Continuing What Was Once Started

The project of an office-and-hotel complex located on the first kilometer of the Rublevo-Uspenskoe Highway develops their old ideas and responds to the architecture of the buildings that “Sergey Kisselev and Partners” had built earlier in this area.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

21 February 2018

Object

The land site at the beginning of the Rublevo-Uspenskoe Highway has been explored by “Sergey Kisselev and Partners” for more than a decade now. In 2015, its south part saw the completion of the office center Pallau RB, the designing of which had been started still before the economic crisis of 2007. The north part of the territory lies vacant so far; it is meant to be used in another project that is now being considered by the government of the Moscow region.

This place, in spite of the proximity of Moscow’s main thoroughfare, is rather quiet: it is separated from the highway by two buildings of car dealerships; it is 170 away from the Moscow Ring Road, its north part borders on the villa community “Rublevo-10”, and its south part borders on the Romashkovsky Forest. For this reason, it was planned very early on that, in addition to offices, a hotel would be built here as well. Ultimately, the territory was divided into two parts: the part that is closer to the Moscow Ring Road got the office buildings “А” and “Б”, while the part that is closer to the forest got the hotel buildings “В” and “Г”; each pair of the buildings is linked by a podium. Beneath the entire territory of the complex, there is single-level underground parking garage. The two pairs of volumes that stand in a fan-like fashion from north to south are separated by a landscaped triangle with a small pedestrian promenade. It is planned that the hotel complex will be built first; the offices and the landscaping part will become the second stage of construction and will appear later on down the line.

zooming — Hotel and business complex on the Rublevo-Uspenskoe Highway. Photo visualization. View from the Rublevskoe Highway © Sergey Kisselev and Partners

The two office buildings form a visual transition and follow the outlines of the Pallau buildings, inheriting not only the business function, but also the abundance of glass and the angles of the sloping planes, including those of the roofs – inwards from the outside, as if all the slabs turn their noses up before the formal border of the nation’s capital – the Moscow Ring Road. If one is to look from the southeast, the office buildings line themselves up as an incremental rhythmic array, alternating glittering glass and yellowish façades. But then again, while the façade panels of Pallau are metal, and their delicate metallic glitter can be traced back to the original concept of a glass volume clad in golden casing, it is planned that the new buildings will utilize Jurassic stone: its color and texture is different but, if viewed from a distance, they would still look pretty similar.

The glass casing is also designed in a “reverse” way to a certain degree: the new buildings will also have glass façades, only these will be the side ends instead of the longitudinal walls. Their pixel-like pattern, dark on the downside and light on the upside, is provided by this simple technique: instead of conjuring with various shades of blacked out glass (which inevitably leaves the building’s without some of the ambient light), the architects proposed to take some of the glass sections with the same UF-protection coefficient, and reverse them 180º – this way, the protective properties remained just as effective, while the sunlight reflection angle became different, which is meant to create an effect of soft pixel “dissolution” of the glass surfaces and a smooth transition to the sky. This is a technique that is cost-efficient and elegant at the same time.

Thanks to the chamfers of the roofs – together they go 5 meters upwards – the architects were able not only to hide mechanical rooms but also to make the western part of the roofs usable – they will serve as venues for the office parties. According to the chief architect of the project, Anastasia Khomyakova, this place is sure to command fine forest views. The usable parts of the roofs are fenced off from the Moscow Ring Road by the overhangs of the mechanical rooms.

The other three façades are subjugated to a large-cell grid that vertically groups from three to five floors, the inner side wall sporting a regular grid with constant horizontals and verticals becoming denser but more slender with each upward step. As for the outer side façades, their horizontals are displaced: the result looks like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle or a simplified picture of some tectonic shift. The depth of the ribs also grows downwards, strengthening the geological or maybe gothic associations.

