartments, while technical floors combine engineering spaces with contoured storage rooms for residents, realizing one of the progressive trends of our time. Types of apartments range from studios to three-room apartments, with most layouts providing a kitchen-living room, but there is also a split option for traditionalists. Variants with a free layout are outlined. Many apartments, starting from two-room apartments, have two bathrooms.
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zooming 1/8 Building 2. Plans for 20 and 21 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 2/8 Building 2. Plans 2-12 and 18 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 3/8 Building 2. Plan of technical floor and plan of 1 residential floor. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 4/8 Building 1. Plans for 20 and 21 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 5/8 Building 1. Plans for 16-17 and 18-19 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 6/8 Building 1. Plans for 11-13 and 14-15 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 7/8 Building 1. Plan of 2-7 and 8-10 residential floors. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
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zooming 8/8 Building 1. Plan of technical floor and plan of 1 residential floor. Residential complex "Zurbagan". The concept of development of the territory in Voronezh, 2018-2020 © Close-up
In a word, this is a large-scale concept for the development and reorganization of an area on the edge of the rapidly developing Voronezh. Solved in line with modern trends of attention to the improvement of public spaces, and painted with an interest in both details and the distribution of masses from a distant point of view. Above the water of the Voronezh reservoir, which is called the sea, these new houses are indeed acquiring the romantic features of the city of towers and sails: as if some world theater of images of the “city by the water” froze in anticipation of incarnation.
