A dairy plant in the Kaluga Oblast was set up about 10 years ago, primarily to produce soft cheeses. It was fine-tuned with the participation of specialists who had undergone training in Switzerland and Italy, it has strict sanitary rules, and its cheeses are sold in Moscow on the glamorous Kutuzovsky Avenue. Today, the dairy farm is expanding, and its owner, an old acquaintance of Roman Leonidov – many years ago the architect designed a private house for him – has asked the architect to come up with the concept of the entrance building.

Contrary to our expectations, the building’s function is more technical than representative: the building will host management offices, a café, changing rooms and rooms for sanitation, which the farm’s employees must rigorously undergo before their shift.

Roman Leonidov, Studio of Roman Leonidov

At the initial stage, we had to understand the technology and conditions of functioning of the spaces. Although we were given a precise list of the required spaces, we had to organize them optimally and build connections between them. We also had to strike a balance between simplicity and expressiveness.

I would define my idea in this nutshell: lightness, transparency, “milkiness”. Hence the combination of warm white with glass, with a certain percentage of mirroring on the outside, and milky glass behind it. “Milkiness” can also be emphasized with backlighting. In this case, electrochromic glass would have been the perfect solution, but it is prohibitively expensive. We will choose the material – as a rule, we choose from many samples, and we often choose it right at the construction site.