Published on Archi.ru (https://archi.ru)

12.01.2010

Palace scenario

Julia Tarabarina, Anna Martovitskaya
Architect:
Ilya Utkin
Studio:
Alexandrov and partners
U-Studio

The project is not new, it is more than two years old, but is unknown. There would be a new city-block in Moscow, similar to the building along Levshinsky lane so popular among tourists.

Ulya Utkin working on Marfino district generally kept to the master plan designed by the English bureau John Thompson & Partners and consisting of square city-blocks. He made just a few corrections. But formally small corrections had a radical impact on the layout. According to the architect he turned Thompson “modernist open structure” into "closed classic” structure. He made an accent on the central square, made it round and locked around it the yard passages, tightened subordination of the entire composition - peripheral Ï-shaped buildings are lined up strictly on the axis and locked them in the most classical manner. The method and simple geometry figures created the arrangement – any theorist-idealist of the Enlightenment age would appreciate it. Allusion to the XVIII century is in place here – nearby there is the famous Ostankino manor with a palace and theater. It is not seen, there is a wild park (used to belong to the manor) between Marfino and Ostankino, but the ensemble points toward the museum by the axis of the main boulevard with the channel. In the middle of the central square over it waters there is a thrown a bridge - a copy of the Palladiev, or the Mramorny, the bridge in Tsarskoe Selo. Which, in turn, repeated the English parks bridges, made under the famous project of Palladio tractate. A bridge with such set of allusions, placed in the heart of ensemble has to be significant. It becomes a kind of statement, a manifesto of being a part of classical architecture. In modernist areas there are abstract sculpture, here is the bridge. On the other hand, it refers us to palace parks – all the small squares in Marfino are lined like parterres, and in this urban districts area is compared more to a representative park of classicism. The idea is also shown on the facades. The two top floors are decorated with four-column porticos – like manor buildings were put on the tops of multistory apartment buildings. The second theme, also inspired by Ostankino and Ilya Utkin’s preferences is a theater. Probably it is more intensive than the palace theme. An elite residential district generally trivial for our times in the project turned into a giant phantasmagoric scenery, an architectural performance showing the theme of a Russian peasant’s dream of a garden at least like Versailles.

None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None