The graceful, precise, very expressive move of the architects of the Tsimailo, Lyashenko and Partners bureau, who came up with a way of organizing a dialogue not only between the plane of the facade and the environment, but also between the building itself and the context of Kutuzovsky Prospect, made it possible to approve transparent illuminated columns as a key element of the club house "Kutuzovsky XII" - metaphors of "city lamp".
The house attracts the attention of professionals, architecture lovers and ordinary passers-by - especially in the evenings, when many glass columns are brightly illuminated and the house literally gushes with light like a giant city lantern, affirming the "beauty and strength of life."
Columns - glass tubes of beaten glass Planibel Crystalvision without capitals and bases, strapped by shining metal hoops, are measuredly spaced in front of three facades: the main one facing the avenue and two end ones. They are installed in a spacer between the consoles of the inter-tier plates. The horizontal lines of the slabs combine floors of two and three, glass tubes are high and slender. It seems that they are "stitching" thin friezes right through. The intersection of rounded trunks and slabs gives the facades volume, plasticity and even depth, and the transparency and glow of the glass - intrigue.
The columns are based on metal pipes with a diameter of 25 cm installed inside. They are surrounded by star-shaped reflectors made of bent metal, factory-painted in a light color. Gold-colored stainless steel hoops, coated with titanium nitride, serve as fasteners: they connect transparent shells made of hardened bending triplex.
The height of each cylindrical element is 2200 mm, the diameter is 1100 mm. In the lower tier of the building, the height of the glass columns, consisting of five cylindrical elements, is about 10, in the upper tier - 8.8 meters, in the main part of the building - 6.6 meters.
The glass shell of the cylinders - the "crystal columns" that have already become famous in Moscow, is made of Planibel Crystalvision glass manufactured by AGC. It is the unique transparency of the glass, "enhanced" by the illumination of the columns at night, that makes them an "ultra-si element" for a modern facade.
Initially, the architects were inspired by the installation "Column" by Alexei Kozyr and Ilya Baybak, shown once at Arch Moscow - where the column-lamp from floor to ceiling was made up of glowing tubes. For the facade of Kutuzovsky XII, pipes with a diameter of 10 cm were also considered, but the idea had to be abandoned: partly because of the high cost of such a solution, but primarily for safety reasons - the pipes could not withstand wind loads and crack. Hardened triplex is much more reliable. The effect, however, was almost the same: the backlight bulbs are installed at the top and bottom in the bosoms of the reflectors, so that from a distance there is the effect of many luminous verticals, emphasized by white silk-screened stripes applied to the glass outside. Reflectors, in addition, collect light into "beams" - in the evening the rays are clearly visible both on horizontal planes and on the surface of the walls.
In the afternoon super clear absolutely neutral glass Planibel Crystalvision does not hide the reflector placed inside the "star", allows, if desired, to see it - this is the essence of high-tech aesthetics - although it is more important that the columns acquire depth and at the same time ribbing, recalling marble flutes, an important element of the language of classical architecture - which, in its turn, takes us from the obvious high-tech to the metaphor of the traditional form, praised by the theorist of postmodernism Charles Jenks. This kind of "bilingualism" allows the facade of the house on Kutuzovsky to salute both the glass skyscrapers of the City, which loom to the west of it, and the hotel "Ukraine" located to the east. On the whole, he manages to fit into the traditional context of the Stalinist prospect, without losing modernity.
But let's figure out how this element works, so ingeniously invented by Alexander Tsimailo and Nikolai Lyashenko.
The realization of the idea required a very high-quality material and careful, largely creative work of manufacturers - a kind of engineering creativity on a solid foundation of good modern glass with unique characteristics.
Crystalvision glass: absolute transparency and color clarity
In the house "Kutuzovsky XII", a 6 mm thick triplex made of Crystalvision enlightened glass is used in the glass shells of the columns on the façade and in the enclosures of the French floor-to-ceiling windows.
Double-glazed windows are composed of 8 mm Planibel Crystalvision glass and 6 mm thick Top N + T multifunctional glass. This solution made it possible to complement the neutrality and purity of color rendering of Planibel Crystalvision with the thermal insulation and sun protection functions of Top N + T glass. The use of triplex as a part of double-glazed windows creates additional noise insulation for the maximum comfort of the residents of the complex.
Thus, the building adheres to two important trends of our time: glass is neutral, transparent, and in window openings it is also energy efficient - it retains heat in winter and cool in summer.
Crystalvision is a unique glass developed by AGC specialists. According to many industry professionals, the emergence of such an innovative material marks, no less, a new milestone in the development of architecture and interior design.
Planibel Crystalvision is as neutral as possible: it does not have yellow, green or blue tints, which, as a rule, are found even in enlightened glasses and are clearly visible to the human eye. For Crystalvision glass, the CRI parameter - Color Rendering Index, which characterizes the level of correspondence of the natural body color to the visible color of this body when illuminated with this light source - is equal to 100. In other words, the color of an object when looking at it through such glass is not distorted at all. At the same time, the light transmittance coefficient LT, or Light Transmission, of Crystalvision glass is 91, and this is a very high indicator even in comparison with other anti-reflective glasses.
