A Comfortable City In Itself

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

The plot of the homecity residential complex, whose name is derived from the "parent" Comcity, is located on the territory owned by the same owner as the business center, the glass wings of which can be seen shortly after leaving Moscow on the Kievskoe highway, on the right. Comcity here owns an area stretched out by an extended trapezoid, expanding with distance from the highway. If you mentally circle it in a triangle, then the sharp nose will be somewhere on the highway. In a narrow part of the territory, closer to the highway, in 2014 the first building of the Comcity business park was built according to the project of the Czech architects Cigler Marani. Two years later, the owners of the complex turned to the SK&P architects with a request to study the territory from the point of view of the possibility of adding a certain amount of residential to the dominated office function, in order to adjust the PPT. Then SK&P offered several options for building the northern part of the territory.

The PPT was changed, albeit delicately enough, the prevalence of offices continued. As a result, the territory is now divided into 4 phases: the first, Alpha is a working building, the second, Bravo is also an office building, it is designed right after Alpha by the SK&P architects, followed by Charlie's site, also an office one, but so far without a project, now there is ground parking there, and closes the line with the only residential complex in the total composition - Delta, aka residential complex homecity for about 2000 residents and 1513 apartments. It is assumed that people working in offices will be able to buy business-class apartments in it and live quietly and comfortably next to work, which, as you know, is one of the ideas of a modern post-industrial city in which functions are mixed and everyone is not very far away. …

Жилой комплекс “HOMECITY”. Ситуационный план © АМ Сергей Киселев и Партнеры

The residential complex consists of five U-shaped blocks, 5 sections in each, with one tier of underground parking under the spot of the house and its yard. The blocks are located along the pedestrian boulevard, which serves as the axis of the territory, their courtyards are open towards each other and form, together with the boulevard, the public space of the complex. The height of the houses goes down to the boulevard by steps: on the outside there are 9 floors, on the inside there are six. Downright ideal

announced in 2017 in pilot projects of the Moscow renovation competition, but not implemented within the framework of this program.

But more than that: in addition to the altitude restrictions associated with the Vnukovo airport, the GPZU assumed a relatively small volume of square meters of housing, the customers did not plan to deviate from the restrictions. So the architects even had the task of not exceeding the volume - this gave a lot of through arches in the first floors, which ensured the permeability of the space at the pedestrian level. Such permeability is another principle of their favorite pieces of post-industrial urbanism, since it makes life much easier and enriches the facets of its perception. The arches are located in poorly insolated parts that are not suitable for apartments.

Жилой комплекс “HOMECITY”. Генплан © АМ Сергей Киселев и Партнеры

Also, on the ground floors, and partly even in the underground level, public and commercial premises are planned that provide urban versatility: cafes, shops and services of various profiles, a pharmacy, a bank, a financial institution, and so on. The list is long enough, but it can change in the course of the complex's formation. The height of the first floors is 4.5 meters. To illuminate the rooms in the underground tier, the authors of the project provided pits - long and wide, along the rear facades of buildings 1 and 2. There are bridges over the pits leading to the first floor. So the technical solution works not only for multifunctionality, but also for the diversity of the perception of the developed, urban type space, which should gradually arise here.

Жилой комплекс “HOMECITY”. План -1 этажа. Приямки видны на планах 1 и 2 корпусов © АМ Сергей Киселев и Партнеры

Жилой комплекс “HOMECITY”. План 1 этажа © АМ Сергей Киселев и Партнеры

Thus, the number of apartments on the ground floors became noticeably smaller, but those that remained received front gardens and their own entrances from the street - another popular modern technique, which SK&P architects have already proven in the premium and professional award-winning residential complex"

Literator , located in the very Khamovniki. Sitting on the terrace, from behind the green hedge, you can watch the children in the yard.

“In the very first developments in 2016, 12-story dominants appeared, which neither us nor the downloads liked. It is very fortunate that we managed to abandon them and settle on a more restrained, in terms of altitude, solution. In this project, we did not strive to create any urban planning dominant, especially since it would be inappropriate when located in the depths of the territory.

