По-русски

A Rhombus Blitz

The contest project for a residential block situated on the site of Annenhof Grove by “4izmerenie” bureau is an example of combining striking futuristic towers with a humane solution of an urban environment and with evenly distributed functions.

Written by:
Lilya Aronova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

29 April 2015
Object
mainImg
 
The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie


The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie


Today, the district of Lefortovo – one of the oldest in Moscow – is being actively transformed. While today its industrial enterprises take up more than half of its territory, in the near future the proportion is to shift to the benefit of the residential, cultural and public spaces. Not so long ago, the angst over the plans to build up the “Hammer and Sickle” plant’s territory has calmed down, and in August 2014 “Morton” group announced a blitz-contest on a development draft for the neighboring lot that refers to “Tenancy 14” on the Krasnokazarmennaya Street. Following the results of the contest, the winners were awarded the first and the second prizes, while another eight works were short-listed (which means, under the terms of the contest, that they “can be invited to further creative competitions and projects of Morton group and OOO “Regional Urban Planning Center”). One of this Eight was the bureau “4izmerenie” with its project “Annenhof Grove”.

Since the existing buildings of this territory – production halls, warehouses and other objects of neither cultural nor architectural value – are not planned to be preserved, the only thing that limited the participants’ imagination was the design assignment itself. But they did have an interesting historical background at hand – the difficult fate of the Annenhof grove that has been here since the 1730’s. It is generally thought that the grove back in the day was planted overnight by a pleasing courtier Biron to delight the eyes of the empress Anna Ioannovna, never to be liked by the city people, and in the beginning of the last century was altogether “shaven” (Gilyarovsky) away by a massive tornado in 1904. The project of “4izmerenie” in a way aims to repair the historical injustice by giving a new life to the grove and a comfortable urban area with an open parking to the Muscovites. The team of “4izmerenie” feels right at home in this challenging and often-disliked mode of a blitz-contest. “It is like building parti diagram at the university – only now we do it for real, like the grownups that we are – says one of the project’s authors, Vsevolod Medvedev. – It is a great test for your speed of creative thinking and ability to make decisions quickly”. In this case it was actually a super-blitz – the task of the competition was completed in only five days, and the authors are happy with their result.

The project by “4izmerenie” fits into the spatial context as naturally as it does into the historical one. The master-plan of the development extends the main axes of the district. Their combination defined the rhomboidal cell structure of the plan divided into five mini-quarters plus the office-center, situated near the southern border. The architectures of “4izmerenie” consider this solution made entirely of advantages: it allowed them to create a fix and laconic composition with the residential, office and public volumes arranged along only three axes. The swiftly interchanging spaces, easy air-circulation, great insolation, the visual impression of constant movement (a definite advantage of this project, compared to some other short-listed participants, who consider building closed volumes with courtyards) – all of them are also functions of the multiply repeated rhombus, that represents a certain compromise between a canonical orthogonality a chaos of broken lines. The global practice actively uses this dynamic geometric figure in the area of façade decoration, however, it rarely puts it in a building plan – but if it does happen, it almost surely makes a powerful architectural expression: take, for instance, the centerpiece of Barcelona – “DiagonalZeroZero” upon the project of “EMBA” bureau, or Dominic Perro’s almost 1000 feet high “Blade” – that is now being built in Seoul.

All the buildings in the project “Annenhof Grove” are rhombuses with rounded corners that are almost identical in plan but have different numbers of floors (from 13 to 22 with the number of floors decreasing towards south) and oriented towards different cardinal directions, which allows avoiding monotony. The dwelling buildings “grow through” the stylobate that in its turn, according to Le Corbusier’s principle, appears to be hung over the ground floor, on the level of the second storey protecting from the rain and uniting the towers with square closed and semi-closed lines surrounding the inner yards. Thus, there forms a hybrid space on the ground floor: basically modernistic but with a hint of the traditional urban structure – more closed up, secluded, subdued to the human scale but not wind-blown like the usual micro-district. And up above – rise the towers. It creates an elegant compromise between the modern Moscow tendency to residential quarters and the insolation requirements. The play of the overhung horizontal connections between the towers is supported by the mounted passages, suggested be the architects of “4izmerenie”. These passages are laid along the lines of the rhombus-like module on the level of the fifth, ninth and twenty-first floors – a method not only striking and changing the whole development into a complex spatial construction, but also bold and pricy. 

