Creating Traditions

The construction site on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street occupies a whole block that has an almost perfectly rectangular layout. It was this geometry in fact that prompted the master plan solution to the architects: one of the houses “Group ABV” positioned along the red street line, the other brace-shaped house actually braces the site along its perimeter on the other three sides. As far as the architectural image is concerned, its character was determined by the industrial architecture style, so characteristic of Moscow’s Khamovniki district of the XIX century. The main facade of the residential complex will be designed in the contemporary style, yet it will be decorated with Andrew Nalich relief. This seemingly ostentatiously “decorative” detail ultimately proves more than appropriate in this situation - it ties the building in with the surviving tenement houses, at the same time making the facade look as if a fair amount of work was put into it, and more “hand made”, giving the passers-by a lot to examine and admire. 

In the brick facades with large rectangular windows, one can indeed see the traits of the late XIX century industrial buildings located nearby or the regular houses of the Stalin era. The architects deliberately created this “reverberating” effect - they wanted to achieve maximum harmony when inscribing the all-too-bulky complex into the context of the narrow streets and its already-existing buildings: the main facade is dissected into vertical fragments, which creates the illusion of a whole set of lively-looking houses and helps to avoid the monotony of the lengthy front side.

The landscape solution of the yard that will only serve the residents of the complex, employs, on the other hand, the traditions of old estate planning. Here the landscape centerpiece is the alley with its perspective crowned by a fountain; these are not the only landmarks of this area, however. The yard is going to get a polygon composition decorated with mosaic that will not only adorn the yard but will also make its planning look more sophisticated by zoning the children's and the grown-ups' areas apart from one another. The composition serves a functional purpose as well: it works as the camouflage of the light dome of the fitness center’s swimming pool that is there in the semi-basement floor under the yard. 

This project draws attention, first of all, by the exquisiteness of all of its details. The reserved facade of he house, neatly woven into the fabric of the historic street, arrests your attention most of all when viewed from a close range: the combination of stones and bricks, the plastics that adorn the window lintels, the bass relief, and the wrought iron railings of the balconies – “ABV Group” stays true to itself in terms of its meticulous approach to even the tiniest of the decorative elements.