The two hotel buildings that stand in the western part of the territory look more conservative. The façades of the one that is closer to the center of the construction site are designed in dark brick, the architects planning to use hand-formed solid brick with a grisaille effect, which is created by the strips of lighter bricks running along the vertically grouped windows that make visible the sunlit chamfers – in order to raise people’s spirits and enhance the volume of the windows. Here, though to a smaller scale than on the office façades, the play of horizontals is also visible: the interfloor lintels are sometimes thinner and sometimes wider, and thus they form a semblance of a small wave. The lintels in the groups of windows are made of dark-brown brick; the frequent hollows of the stanza balconies are clad in dark metal bars, and all of this, put together, creates deep volumetric chocolate-colored façades. The tall 5-meter (as is the hot trend of today) ground floors are occupied by a cafe turned in the direction of the small park.

The second building, i.e. the one that stands closer to the woodland, is notable for its light-colored brick which is even closer to the color of white stone. The bricks here are also hand-formed, with crumpled “white-clay” texture – finding the right brick manufacturer turned out to be quite a chore. Neither verticals nor horizontals prevail here; rather, they are mixed up: the textured stripes put one in the mind of constructivist city blocks, and the dark inserts between the windows look as if they were borrowed from the neighboring building. The resulting hybrid is akin to a fragment of a strip of lace blown out of size – everything looks rather cozy, countryside-style, like a dappled shade on a summer terrace. But then again, let’s not forget that the warmth of the sepia grisaille is meant to compensate for the scale of the complex: each building here has 17 floors in it, and is 60 meters high, although, by the standards of buildings situated just beyond the Moscow Ring Road, this falls short of the notion of a “giant scale”, the common number of floors here being 25.

As we remember, the two hotel buildings are linked to each other by a podium which is the same 5 meters high as the public and commercial ground floors. It will host a fitness center with a spa; its landscaped roof will be turned into a walking promenade. This complex is interesting as the continuation of the work that “Sergey Kisselev and Partners” started here long ago. In this sense, their own creation (which, we have to admit, underwent some significant changes during the design process but still retained the architects’ original idea) becomes an important contextual fragment for the authors, requires a response, even some sort of resonance, to enhance and explore this theme even further. A keen observer may see here a kind of gothic tapering of the roofs of the office buildings that overlook the highway with two of their walls – and, at the same time, a slight transition to a different theme, which is homely, palpable, and is connected, let’s say, with the signs of the times; a theme which is defined by the functional requirements, and, possibly, by the relevance of the “Manhattan-type” high-rise brick imagery. The three blocks of buildings, the first of which is already complete, come together, one way or another, to form a certain chain, grow, turn around, change their materials, but remain parts of the same story.

21 February 2018

Headlines now

The Big Twelve

Yesterday, the winners of the Moscow Mayor’s Architecture Award were announced and honored. Let’s take a look at what was awarded and, in some cases, even critique this esteemed award. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?

Object

Above the Golden Horn

The residential complex “Philosophy” designed by T+T architects in Vladivostok, is one of the new projects in the “Golubinaya Pad” area, changing its development philosophy (pun intended) from single houses to a comprehensive approach. The buildings are organized along public streets, varying in height and format, with one house even executed in gallery typology, featuring a cantilever leaning on an art object.

Report

Nuanced Alternative

How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.

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Blinds for Ice

An ice arena has been constructed in Domodedovo based on a project by Yuri Vissarionov Architects. To prevent the long façade, a technical requirement for winter sports facilities, from appearing monotonous, the architects proposed the use of suspended structures with multidirectional slats. This design protects the ice from direct sunlight while giving the wall texture and detail.

Report

Campus within a Day

In this article, we talk about what the participants of Genplan Institute of Moscow’s hackathon were doing at the MosComArchitecture booth at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition. We also discuss who won the prize and why, and what can be done with the territory of a small university on the outskirts of Moscow.

Overview

Vertical Civilization

Genpro considered the development of the vertical city concept and made it the theme of their pavilion at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition.