The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie








The architects suggested making the most of the roofs of the stylobates operational: the planned recreational spaces are intended only for the dwellers of the district and local workers, unlike the lower level – available for everyone. The thing is, that unlike most participants of the contest that tended towards strict functional division of the corpuses into dwelling and office buildings, the architects of “4izmerenie” decided rather to approach this issue from two directions simultaneously. They suggested building the main office block on the crossroad of the Entuziastov highway and the future passway – first of all, it will create the architectural centerpiece from the direction of the main transport artery of the district, and secondly, it will provide an autonomous accessibility for the employees. Besides, the entire second level of the stylobate and partly the ground floors of the eastern towers are allocated for the offices (together with the commercial and public rooms).



This project owes its charming futuristic air not least to the facades solution – laconic, even minimalist “splendid snow-white icebergs” (in the metaphoric expression of Vsevolod Medvedev). The authors suggested making them of glass with insertions of metal – just think of the visual characteristics of the apartments! By the way, the apartment layouts promise to be interesting and various: the floor spaces of the apartments vary from 600 to 1600 ft2, plus the two-storey penthouses. 

The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie


The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie


The project of "Annenhof Grove" residential complex at the Krasnokazarmennaya Street © 4izmerenie


The “not the most humane” building density, according to the architects, provided by the specifications (30 ha on a territory of 9 ha, aside from the underground space, with the height limitation of 240 ft) made the authors seek solutions of visual and dynamic lightening of the block. Since the ground floor development is not entire, but partial it allows for organizing a number of different well-equipped spaces, starting from little yards to squares that are to be open to all of the citizens according to the plan of the architects. And the central artery, extending the main axis of the neighboring site of the “Hammer and Sickle” (that is planned to be preserved after reconstruction) becomes the main planning accent of the block. This zone – practically a boulevard that organizes all the main fragments of the development – is planned to be completely pedestrian. More than that: the romantically-spirited architects have thought of an artificial little river as homage to Sinichka-river – that once flowed here, but now is only reminded of by several place-names. With a pinch of fantasy one can see the corpuses rising in different directions upon the stylobate not only as blocks of ice, but as some kind of a paraphrase of park trees. There should be plenty of real trees here, however: the architects want to make both the boulevard and the yards as green as possible. This is also a pendant of the “Hammer and Sickle” – its designer, “LPA Design” bureau, intends to make a city-park of it. A comfortable, ecological and simply good-looking recreational zone became one of the main advantages of this fascinating and promising project.


29 April 2015

Written by:

