The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement

The site is very complex, with an elevation difference of about 30 meters and a lot of restrictions, both in terms of elevation and landscape and visual analysis. We knew from the beginning that this would be the case – and we wanted to turn the limitations into an advantage, creating a decent background for the architectural monuments, and implementing a history-based approach... For example, we are now working on an immersive route that will tell the history of the place through QR codes. 

So, in the brief for the 2021 competition, we included a wish for small-scale development in the historical part – some people heard this recommendation, some did not, but of the three participants, it was the Ostozhenka architects who solved this problem most accurately.

We are not the first to work with this site – the heights, parameters and approaches have been determined before us. In addition, the project was born in repeated discussions with our colleagues, and we have great respect for the Nizhny Novgorod architects and the Nizhny Novgorod school – they are all our friends and excellent professionals, we consider them full-fledged co-authors. Of course, we took into account both historical and architectural research, and the data of visual-landscape analysis. We restored and developed the historic street network and did everything to pick up the morphology of the historic building in terms of modularity, so that the new background fabric would not be alien. We positioned the buildings at angles to create more interesting views.

The towers near the bridge are a different story – they were needed as a counterpoint to the powerful horizontality of the Metro Bridge: its length is about a kilometer, and here we needed to work on a different scale.

The territory of Chernigovskaya Street and Garshina Street is located in the center – and at the same time on the outskirts. But due to the fact that the place is a dead end, the historical environment has been preserved here, but only partly – stone houses, and wooden houses, which were also quite numerous back in the day, have been lost. So from the very beginning, in 2012-2013, when the first attempts to offer something for the site occupied by the bakery appeared, we insisted on considering the territory up to Melnychny Lane in an integrated way. Then the idea of “spontaneous” development appeared, subordinated to the relief and the street grid, and with a small number of stories – all the attempts to increase the height in the central and northern parts were “grounded”.

I believe that the concept is successful, if it is implemented, the city will have a good comfortable place, a pedestrian zone, and development, combining the historical scale with the modern one. Public transportation should appear – the site will be fully involved in the urban fabric.

We know the area well; several years ago we worked on development projects here. We looked closely at the bakery site, but we studied it in connection with the entire territory as a whole – in the status of preliminary studies. In our projects, the density of the mid-rise part was somewhat less, and the morphology of its construction was stricter and slightly more rigid: the plans were in the form of the Cyrillic letter Ш, open to the river. And our color – on the contrary – was more picturesque, adaptively immersed in the “earthy” range of brick and plaster. I still believe that only the Church of St. John the Baptist and the monastery should remain white, so they stand out better against the background of the buildings, both old and new. White-colored houses seem to me... not meant from our latitudes, they look as if they were taken from some seaside town – I said this at the Architectural Council, and I told the authors about it too.

But now we are working in the direction set by Ostozhenka, within the framework of the master plan, so our color set is also light gray, conditionally white stone. And the texture of the facades is brick, in two variants: a simple brick surface and a relief-striped one, designed for oblique light. In addition, we suggested adding texture, most likely fiber cement, and inserts – to build up references to the XVII century and to the Annunciation Monastery. Perhaps even tiles would be appropriate here.

I think this project is appropriate, it fits in correctly with the existing development, and I do not agree with those who oppose any development of the territory of Chernigovskaya and Garshina Streets in principle. It seems to me that this territory should be developed, to make it better for both residents and tourists.

Our site is located in the western part, next to the Annunciation Monastery, so we tried to keep on the edge between minimalist architecture and some very light “Old Russia” allusions. The building next to the monastery, with a built-in kindergarten, is light brick with wide slopes, and for the neighboring one we proposed a motif similar to open shutters – with transverse inserts. Further on, everything dissolves, becoming more modern. We did not deviate from Ostozhenka’s proposal; we tried to stay within the master plan. I would say that there was a little more certainty than usual.

We faced many challenges in our work.
We had to comprehensively design a complex site and a non-standard compositional solution.
In the entire development we strived to realize the transition from history to modernity, using actual materials and solutions, but preserving the proportions and techniques typical of the historical environment.
The alternative facades of the Towers were designed in two materials – ceramic and aluminum panel: terracotta as a tribute to the historical context, and aluminum as a modern and technological response.