Khodynskoe Pole is a former airfield, whose surroundings have been built up so intensively over the past 20 years that the area has rightfully become one of the symbols of post-Soviet gigantomania. Two-thirds of the arched contour of the field, similar in plan to an orange slice with a base of 1.5 km and an arc of more than two, was occupied by the Grand Park residential complex: 43 hectares, about 500,000 m2 area, 4700 apartments with something. It seems to combine all the main variations of large-scale volumes: the Sail house-sculpture, towers, an amphitheater of quarters descending towards the field. The outer contour is formed by two house-walls, one of them is 770 m long. Both have a variable jagged silhouette, so that the house on the western corner was nicknamed "comb" by the inhabitants. I remember the walls of some large ancient city, for example, Istanbul, Smolensk or Kolomna, preserved in the form of large fragments. Meanwhile, this wall was not destroyed in time immemorial, but grew in the first half of the 2000s according to the plan of the Mosproekt-4 architects under the leadership of Andrey Bokov.
In addition, Andrei Bokov, in collaboration with Dmitry Bush, built two stadiums for the CSKA club: the current VEB Arena on the west side, in 2016, and the Megasport Ice Palace on the east corner, ten years earlier, in 2006. This second palace is Grigory Revzin compared to "a large propeller, the blades of which fly in different directions" - really similar, since its outline is made up of two spiral ramps, red and blue, with colored translucent plastic canopies.
To the southeast of the spiral of the Ice Palace, on a narrow and long section between it and the street of aircraft designer Sukhoi, the residential complex “Litsa” was completed two years ago according to the project of Vladimir Plotkin and TPO “Reserve”. We talked about his project, as well as about finding a form for a complex problem in 2014. In terms of key parameters, it can be compared somewhere with the third part of the "Grand Park": a total area of 186,000 m2, living area 107,000 m2; and all this on a plot of 1.7 hectares, fifteen times less than that of its predecessor neighbor.
The house completed the dotted line of houses-"walls", begun by Andrey Bokov and took on the role of an entrance accent, a kind of propylaea of the Khodynskoye field. Standing at the corner facing the nearest entrance from the Leningradskoye Highway, it visually separates the Khodynka space from the wide bypass street and the aircraft designers' industrial zone located outside, to the southeast. The parameters of the house are in many respects forced, a large volume in a narrow area, close to the arena, but they are logically supported by the theme of the “fragment of the fortress wall” already given here. In addition, if we continue the comparison, then often the monuments of medieval cities are almost leaning against their walls and corners (let's take Anna's church in the corner of Kitay-gorod); here and here something similar happened, but in modern approaches and proportions. It was as if the propeller of a stadium had fallen in the corner of a huge city and, having cut a place for itself, buried itself into the ground. Although again it was the opposite, the wall surrounded the screw.
In a word, an unusual, very unclassical combination turned out. But beautiful: it seems that the house proudly lifts its head, cutting the space like clockwork, at the same time exchanging glances with the Petrovsky Palace of Catherine II on the opposite side of Leningradka - it is just visible from here.
Due to the cramped area and large volume, the structure of the house turned out to be quite unusual. Under the entire curved-triangular section there are three tiers of underground parking, which from the inside, along the passage separating the house from the Ice Palace, grows in two more tiers. Above the ground from the side of the streets - 4 tiers of commercial urban infrastructure: shops, boutiques, cafes, fitness interspersed with the lobby of a residential building. A whole shopping and entertainment center with two groups of escalators fits here. Along the street in the lower floors there are cafes, shops, a children's center - they work, despite the presence of a medium-sized mall inside, as well as the fact that the traffic on the street is intense, 3 lanes in each direction. However, the house is 11 m away from the edge of the track. But it is noteworthy that here it was possible to combine the "internal" trade of the mall and the external city trade - they are usually considered incompatible.
-
Image 
zooming 1/4 Longitudinal section. Residential complex "Litsa" © TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 2/4 Cross section. Residential complex "Litsa" © TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 3/4 Plan of the stylobate. Residential complex "Litsa" © TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 4/4 Floor plan at elevation +4.800. Residential complex "Litsa" © TPO "Reserve"
So, Litsa residential complex is a truly multifunctional complex. The cases of embedding a mall in the stylobate of a residential building can be counted on one hand, a shop, a kindergarten or a fitness center is one thing, and here there was also a place for a multiplex cinema. Almost a modern analogue of the House on the Embankment, in which you can live without much going out; the only thing missing is the office function, but now we are getting used to working from home …
The stylobate occupies the entire building area, and the residential part above it consists of one long (300 m) six-section plate curved along the street, and another plate from one section. It is located at the northern end along Aviakonstruktora Mikoyan Street, parallel to the driveway that leads obliquely to Khodynsky Boulevard. In addition to the arc set by the bend of Sukhoi Street, at the ends the house is "cut off" by imaginary rays that converge somewhere at the entrance to the Ice Palace ticket office - it is difficult to say if this is an attempt to accentuate the neighboring building, but two elegant corners, not exactly Russian, but quite sharp, appears at key points of view. The small plate received a trapezoidal shape in plan, the vanishing point of the lateral lines in the center of the arc of the courtyard.
The thickness of the dwelling plates is 17.5 m, which, when projected to a total height of 88 m, gives a rather thin outline. Apartments - from one- and two-room on the sides of small corridors to two-sided three-room and the best four-room in the upper part of the southern end. The small plate contains bunk apartments - an experiment with typology that is not common for Moscow.
The yard is located on the roof of the stylobate - a technique that is widespread in our time. But here he is at a height of 20 meters from the ground, to put it mildly, 2-3 times higher than usual. It is as if the courtyard was on the roof of a 6 or even 7-storey building. It is completely invisible from the street, it is quiet and private inside. The courtyard is illuminated mainly by the southwestern sun, but in its entirety, "for the lumbago". And the second plate covers it from the north wind, adding reflected sunlight - in the late afternoon, when the children are out, say, after school.