Lilya Aronova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov
Headlines now
New “Flight”
Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.
The Yauza Towers
In Moscow, there aren’t that many buildings or projects designed by Nikita Yavein and Studio 44. In this article, we present to you the concept of a large multifunctional complex on the Yauza River, located between two parks, featuring a promenade, a crossroads of two pedestrian streets, a highly developed public space, and an original architectural solution. This solution combines a sophisticated, asymmetric façade grid, reminiscent of a game of fifteen puzzle, and bold protrusions of the upper parts of the buildings, completely masking the technical floors and sculpting the complex’s silhouette.
Architecture and Leisure Park
For the suburban hotel complex, which envisages various formats of leisure, the architectural company T+T Architects proposed several types of accommodation, ranging from the classic “standard” in a common building to a “cave in the hill” and a “house in a tree”. An additional challenge consisted in integrating a few classic-style residences already existing on this territory into the “architectural forest park”.
The U-House
The Jois complex combines height with terraces, bringing the most expensive apartments from penthouses down to the bottom floors. The powerful iconic image of the U-shaped building is the result of the creative search for a new standard of living in high-rise buildings by the architects of “Genpro”.
Black and White
In this article, we specifically discuss the interiors of the ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh. Interior design is a crucial component of the overall concept in this case, and precision and meticulous execution were highly important for the architects. Julia Tryaskina, head of UNK interiors, shares some of the developments.
The “Snake” Mountain
The competition project for the seaside resort complex “Serpentine” combines several typologies: apartments of different classes, villas, and hotel rooms. For each of these typologies, the KPLN architects employ one of the images that are drawn from the natural environment – a serpentine road, a mountain stream, and rolling waves.
Opal from Anna Mons’ Ring
The project of a small business center located near Tupolev Plaza and Radio Street proclaims the necessity of modern architecture in a specific area of Moscow commonly known as “Nemetskaya Sloboda” or “German settlement”. It substantiates its thesis with the thoroughness of details, a multitude of proposed and rejected form variants, and even a detailed description of the surrounding area. The project is interesting indeed, and it is even more interesting to see what will come of it.
Feed ’Em All
A “House of Russian Cuisine” was designed and built by KROST Group at VDNKh for the “Rossiya” exhibition in record-breaking time. The pavilion is masterfully constructed in terms of the standards of modern public catering industry multiplied by the bustling cultural program of the exhibition, and it interprets the stylistically diverse character of VDNKh just as successfully. At the same time, much of its interior design can be traced back to the prototypes of the 1960s – so much so that even scenes from iconic Soviet movies of those years persistently come to mind.
The Ensemble at the Mosque
OSA prepared a master plan for a district in the southern part of Derbent. The main task of the master plan is to initiate the formation of a modern comfortable environment in this city. The organization of residential areas is subordinated to the city’s spiritual center: depending on the location relative to the cathedral mosque, the houses are distinguished by façade and plastique solutions. The program also includes a “hospitality center”, administrative buildings, an educational cluster, and even an air bridge.
Pargolovo Protestantism
A Protestant church is being built in St. Petersburg by the project of SLOI architects. One of the main features of the building is a wooden roof with 25-meter spans, which, among other things, forms the interior of the prayer hall. Also, there are other interesting details – we are telling you more about them.
The Shape of the Inconceivable
The ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh brings to mind a famous maxim of all architects and critics: “You’ve come up with it? Now build it!” You rarely see such a selfless immersion in implementation of the project, and the formidable structural and engineering tasks set by UNK architects to themselves are presented here as an integral and important part of the architectural idea. The challenge matches the obliging status of the place – after all, it is an “exhibition of achievements”, and the pavilion is dedicated to the nuclear energy industry. Let’s take a closer look: from the outside, from the inside, and from the underside too.
​Rays of the Desert
A school for 1750 students is going to be built in Dubai, designed by IND Architects. The architects took into account the local specifics, and proposed a radial layout and spaces, in which the children will be comfortable throughout the day.
The Dairy Theme
The concept of an office of a cheese-making company, designed for the enclosed area of a dairy factory, at least partially refers to industrial architecture. Perhaps that is why this concept is very simple, which seems the appropriate thing to do here. The building is enlivened by literally a couple of “master strokes”: the turning of the corner accentuates the entrance, and the shade of glass responds to the theme of “milk rivers” from Russian fairy tales.
The Road to the Temple
Under a grant from the Small Towns Competition, the main street and temple area of the village of Nikolo-Berezovka near Neftekamsk has been improved. A consortium of APRELarchitects and Novaya Zemlya is turning the village into an open-air museum and integrating ruined buildings into public life.
​Towers Leaning Towards the Sun
The three towers of the residential complex “Novodanilovskaya 8” are new and the tallest neighbors of the Danilovsky Manufactory, “Fort”, and “Plaza”, complementing a whole cluster of modern buildings designed by renowned masters. At the same time, the towers are unique for this setting – they are residential, they are the tallest ones here, and they are located on a challenging site. In this article, we explore how architects Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova tackled this far-from-trivial task.
In the spirit of ROSTA posters
The new Rostselmash tractor factory, conceptualized by ASADOV Architects, is currently being completed in Rostov-on-Don. References to the Soviet architecture of the 1920’s and 1960’s resonate with the mission and strategic importance of the enterprise, and are also in line with the client’s wish: to pay homage to Rostov’s constructivism.
The Northern Thebaid
