По-русски

Raising the Yard

The housing complex Renome consists of two buildings: a modern stone house and a red-brick factory building of the end of the XIX century, reconstructed by measurements and original drafts. The two buildings are connected by an “inclined” yard – a rare, by Moscow standards, version of geoplastics that smoothly ascends to the roof of the stores lined up along a pedestrian street.

Natalia Koriakovskaia

Written by:
Natalia Koriakovskaia, Arina Strigova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

19 March 2021
Object
mainImg
The housing complex Renome, about the project of which we wrote in 2016, is situated inside the blocks between three streets: Novoslobodskaya, Palikha, and Sushchevskaya – and one in-block pedestrian passageway that connects the exit from the Mendeleevskaya Metro Station and the Sushchevskaya Street. In our particular case, the passageway, winding amongst a conglomerate of old Moscow houses, is more attention worthy than all the surrounding streets because recently it has turned into a cozy urban hangout with lots of bars and small shops, colorful signs and lights hanging on strings – in a word, this something like Moscow’s Covent Garden. Making a turn underneath the arch, the pedestrian way, starting from the metro station, leads past the restaurants of the Atmosphere business center, an office complex built by ADM Architects in 2011-2013, and presenting a result of painstaking reconstruction of a fragment of city development of the XIX century, consisting of low-rise buildings of a weaving factory. There are grounds to believe that the public bottom floors of Atmosphere, its cozy little yards, and the end-to-end passage to Palikha became one of the drivers for the development of the pleasant “go-for-a-stroll” environment near the Mendeleevskaya metro station.

Renome was designed three years after Atmosphere was completed – by the same architectural company ADM Architects, and on commission of the same developer, Simex. One of the most important tasks was to capitalize on the success of the public floors and the pedestrian street, creating yet another “shopping passage” a hundred meters away from it. Hence, the new housing complex consists of two buildings: a large L-shaped one with light-colored facades of Jurassic stone, and a small red-brick one. Between them, running along the pedestrian passage from Novoslobodskaya to Sushchevskaya, there is a 5-meter high link volume with a tall stained glass window and round concrete columns visible through the glass: it will be occupied by cafes and shops.

  • zooming
    Renome housing complex
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    Plan of the first floor. Renome housing complex
    Copyright: © ADM


The retail “link” building closes the courtyard of the complex from the south side and becomes the basis for the most interesting – well, at least, rare by Moscow standards – part of the spatial and volumetric solution. Considering the fact that the shop buildings will turned to the yard with their dull technical side, a “cold wall”, which will be casting an almost permanent shadow, the architects proposed to raise the landscaped yard on one side, designing it as a gently sloping “mountain” – a kind of green amphitheater that leads to the operated roof of the shops.

  • zooming
    1 / 3
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    2 / 3
    Renome housing complex
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    3 / 3
    Renome housing complex
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


The inclined surface of the yard is structured by a diagonal grid of trails with a slight tilt, comfortable to ascend. Its flexible shape looks a little bit like paper garlands with slits. The rhombuses, appearing between the ramps, host flowerbeds and recreation areas – the architects made the most out of the surface, making each of its fragments useful; the geometric pattern of the garden looks great from the apartment windows. The upper part is paved with wood, and in the summer there are wicker chairs and umbrellas: a small resort oasis that smoothly grows out of the garden on the slope.

The artificial relief here turns out to be something more significant and interesting than the usual geoplastics of the hills. In addition, the upper part is well lit by the rays of the southern sun, and the plants of the slide get the light in full – this unconventional move made it possible to completely avoid the “shadow pocket” effect. And we will also note here the urban space itself turned out to be delicately, yet clearly, zoned: on the one side, there is a private courtyard, on the other side, there is city retail – they exist in the same space, but almost without touching each other, except that the tops of green bushes on the roof can arrest the gaze of some passer-by.

  • zooming
    1 / 3
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    2 / 3
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    3 / 3
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


This solution is also interesting from the typological standpoint because, although it was implemented on flat relief, one can nevertheless trace typical Moscow features in it: Moscow is known to be a hilly city, at least in some places, and somewhere, especially in the neighborhood of Maroseyka or Serebryaniki, you do come across inclined yards and terraces.

Back to the residential buildings, though! While the string of shops in the link building continues the Atmosphere business center function-wise, the L-shaped building picks up its light tone and texture, only in a more expensive material – stone as opposed to the ceramic tiles of the business center. Stone verticals with striped grooves vary in width and frequency, interspersed with thin lintels, the lintels being light stone on the outside, and mostly dark wood on the side of the courtyard. Panels of the same “wood-like” time appear in the entrance portals, and in the finish of the lower surface of cantilever above the pedestrian walkway at the western end – in all cases, wood adds to a homely feel of the place.

  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


The floors are vertically grouped in twos, the pairs dissected by the flat horizontals of the friezes. However, the intermediate floor is masked not by dark tinted glass, as is often done nowadays, but by glass with silk-screen printing of a white raster gradient – their whiteness makes the house brighter and softens the tension of the vertical rhythm. In addition, some of the windows are actually windows, and some of them are glazed recessed balconies (Andrey Romanov calls them winter gardens); they are sunk in the facade plane at different depths, which is why there is a surface oscillation barely noticeable to a superficial glance. This way, when viewed from a certain angle, the line of the white glass forms a zigzagging horizontal, as if some kind of thread was running through the facade.

Renome housing complex / ADM architects
Copyright: Photograph: Archi.ru


Thin strips of corrugation on the stone are complemented by carvings of graceful rectangular flower pots, as well as plastic forged fences and “smoker’s balconies”; in every case, the ornament is built on a single flowing plant motif.