The main, most noticeable technique is the facade pattern. A zigzag, white-green pattern unites the longitudinal walls of a long plate, develops into a variety of optical effects: from the Leningradka side, we perceive the eye-catching horizontals more sharply, zigzags from the center and south-west, ripples of diagonals appear in a strong perspective. The bottom line is that the drawing is the same and "plays" from the form, it has the ability to change depending on the angle and perception. Not every pattern can do this.
-
Image 
zooming 1/5 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 2/5 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 3/5 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 4/5 Residential complex "Litsa" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 5/5 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
Another feature: the drawing almost completely integrates the windows, makes them a part of itself. We are used to the fact that the essence of the facade is the alternation of walls and openings. But here it is not perceived as such, it even takes some mental effort to understand where the windows are - at first we see an integral structure with its own internal laws. The pattern helps to level the scale - it is generally believed that large spots are the best way to do this, but by “absorbing” the windows, the pattern turns the whole house into a spot with a complex outline.
Everything, meanwhile, is arranged quite simply and even economically. The wide "modernist" windows are grouped into groups of three horizontally: inside each group there are dark brown piers, and on the sides are thin white ones. However, the horizontal line of the white zigzag unites not three, but two windows - the rest is filled with green inserts - the very ones that make the house perceive as "green", although there are no more such elements on the facade of 15-20%. The panels are simple, riveted, even at the bottom. But the white surfaces are covered with gray "polka dots", which, when viewed from a distance, imitates slotted metal, transforms rivet circles into a convention and removes the excessive brightness of white. The middle window in the group from below is underlined with a black stripe on white, the stripe falls on the corner of the zigzag and resonates with the dark metal of deep slopes. The report is not that complicated, but all together it gives some kind of fractal - a great way to overcome the monotony of identical windows in some new way.
From the side of the courtyard, the zigzag is the same and develops in the same direction, from south to north from bottom to top, working on the impression of a single matter of the entire plate. But here they add the slotted metal grilles of the staircase halls, whose perforated polka dots seem to be the prototype of the circles on the white panels. In the evenings, black metal walls come into play - they shine in the sun and are reflected in the glass, adding a golden hue and depth.
At the ends, the zigzags turn into horizontal stripes, which also emphasizes the imaginary unity of the matter from which the cases are made: it is as if a cut and whether a stone with a certain structure, and on a longitudinal cut it would give one, complex pattern, and on a transverse another, for example, a striped one. The colored stripes of the long house are, of course, green, and the small plate, which has no extended dimension and no zigzags, is monochrome on the north wall, and maroon on the south, as a response to the neighborhood of the arena's red ramp.
From a distance, the large volume of the stylobate seems to be a stand supporting the backstage from the inside of the house, which recede as far as possible from the spiral of the Ice Palace, giving it the maximum possible "air". But the lower part of the house, assigned to a different function, was also revealed on the front facade facing the street. Above the shops on the first floor there is a sawtooth-toothed strip of glass bay windows of two-storey height - they fold plastically into a kind of mechanical tape, a track that ensures the house bends, and practically catch the sun - the wide planes of the bay windows face exactly to the south. Above, the house is first underlined with a wide white stripe, then with a line of horizontal openings, and only then the pattern begins.
The long house is divided by two deep slots, 11 stories high. They divide the plate into three large parts, let additional light into the courtyard, and a slot in the center fold is located directly above the entrance to the main lobby of the residential building and accentuates it.
The entrance, I must say, is marked very delicately, with a white visor and three alternating glass ledges and hollows, consonant with the logo of the house. The same white visor, only larger and two floors higher, as well as the recess-bevel of the glass wall, mark the entrance to the mall from the Leningradka side.
-
zooming 1/4 Residential complex "Litsa" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 2/4 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 3/4 Residential complex "Faces" Photo © Konstantin Antipin / provided by TPO "Reserve"
-
zooming 4/4 Residential complex "Litsa" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by TPO "Reserve"
The walls are white in the slots. The inner end of the wall of the northern building is also white, so that the gap between the plates can be understood as a third, deeper cut - this emphasizes the integrity of the house, which begins to be perceived as an L-shaped volume, dissected several times, including at a turn. In addition, additional plastic appears in the slots and at the ends - shallow, but full width, cantilever protrusions. In the northern part, their height is the same and it is difficult to get rid of the thought that these are "faces", the house has two faces - in general, it is easy to see two creatures here: one, long, is directed forward, the other protects the courtyard, and they look into one side. All this is given in an extremely abstract and very generalized way, akin to the sketches of Juan Miro or Picasso of the late period - the creatures are completely imaginary, they do not go beyond the framework of stereometry at all. And meanwhile, the high arch at the southern end of the long house - another "trademark" through opening on a thin support - is very reminiscent of either a tail or a leg set aside.
Metaphors are optional; but they animate and complete the image. In essence, the house has completed (or, let's say, almost completed) the construction of the arc of the Khodynskoye field, having solved a lot of complex problems, from functional and typological to volume-spatial and optical. He picked up the theme set here by the walls of Andrei Bokov, but developed it and interpreted it in his own way. The house is thinner, the "prongs" are higher and, frankly, not so much like serfs. Here on Khodynskoye Pole, probably because of the spaciousness, everything basically turns out to be powerful and definite: visible houses - "walls", round houses - "pipes", houses-quarters lined with crosses and huge pauses between all of them. And this house, in the most inconvenient, but also responsible place, turned out to be different - it, of course, declares itself, but at the same time, it seems to shiver in the cool Khodyn wind.
