three-level apartment with an area of ​​400 m2 in Moscow Arthur Vanuni, Elena Levina

Passing the gallery

A photo: Kirill Ovchinnikov

Text: Julia Sakharova

Stylist: Julia Krugovova

Architect: Arthur Vanuni, Elena Levina

Magazine: N1 (90) 2005

Architect Arthur Vanuny made an unusual apartment and came up with a name for it - “Butterfly”. It really does. The upper level - glass - as if hovers over the city. The whimsical metal structures of the ceiling resemble the wings of a fantastic insect. True, their scale is much larger than real However, everything is big. Starting with the number of levels (there are three), the number of square meters (about 400) and ending with ideas that inspired the architects. They admit that the main ideological inspirer is Antonio Gaudi. The Catalan master, as is known, claimed that people created the right angle without imagination, and admired organic natural forms. He decorated his buildings with sculptural images of plants and animals. Recall, for example, the famous Sagrada Familia. His "Infinite Bench" looks like a snake, and Mila's house in Barcelona looks like a fantastic atoll. So Arthur Vanuni has his "butterfly" made of metal and glass not just a certain portrait or outline of a real butterfly, albeit on an enlarged scale. It is rather a beautiful architectural metaphor. “Our customers immediately liked the idea of ​​a butterfly apartment,” says Arthur. “Still, the urban environment is quite a tough thing. Perhaps that’s why we all citizens are instinctively striving for nature. The architect can tell about nature in different ways in the urban interior. We chose the butterfly image, but do not think that this is an abstract architectural idea. This is the key with which we managed to solve a whole complex of problems, constructive and decorative, which we closely link with the main task of organizing a comfortable and psychologically Comfortable living space. " Here lives a family of four: parents and two children. The girls have a whole lower floor: each of them has its own bedroom, a common children's lounge and a hall. The staircase leads to the second level, where architects have planned public spaces for the whole family and guests. Here is the entrance to the apartment. Opposite the entrance is a dressing room, and around it, in a relatively open space, zones of the kitchen-dining room and living room-study are grouped. The third level, where the parents' private apartments are located, was built by architects on the roof. The plan clearly shows how technical rooms invade living space, resembling an iron. This is where the Gaudi principle came in handy: to adapt, to go around, to organize movement along a wavy path. First, the ladder to the third floor had to be made to the side of the "iron", not on the side where the stairs are at the entrance. Secondly, the architects placed functional zones (dressing room, bedroom, bathroom) around an inconvenient "iron". It looks like a pearl clam that turns a “uncomfortable” grain into a pearl. And decorative solutions, such as transparent, radiant colors and wavy paths of marble "shell", emphasize the smooth, natural rhythm of space.Arthur Vanuni: "This three-level apartment in Moscow turned out to be unusual, but at the same time very comfortable. The upper level is built above the roof of the house, it is almost entirely glass, and on the ceiling is a metal construction resembling the wings of a giant fantastic butterfly. We were inspired by the example of the great Antonio Gaudi."