White City

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

At the request of the customer, the location of the facility is not disclosed. The building plot is located in a seaside town, between a bay and a park, on one side it is bounded by a street, on the other - by a chaotically located individual building. The main difficulties, they are also the engines of creative search, are a pronounced relief, the features of which were not taken into account when creating a project for the planning of the territory, a limitation in height and the need to include 250 municipal apartments in the complex, which in the future the city will transfer on favorable terms to young doctors and teachers.

According to one of the leading architects of the project, Vasily Krapivin, the dance with norms and TEPs in this project was one of the most difficult. Initially, the customer held a closed competition and asked the bureau to rework one of the variants with three extended buildings. To get away from the "feeling of a wall", OSA proposed low massive urban villas that formed a permeable space, but were rejected because of the apartment design: for the floor to remain efficient, very large apartments would have to be made, despite the fact that the areas of municipal apartments, and their about half of the total, are strictly regulated.

Then, in order to bring an interesting silhouette to the water, the architects drew five buildings connected by terraced sections, which would create the feeling of flowing from one volume to another. The customer was not ready for such an expressive decision. As a result, we settled on a composition of five free-standing sections of the same number of storeys: they do not close the quarter with a massive wall, preserving the feeling of spaciousness, and facades made in different styles convey the diversity.

All facades are multi-layered, but they have differences. In two buildings, in the corners of the section, the "substrate" of the wall - in the sketches it is made of a material with the texture of wood - appears behind the balconies and terraces covered with an openwork white "crust" - a screen that saves from the sun and closes the air conditioners the facade has not changed in the future: it is known that, to protect themselves from the heat, local residents like to glaze their balconies and use a light-protective film.

The other two outer houses are distinguished by rounded corners and a contrasting dark screen, to which perforation gives weightlessness, at the same time creating the effect of an openwork shadow, similar to that of the foliage of trees. On such a design, climbing plants are likely to feel good.

The central house does not have a layer of a screen; it is a snow-white volume with sculpturally sculpted ledges of balconies and terraces, which also provide enough shade.

For the facades, it is planned to use large-block hinged elements that will not "load" the drawing with seam lines. This creates a certain complexity, since the elements are almost never repeated. For cladding, we settled on fiber panels, abandoning metal, which would give an unnecessary uninhabited effect, and plaster, which is not suitable for cantilever elements.

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  1/4 Quarter on the seashore © OSA Architectural Bureau

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  2/4 Quarter on the seashore © OSA Architectural Bureau

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  3/4 Quarter by the sea © OSA Architectural Bureau

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  4/4 Quarter on the seashore © OSA Architectural Bureau

Another issue that needed to be resolved was the format of the integration of social apartments. The decision was not easy, both customers and architects doubted - it was possible to move municipal housing to a separate building or to the lower or upper floors - but ultimately they came to the option in which social apartments are integrated into each house and everyone has a common territory.

But the requirements for municipal housing are relatively strict and large loggias could not be foreseen in them, therefore continuous lines of terraces were impossible. So the irregular white grid somewhere protrudes forward, somewhere it hides loggias behind it, and somewhere it decorates the wall, generally creating the effect of "porous", sponge-like volumes characteristic of southern architecture.

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  1/3 Quarter on the seashore © OSA Architectural Bureau

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  2/3 Quarter on the seashore © OSA Architectural Bureau

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  3/3 Quarter by the sea © OSA Architectural Bureau

The complex is located on the coast and on a hill, the height difference is 5 meters, - according to the master plan specialist Maria Tsarev, the relief allowed creating an interesting multi-level organization of the space. Each house has through lobbies: on one side, the exit is located on the second floor, on the other - on the first, and they lead to spaces of varying degrees of privacy - either to the street or to a raised courtyard. One of the entrances to the underground parking, located on the lower level, even dispenses with a ramp.

Thanks to inventive facades, the residential complex undoubtedly has a chance to become the figurative dominant of its area, without, however, violating the cozy scale of the environment. From perspective angles, it can be seen that the houses do not invade the skyline, but fit into the context very carefully, forming a more coherent view from the embankment. Light and airy architecture is in tune with the atmosphere of a resort town, it is like a low chalk rock on the shore, - it's not for nothing that the sea is splashing just a stone's throw away.