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

14.07.2010

Ground Folds

Anna Martovitskaya
Architect:
Vladimir Plotkin
Studio:
Creative Union ‘Reserve’

Vladimir Plotkin designed a unique sculpture-building for one of the passages connecting Sretenka and Trubnaya streets. The apartment complex consists of two sections with different heights, wrapped in folded skin of glass and travertine.

Location of the complex left little choice to Vladimir Plotkin and his team – the complex would be elite, therefore with small number of apartments with large floor areas, with a fitness club and parking lot, and have a remarkable appearance. The construction site has a shape of an irregular rectangle stretched from the south to the north, from Bolshoi Suhorevsky passage deep to the city-block, where three left borders of the territory are surrounded by small gardens. The nearest neighbor along the frontage line is the 5 storey office building on the west side and it dictates the new building a relatively small scale according to the rules of modern in Moscow centre. From the other, eastern side, there is a small garden "attached" to the developing complex - under there will be an underground parking. If Vladimir Plotkin would position the building strictly following the site configuration, there would appear a skewed parallelepiped directed from the southeast to the northwest. This solution guaranteed interesting facades, but the intricate and therefore inconvenient apartment layouts. So the building got more complicated three-part planning, where the two trapezoids of the residential sections are joined, as if glued together, by a narrow strip. Sections vary in heights: the 6-story one faces the passage, the 8 storey sections is placed deep within the area. Though the building consists of a single volume, visually it seems to be two-parted: sections are separated by narrow deep niches (one of them, from the eastern small garden has the main entrance), and the 8 storey volume is partly hanging over the “street” section by the console.

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