The apartment complex “Sputnik” – an extensive high-rise housing development of comfort class – is built by Samolet Group in the stead of a former sand quarry lying between the Moscow Ring Road and the Zhivopisnaya Bay, at the border of the Lipovy Les parkland. The complex is situated not far away from the bank of the Moskva River bank; there is a paid-entrance riverside beach a 10 minutes’ walk away, and the surroundings are quite in the spirit of the Rublev Highway – all around you can see a whole congregation of luxury-class villas that somehow seem to peacefully coexist with giant suburban shopping malls. There are also villa settlements that feature modern architecture: in the east, the Sputnik territory borders on the “Rublevo Residences”, build in 2012 by the project of the British PRP Architecture; a little further north, right next to the building of the Government of the Moscow Region, designed by Mikhail Khazanov, there is a low-rise six-story residential complex called “Rublevo Park”, designed by Alexander Tsimailo and Nikolai Lyashenko.

Meanwhile, large-scale development is also represented here not just by “Sputnik” alone – specifically, a kilometer and a half away in a straight line, on a peninsula that cuts into the Moskva River, PIK Development is building the “Myakinino Park” housing complex. Therefore, the context is busy and contrastive, not to say mottled, which is generally expectable outside the Moscow Ring Road. And, although the city environment has not yet fully formed on the pedestrian level, the views of the Moskva River, which one can admire from the windows of the 30-story houses, are already beautiful, which is rather an advantage for the residents of the high-rises. Originally, the concept for developing this land was developed by a Dutch architectural company, but later on the construction scale rose to 30-33 stories, and the developer distributed the tasks of designing individual land sites between a few reputed Moscow architectural companies.

The two first parts, each one consisting of three towers standing on a podium, have already been built by the projects of Ostozhenka and Reserve Union; these are situated closer to the Moscow Ring Road, about 160 meters away from the highway. In the central part of the complex, there is a school building, currently designed by Atrium Architects.

The houses of the next two stages – complexes B3 and A5 – were designed by Sergey Kiselev and Partners. The landscape design was done by Ilia Mochalov; the interiors of public spaces – by the company Haast.

Alexey Medvedev, Sergey Kisselev & Partners

The typology of the towers, as well as the apartment design, was predetermined by the marketers in this case – we worked with preset parameters, rather rigid, down to the size of the fenestration. The recommendations also included colored facades. Initially, more austere and monochrome facades acquired a red-yellow “autumn” look and highlights very much like “sun glare”. Flat facades without bay windows were also part of the assignment. In such cramped conditions, however, we tried to design the volumes using a contrasting pattern, to build the rhythm of the facades at the expense of colored spots and baskets for air conditioners. We thought over the structure of the bottom floors, entrances, and double-height spaces, open to the light.