“It is important for us to see the AGC product on the implemented projects - this allows us to evaluate and demonstrate its capabilities on a real example. And the club house "Kutuzovsky, XII" is especially interesting - first of all, because it was Crystalvision glass that became one of the key elements of its imagery, the material that helped to embody the bold intention of the authors of the project.
The implementation required a lot of effort and a creative approach from the manufacturers: for the implementation of the project, several individual solutions were developed, intended directly for the house on Kutuzovsky. But all the difficulties have been overcome and now we have a completely new, not afraid of this word, a unique use of modern glass on the facade. Contemporary architecture is constantly demanding the creation of new, innovative materials, and Crystalvision is just such a material. We can say that the ideas of architects drive the progress of manufacturers, and vice versa, our products spur the creativity of architects."
Bending
The conceptual material of the "Kutuzovsky XII" project was precisely the bent anti-reflective glass AGC. The word "molded" comes from the Latin "mollio" - "to melt, soften."
The glass shell of the columns - triplexes - are made of Planibel Crystalvision glass by Zavod LIT JSC, located in Pereslavl-Zalessky. Triplex - laminated tempered glass, consisting of two bent glass sheets with a radius of 550 mm. For this project, a bending module was specially manufactured, built into the existing glass tempering line, which made it possible to manufacture bending column elements with a small radius and high height.
The production process of the bending multilayer column elements consisted of five conventional stages:
- Glass cutting and edge polishing
- Drawing with ceramic paint
- Glass bending with tempering
- Lamination
- Installation of technological elements and packaging
At the first stage, sheets of original glass with a thickness of 2 mm were cut into blanks of the required size and the edge was polished.
Next, a pattern in the form of parallel stripes was applied to the blanks with ceramic paint.
After the drawing was applied, the workpiece was given the desired shape - the shape of a half-cylinder, and the paint was fixed, which became an integral part of the glass: the glass workpiece was heated to a softening temperature (680 C) and quickly moved to the bending module, where the glass was fixed between two rows movable rollers, gave the shape of a half-cylinder. After the workpiece took its final shape, it was sharply cooled with a uniform dense air flow. This is how the process of bending and thermal hardening took place, which increases the strength of the glass.
Further, the bent blanks were connected to each other with an architectural polymer film in a vacuum chamber, from which, after the completion of the process, ready-made glass half-cylinders - triplexes - "came out".
At the final stage of production, these half-cylinders were equipped with fasteners necessary for installation: slide rollers, protective corners and support bushings. Further, each element of the column was assigned an individual serial number for tracking it on the construction site, after which the elements were packed and sent to the site.
“Glass columns of Kutuzovsky, XII” became one of the most difficult and ambitious projects for us, since the requirements for the repeatability of the elements produced in this case were unprecedentedly stringent. The most difficult thing was the start of the project: we spent day after day adjusting the production lines to achieve the required geometry accuracy and shape repeatability for each new product. There were tears, there was despair, there were sleepless nights, there were many tons of glass in the "trash", but we succeeded - 1491 ideal elements.
It seems to me that the entire large project team managed to do the main thing - to combine a beautiful and noble architectural image with a high-class technical and technological content in their work."
Changing light bulbs and cleaning
An essential advantage of the design of glass columns is that the cylinders of their shell are not rigidly fixed, but movable. Specially designed casters allow you to slide the panel, wipe it from the inside or replace the light.
Specialists were responsible for the design and manufacture of load-bearing metal structures and "filling" of the columns, as well as for their installation on the facade.
company "Building Technologies".
The system of opening and closing the shells is an absolute know-how, the solution was developed by the company "Construction Technologies" together with the specialists of JSC "Plant" LIT "especially for the facades of the house on Kutuzovsky.
“The task was not easy. The glass is fixed in the grooves and moves along the recoil guides specially developed for this project. It is safe to say that all the elements used in the columns are non-standard. The gaps between the glasses are minimal - dust practically does not penetrate inside, and at the same time the glass does not fog up. Installation was carried out using outboard winches, the design of which was finalized and improved specifically for solving the task at hand.
The fact is that the mass of one column in the assembly reached 2-2.5 tons, and we had to, in compliance with all safety rules, bring such a volume through the scaffolding on the facade and install it between the concrete floors. Glass panels and decorative rings were assembled by hand."
Reflectors
For the manufacture of reflectors installed inside the columns, the specialists of the Stroitelnye Tekhnologii company designed a special bending machine, which made it possible to bend the corrugated radius parts as the designers intended. The backlight wiring is hidden inside the reflector. Rivets and folded joints are used as fasteners in the columns.
All these efforts and specially designed solutions make the premium home exceptional in its own way. As you can see, here, not only the notorious location works for a unique, in all respects elite image - the location at the beginning of Kutuzovsky Prospect and the Lamborghini store next door, and even not only high-quality natural limestone on the facades - all these are quite common signs of premium houses. "Kutuzovsky XII" also captivates with high-tech: using state-of-the-art materials such as Crystalvision ultra-clear and neutral glass, AGC's Top N + T multifunctional glass. It is equally important that many solutions are developed directly for the project - in this case, the ideas of architects literally stimulate, albeit pointwise, the development of building technologies. I would like to see examples of this kind of cooperation as an “engine of progress” occurring more often in our open spaces.