The small open balconies are semicircular on the plan and – the architects especially emphasize this – are fundamentally different from the decorative baskets without a bottom for air conditioners that are now commonly accepted in Moscow construction. These balconies have a sturdy base made of a cast iron plate about 5 cm thick, which can support the weight of more than one person. In a word, what we are seeing are distant relatives of the cast iron balconies of Moscow of the XIX century, which gracefully resonate with the surrounding context: they liven up the facade not only with their rounded plastique and lacy shadows but also functionally because the architects indeed designed them with people in mind.

Renome housing complex / ADM architects
Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


The other building of the complex, made of red brick, square on the plan, and situated closer to Novoslobodskaya Street, was inherited from the weaving factory. In the process of working on the project, the architects planned to preserve two of its surviving facades of the late XIX century and to complete the other two walls, which had been depersonalized by restructuring during the Soviet era. However, due to the fact that the there was an underground parking garage occupying the whole space underneath the complex, preserving the walls of the building, which did not even have a protected status turned out to be rather problematic, and ultimately the architects and the client came up with the idea of restoring the factory building according to measurements , using artificially aged Belgian bricks, reminiscent of the historical ones.

  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


Which they did, and rather carefully, too – preserving the types of historical brickwork: all-stretcher bond on the walls and alternation of all-stretcher and header bonds on the blades, they also restored the figured cantilevers and metalwork, for example, decorative fastening of internal ties, according to measurements and archival drawings. The bearing structure of the house is monolithic concrete; moreover, it bears the upper floor penthouse, which echoes in color with its stone neighbor. However, the brick facades correspond to the historical ones, adjusted to correct the microscopic difference in the size of the windows and the slight curvature of the lines. “There were no inaccuracies on the historical drawings; the windows were designed to be exactly alike. The minor discrepancies appeared in the XIX century on the construction site; we corrected them. The proportions, the eaves, and other details – we were meticulous” – Andrey Romanov emphasizes.

  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Ярослав Лукьянченко / provided ADM architects
  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


The red-brick building is called Héritage; the L-shaped one is called Nouveau, both names are French. The main name Renome literally means in French “famous” or “well-known” but somehow in Russian it is perceived more like “reputation”. Curiously, Héritage and Nouveau are written on the signs in French, but Реномэ is written in Russian: it appears that the marketing logic is loosely based on the idea that preserving (or restoring) heritage and buildings new things are two main components of a good reputation. Even though here it is rooted in reality, generally it is not always the case.

  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects
  • zooming
    Renome housing complex / ADM architects
    Copyright: Photograph © Yaroslav Lukyanchenko / provided by ADM architects


Thanks to the brick house, the new residential complex, inscribed in the space of this Moscow neighborhood, acquires a quite palpable “difference in time” on the level of emotions, a variety of styles, appropriate in the local environment and looking as if it was exactly what this environment needed. It is difficult to say which texture – red or white is more interesting and: a varied masonry made of aged bricks or an airy ensemble of carved light stone. But then again, considering the fact that both are within an arm’s reach if you just walk in the yard, being that close, the house has no right to remain indifferent – both parts are equally responsive to the demand for tactility and variety of impressions.

We will also note here that the restoration of a historic building involving the completion of its walls is the only such case in the portfolio of ADM architects. The architects are vocal critics of stylization – they still seem to be second-guessing the righteousness of this solution. Indeed, one could argue: perhaps it would have made more sense at the moment – when the impossibility of preserving the original building of the XIX century became obvious – to remake the project altogether, completely abandon reconstruction and build something modern instead of the lost one? Because making an opposition of new and old, the east they did in the Wine House residential complex in Sadovniki, was something that they would not be able to do here anyway. And, upon closer inspection, the dents on the bricks give away artificial aging. And the hue of the real XIX century brick is generally redder, while this has too much brown about it – the dark bricks that occasionally pop up in the masonry also give away a modern approach. But then again, such critical attitude reeks of “Venetian” purism. After all, the actual authenticity of the factory building may interest one or two researchers, but they must be knowledgeable about the history of old buildings in any case.

On the other hand, if we are to speak about the atmosphere of this place, it definitely benefited from this project: the building is interesting, and the contrast is exciting. Furthermore, the historical building to a certain degree became the starting point and the prototype for further development of the ensemble: after a while, another pair was added to it, a counterweight, another house, whose modern architecture nevertheless echoes the “factory” building and even “grows” out of it in compositional terms. More about that in our next article.

  • zooming
    Plan of the standard floor. Renome housing complex
    Copyright: © ADM
  • zooming
    The master plan. Renome housing complex
    Copyright: © ADM


19 March 2021

Natalia Koriakovskaia

Written by:

Natalia Koriakovskaia, Arina Strigova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov
Headlines now
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.
Reconciliation
The restoration of the Salt Warehouse for the Zvenigorod Museum, on the one hand, was quite accurately implemented according to the design of the People’s Architect, and, on the other hand, it was not without some extra research and adjustments, which, in this case, was quite beneficial for the project. The architects discovered the original paint color, details of the facades, and studied the history of rebuilds of this building. As a result, the imposing character of the empire building, the oldest one in the city, and the differences of later additions were accurately revealed. Most importantly, however, the city got a new cultural and public space, which is already “working” in full swing.
From Moscow to Khabarovsk
This year, the works submitted by the students of the Genplan Institute of Moscow included a proposal for revitalizing Moscow’s “Pravda” complex with its structures designed by Ilia Golosov, landscaping an East Siberian town, located a 12-hour drive away from the nearest big city, and three versions of turning a derelict “pioneer camp” into an educational hub, similar to “Sirius”. Two sites out of three have an interested client, so chances are that the students’ works will be ultimately implemented.