We understand the Homecity complex as an example of “life inside”, a largely self-sufficient, quiet life - in a natural environment, but in an urban setting, focused on the private space of courtyards and boulevards. Therefore, we made the outer facades dark, a bit “fortress”, like the outer contour, and the walls of the courtyards are light, almost white."

The volumes of the houses are similar to each other and are very laconic: an even grid of windows, the differences are indicated by the color of the inserts of deepened fiber cement slabs, narrowing the walls and visually expanding the windows. Striped grates decorate the air conditioner niche. There are no balconies, as well as loggias. At the top, the facades receive an “attic” ribbon, a wide strip that unobtrusively decorates the technical floor of the roof - its protrusions are not visible from the ground level.

External facades: facing outward, as well as towards the boulevard and the walls with which the houses “look” at each other, are really decided like a dark “skin” of clinker tiles, almost black - a graphite shade with light tan marks. The walls between the windows are not just narrowed, in most cases they have the same width and height, and form an even thin mesh. The direction of their lines is emphasized by the layout of the tiles: vertical or horizontal, which turns the walls into a kind of flat weaving - Alexey Medvedev likens the technique to half-timbered, as it helps to emphasize the structure of the facade. the pattern is very restrained, like the difference in knitting in a plain sweater.

Жилой комплекс “HOMECITY” © АМ Сергей Киселев и Партнеры

The houses are facing the boulevard not only with a 6-storey part, but also with consoles that hang over the paths and form canopies, laid out with tiles, including from the lower side.

The project of the residential complex, from the sketchy concept to the designer's supervision, is carried out by the architects of the SK&P - this is how it should be, but in recent times this happens less and less, so we note the precedent.

According to the joint decision of SK&P and the customer, MLA + was involved in the work on the project for the improvement of the inner boulevard and courtyards, with which the architects have friendly cooperation not for the first time and now they have also discussed everything together. Again, an example of cooperation instead of competitive tensions. Moreover, the architects of the Dutch company initially proposed the concept of “seasons”: changing impressions on different parts of the complex, but the customer insisted on uniformity and, as a result, asymmetric spots, lush crowns of maples, and bunches of cereal plants became the main theme. The use of white pebbles in playgrounds also became the customer's idea.

The apartment is balanced and tends to be two- and one-room layouts: the first is more than half, the second is more than a third. But there are three and four-room apartments.

One of the planned advantages of the complex is high-quality finishing of public areas, laconic with a predominance of vertical "lattices" of light wood.

A primary school for 350 children and a kindergarten for 150 children are located on the western end of the territory, they will be state-owned and during the design it was necessary to carefully coordinate everything with the Department of Education, tightly "pack" all solutions into standards and a fairly limited area. Therefore, the plans are rectangular, and not round and not sprawling, like those of the most progressive schools. And meanwhile, the architects managed to fit all the necessary functions in the school building, and illuminate the school library on the top floor with natural light through a skylight.

The facades of the school, as well as of the kindergarten, combine light, almost white fiber cement with yellow ocher color inserts for the school, and three warm shades: red, yellow, orange for kindergarten. The accents echo the color of the inserts on the facades of residential buildings.

The school - albeit small, but a "temple of knowledge", is marked by a loggia with a portico of four thin round columns, white against the black background of the inner wall. A light portico with a thin lintel at the top instead of an attic reminds of Le Corbusier's quest and the seventies with their laconically minimalist take on classical motifs.

From the Moscow Ring Road there is 1.5 kilometers, but to the recently opened metro station "Rumyantsevo" on foot for 10-15 minutes. The terrain around is more than varied: 17-storey buildings at a distance, and next to one side there is a “village” of dacha type behind stone fences, on the other side the Govorovsky forest, which continues the Troparevsky forest park outside of Moscow - you can easily go for a walk here, the forest comes right to the eastern border of the complex. To the south, as we remember, are the offices. The environment turns out, for all its diversity, harmoniously balanced: forest, business park, summer cottages. There is a highway, but it is about 900 meters away, so it is much quieter here than, for example, in Moscow on a busy highway. Homecity here is like in the center of a cyclone - a quiet harbor, closed on its own inner boulevard, an element of a correct, comfortable city, formed by force of circumstances, as well as by the good will of customers and architects, in a relatively unexpected place, at the beginning of the Kiev highway.