Interview

Marina Yegorova: “We think in terms of hectares, not square meters”

The career path of architect Marina Yegorova is quite impressive: MARHI, SPEECH, MosComArchitectura, the Genplan Institute of Moscow, and then her own architectural company. Its name Empate, which refers to the words “to draw” in Portuguese and “to empathize” in English, should not be misleading with its softness, as the firm freely works on different scales, including Integrated Territorial Development projects. We talked with Marina about various topics: urban planning experience, female leadership style, and even the love of architects for yachting.

Interview

Andrey Chuikov: “Optimum balance is achieved through economics”

The Yekaterinburg-based architectural company CNTR is in its mature stage: crystallization of principles, systematization, and standardization helped it make a qualitative leap, enhance competencies, and secure large contracts without sacrificing the aesthetic component. The head of the company, Andrey Chuikov, told us about building a business model and the bonuses that additional education in financial management provides for an architect.

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The Fulcrum

Ostozhenka Architects have designed two astonishing towers practically on the edge of a slope above the Oka River in Nizhny Novgorod. These towers stand on 10-meter-tall weathered steel “legs”, with each floor offering panoramic views of the river and the city; all public spaces, including corridors, receive plenty of natural light. Here, we see a multitude of solutions that are unconventional for the residential routine of our day and age. Meanwhile, although these towers hark back to the typological explorations of the seventies, they are completely reinvented in a contemporary key. We admire Veren Group as the client – this is exactly how a “unique product” should be made – and we tell you exactly how our towers are arranged.

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Crystal is Watching You

Right now, Museum Night has kicked off at the Museum of Architecture, featuring a fresh new addition – the “Crystal of Perception”, an installation by Sergey Kuznetsov, Ivan Grekov, and the KROST company, set up in the courtyard. It shimmers with light, it sings, it reacts to the approach of people, and who knows what else it can do.

Object

The Secret Briton

The house is called “Little France”. Its composition follows the classical St. Petersburg style, with a palace-like courtyard. The decor is on the brink of Egyptian lotuses, neo-Greek acroteria, and classic 1930s “gears”; the recessed piers are Gothic, while the silhouette of the central part of the house is British. It’s quite interesting to examine all these details, attempting to understand which architectural direction they belong to. At the same time, however, the house fits like a glove in the context of the 20th line of St. Petersburg’s Vasilievsky Island; its elongated wings hold up the façade quite well.

The Wrap-Up

The competition project proposed by Treivas for the first 2021 competition for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025 concludes our series of publications on pavilion projects that will not be implemented. This particular proposal stands out for its detailed explanations and the idea of ecological responsibility: both the facades and the exhibition inside were intended to utilize recycled materials.

Birds and Streams

For the competition to design the Omsk airport, DNK ag formed a consortium, inviting VOX architects and Sila Sveta. Their project focuses on intersections, journeys, and flights – both of people and birds – as Omsk is known as a “transfer point” for bird migrations. The educational component is also carefully considered, and the building itself is filled with light, which seems to deconstruct the copper circle of the central entrance portal, spreading it into fantastic hyper-spatial “slices”.

Faraday Grid

The project of the Omsk airport by ASADOV Architects is another concept among the 14 finalists of a recent competition. It is called “The Bridge” and is inspired by both the West Siberian Exhibition of 1911 and the Trans-Siberian Railway bridge over the Irtysh River, built in 1896. On one hand, it carries a steampunk vibe, while on the other, there’s almost a sense of nostalgia for the heyday of 1913. However, the concept offers two variants, the second one devoid of nostalgia but featuring a parabola.

Review

Midway upon the Journey of Our Life

Recently, Tatlin Publishing House released a book entitled “Architect Sergey Oreshkin. Selected Projects”. This book is not just a traditional book of the architectural company’s achievements, but rather a monograph of a more personal nature. The book includes 43 buildings as well as a section with architectural drawings. In this article, we reflect on the book as a way to take stock of an architect’s accomplishments.

