Khamovniki is considered one of the most prestigious districts of Moscow. But if during the construction boom, developers were developing territories located as close as possible to the historical center, now, when there is not a single free piece of land left on Ostozhenka, they have gradually shifted to the central and southwestern parts of the district. In recent years, it is there that the most expensive construction in the capital has been concentrated. It is not surprising that more and more new projects appear here, and there is less and less space left, which, however, is not a problem for club houses.
The club house, which is planned to be built in the 1st Truzhenikov Lane, is a vivid example of this kind. The site allocated for its construction is currently occupied by a miniature two-story structure, designated for demolition. It is surrounded on all sides by existing buildings: on the right is a five-story volume originally from the 1990s, on the left is a two-story extended house, behind is the building of the Polytechnic College. In such cramped circumstances, only an elongated trapezoidal piece of land remains for new construction, and its narrowest part goes out to the side of the alley.
In search of the most effective solution for such a difficult territory, the developer organized a closed competition and invited several well-known architectural teams. Among the invited participants was the ASADOV workshop. Let's make a reservation right away that the concept developed by the workshop was not chosen as the winner.
Andrei Asadov said that the participants were faced with a difficult task - to design a club-format residential building with a fairly large area (total area 12,300 m²) on a very limited site.
“We are very familiar with the site. In the 1st Truzhenikov lane in 2009, we implemented the first club house in our practice. It is known as the house on Plyushchikha. There we worked with a rather attractive territory - a green courtyard with trees, a view of the Devichye Pole square. In the new project, we only had a narrow strip between the houses."
In the neighboring
house on Plyushchikha, made up of several different-sized volumes connected by a metal pergola - only 22 apartments, which is justified for a club house. In the new project, the developer expected to receive 2.5 times more. This was a challenge for architects.
Buildings on a typically Moscow winding Truzhenikov Lane are very diverse. Pre-revolutionary two-three-story manor houses and embassies, buildings of the Stalinist and Soviet period have been preserved here. Many buildings appeared in the 1990s and 2000s. The height of the houses varies as well as the time of their construction. For example, in the perspective of the street, you can see the dome of the miniature Holy Cross Church. But directly opposite the plot in question is a residential eight-storey building, built in 2001 according to the project of the workshop "Sergei Kiselev and Partners", and next to it - a brick residential building with a height of 14 floors.
The authors decided to stop at ten floors, but make the most of the site: the first floor retreated from the borders only for the distance necessary for the passage of special vehicles. The first floor in the project is public, the upper two are penthouses, underground parking.
From the second to the eighth floor, the width of the house increases, although it does not lose its fit: bay windows alternate with deep loggias, and the combination of floors of two and three levels out the scale. The bay windows are so large that the house is more like a group of towers, spaced with regular pauses and "pulled together" by stone belts at the floor level of the second, fourth and sixth floors - their inhabitants would have got open balconies. The alternation of protrusions with deep pauses makes the volume porous, reducing its presence in space, and the predominance of verticals is responsible for the harmony of the whole.
Above, glass walls recede far from the façade line, leaving extensive terraces in front of the penthouses. The glass is covered with lamellas, and at the ends, from the side of the street and in the courtyard, their mesh "grows" with transparent pergolas.
In the decoration of the facades, the project combines light stone, copper and curved glass. The stone, light and porous, similar to travertine, creates an outer frame, with the verticals emphasized by flutes. Copper fades into the background, marks the interfloor floors and supports the vertical direction with many lamellas in the ground floor ledges, on the facades of the penthouses and the pergola. The combination of stone and metal gives an image that unequivocally refers to Art Deco, and the reddish tint of copper makes the mood of the decorative composition a little more upbeat.
But the bends of curved glass with extremely rare bindings return us to modernity, if not even futurism - the mercury-iridescent substance is like a force field enclosed in two types of mesh: stone and copper, a kind of Faraday cage, but it remains alive and mobile, flexible shiny fabric, the foundation of the whole house. Glass predominates in the decoration of the first floor, extending to the red line of the street with the volume of a small cafe. Behind the cafe, under the bay windows of the longitudinal facades, pedestrian galleries were planned, they are also the aforementioned passages for special vehicles.
The project of the house, albeit at the level of the tender proposal, vividly develops two traditional themes for Moscow. One of them is excess density in a small area, which needs to be "packaged" into a consistent shape. The other is a facade that combines a response to the affection of Moscow buyers and marketers for the Art Deco style with a restrained but confident futurism. In the 20th century, in the historical time allotted to it, the Art Deco direction could not fully realize itself, it simply did not have suitable customers, and without an adequate client, the style is never complete. Therefore, we, apparently, are waiting for many more attempts to give Moscow a suitable version of the prestigious decorative style. Perhaps the image of a club house proposed in this project, which brought a New York accent to the figurative bustle of Truzhenikov lanes, would be an appropriate answer.