The central part of Ferapontovo village, adjacent to the famous monastery with frescoes by Dionisy, has been improved according to the project by APRELarchitects. Now the place offers basic services for tourists, as well as a place for the villagers’ leisure.
Brilliant Production
The architects from London-based MOST Architecture have designed the space for the high-tech production of Charge Cars, a high-performance production facility for high-speed electric cars that are assembled in the shell of legendary Ford Mustangs. The founders of both the company and the car assembly startup are Russians who were educated in their home country.
Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor
The so-called “Mytny Dvor” area lying just behind Moscow Railway Station – the market rows with a complex history – will be transformed into a premium residential complex by Studio 44. The project consists of three parts: the restoration of historical buildings, the reconstruction of the lost part of the historical contour, and new houses. All of them are harmonized with each other and with the city; axes and “beams of light” were found, cozy corners and scenic viewpoints were carefully thought out. We had a chat with the authors of the historical buildings’ restoration project, and we are telling you about all the different tasks that have been solved here.
The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement
In 2022, Ostozhenka Architects won a competition, and in 2023, they developed and received all the necessary approvals for a master plan for the development of Chernigovskaya Street for the developer GloraX. The project takes into account a 10-year history of previous developments; it was done in collaboration with architects from Nizhny Novgorod, and it continues to evolve now. We carefully examined it, talked to everyone, and learned a lot of interesting things.
A Single-Industry Town
Kola MMC and Nornickel are building a residential neighborhood in Monchegorsk for their future employees. It is based on a project by an international team that won the 2021 competition. The project offers a number of solutions meant to combat the main “demons” of any northern city: wind, grayness and boredom.
A New Age Portico
At the beginning of the year, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport opened Terminal C. The large-scale and transparent entrance hall with luminous columns inside successfully combines laconism with a bright and photogenic WOW-effect. The terminal is both the new façade of the whole complex and the starting point of the planned reconstruction, upon completion of which Tolmachevo will become the largest regional airport in Russia. In this article, we are examining the building in the context of modernist prototypes of both Novosibirsk and Leningrad: like puzzle pieces, they come together to form their individual history, not devoid of curious nuances and details.
A New Starting Point
We’ve been wanting to examine the RuArts Foundation space, designed by ATRIUM for quite a long time, and we finally got round to it. This building looks appropriate and impressive; it amazingly combines tradition – represented in our case by galleries – and innovation. In this article, we delve into details and study the building’s historical background as well.
Molding Perspectives
Stepan Liphart introduces “schematic Art Deco” on the outskirts of Kazan – his houses are executed in green color, with a glassy “iced” finish on the facades. The main merits of the project lie in his meticulous arrangement of viewing angles – the architect is striving to create in a challenging environment the embryo of a city not only in terms of pedestrian accessibility but also in a sculptural sense. He works with silhouettes, proposing intriguing triangular terraces. The entire project is structured like a crystal, following two grids, orthogonal and diagonal. In this article, we are examining what worked, and what eventually didn’t.
An Educational Experiment for the North
City-Arch continues to work on the projects that can be termed as “experimental public preschools”: private kindergartens and schools can envy such facilities in many respects. This time around, the project is done for the city of Gubkinsky, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. A diverse educational and play environment, including a winter garden, awaits future students, while the teachers will have abundant opportunities to implement new practices.
Alexandra Kuzmina: “Working is easy when the rules are the same for everyone”
The subject matter of Moscow Region’s booth and presentations at Zodchestvo Festival was the concept of “Integrated Land Development”, and for a good reason: this task is very challenging, very relevant, and Moscow Region has already accumulated quite a formidable experience in this regard. In this article, we are speaking to the main architect of the region: about master plans and who makes them, about where you obtain resources for creating a comfortable environment, about her favorite projects, about why there are so few good architects, and what we should do with the bad ones.
The Cemetery: Inside and Outside
The workshop organized by the Genplan Institute of Moscow scored one of the two first places at the “Open City” festival. Its subject is reorganization of municipal cemeteries. Two action plans were proposed, diametrically opposite: one for the downtown and one for the suburbs.
Our Everything
Who is Alexey Shchusev? In the last couple of weeks, since the architect’s 150th birthday, different individuals have answered this question differently. The most detailed, illustrated, and elegantly presented response is an exhibition held in two buildings of the Museum of Architecture on Vozdvizhenka. Four curators, a year and a half of work performed by the entire museum, and exhibition design by Sergey Tchoban and Alexandra Sheiner – in this article, we take you on a tour of the exhibition and show what’s what in it.
For Mental Reboot
At the architectural competition held in 2023 in Novosibirsk, the project by GORA Architects – a pedestrian bridge leading to the town of Bor – was awarded the “Golden Capital” prize. In this country, more than a hundred pedestrian bridges are constructed each year. What makes the Bor bridge different?
Gold Embroidery
A five-story housing complex designed by Stepan Liphart in Kazan, responds to the stylistically diverse context with its form, both integral and agile, and as for the vicinity of the “Ekiyat” movie theater, the complex responds to it with a semblance of theater curtain folds, and active plastique of its balconies, that bear some resemblance to theater boxes. Even if excessively pompous a little bit, the complex does look fresh and modern. One will have a hard time finding Art Deco elements in it, even though the spirit of the 1930s, run through the filter of neo-modernism, is still clearly felt, just as a twist of the Occident.