Inverted Fortress

This year, there has been no shortage of intriguing architectural ideas around the Omsk airport. The project developed by the architectural company KPLN appeals to Omsk’s history as a wooden fortress that it was back in the day, but transforms the concept of a fortress beyond recognition: it “shaves off” the conical ends of “wooden logs”, then enlarges them, and then flips them over. The result is a hypostyle – a forest of conical columns on point supports, with skylights on top.

send.project

Transformation of Annenkirche

For Annenkirche (St. Anna Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg), Sergey Kuznetsov and the Kamen bureau have prepared a project that relies on the principles of the Venice Charter: the building is not restored to a specific date, historical layers are preserved, and modern elements do not mimic the authentic ones. Let’s delve into the details of these solutions.

The Paradox of the Temporary

The concept of the Russian pavilion for EXPO 2025 in Osaka, proposed by the Wowhaus architects, is the last of the six projects we gathered from the 2022 competition. It is again worth noting that the results of this competition were not finalized due to the cancellation of Russia’s participation in World Expo 2025. It should be mentioned that Wowhaus created three versions for this competition, but only one is being presented, and it can’t be said that this version is thoroughly developed – rather, it is done in the spirit of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, the project is interesting in its paradoxical nature: the architects emphasized the temporary character of the pavilion, and in its bubble-like forms sought to reflect the paradoxes of space and time.

The Forum of Time

The competition project for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka designed by Aleksey Orlov and Arena Project Institute consists of cones and conical funnels connected into a non-trivial composition, where one can feel the hand of architects who have worked extensively with stadiums and other sports facilities. It’s very interesting to delve into its logic, structurally built on the theme of clocks, hourglasses and even sundials. Additionally, the architects have turned the exhibition pavilion into a series of interconnected amphitheaters, which is also highly relevant for world exhibitions. We are reminding you that the competition results were never announced.

Mirrors Everywhere

The project by Sergey Nebotov, Anastasia Gritskova, and the architectural company “Novoe” was created for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025, but within the framework of another competition, which, as we learned, took place even earlier, in 2021. At that time, the competition theme was “digital twins”, and there was minimal time for work, so the project, according to the architect himself, was more of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, this project is interesting for its plan bordering on similarity with Baroque projects and the emblem of the exhibition, as well as its diverse and comprehensive reflectiveness.

Report

The Steppe Is Full of Beauty and Freedom

The goal of the exhibition “Dikoe Pole” (“Wild Field”) at the State Historical Museum was to move away from the archaeological listing of valuable items and to create an image of the steppe and nomads that was multidirectional and emotional – in other words, artistic. To achieve this goal, it was important to include works of contemporary art. One such work is the scenography of the exhibition space developed by CHART studio.

The Snowstorm Fish

The next project from the unfinished competition for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025, which will be held in Osaka, Japan, is by Dashi Namdakov and Parsec Architects. The pavilion describes itself as an “architectural/sculptural” one, with its shape clearly reminiscent of abstract sculpture of the 1970s. It complements its program with a meditative hall named “Mendeleev’s Dreams”, and offers its visitors to slide from its roof at the end of the tour.

The Mirror of Your Soul

We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.

Part of the Ideal

In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.

Object

The Fortress by the River

ASADOV Architects have developed a concept for a new residential district in the center of Kemerovo. To combat the harsh climate and monotonous everyday life, the architects proposed a block type of development with dominant towers, good insolation, facades detailed at eye level, and event programming.

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In the Rhombus Grid

Construction has begun on the building of the OMK (United Metallurgical Company) Corporate University in Nizhny Novgorod’s town of Vyksa, designed by Ostozhenka Architects. The most interesting aspect of the project is how the architects immersed it in the context: “extracting” a diagonal motif from the planning grid of Vyksa, they aligned the building, the square, and the park to match it. A truly masterful work with urban planning context on several different levels of perception has long since become the signature technique of Ostozhenka.

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Generational Connection

Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.

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Three Dimensions of the City

We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived

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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.

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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.