Project author: Sergey Gevorkyan, Alexander Dolinin
Magazine: N1 1994
The customer turned out to be a patriot of the district in which he was born and lived. In his youth, he even had to lay a soft roof in this panel, nine-story building, so he did not want to part with his usual walls, his porch and neighbors, having the opportunity to purchase an apartment in the Center. The architect proceeded to work on this project, based on the fact that the client wanted to get something unusual and special from the reconstruction and was ready to spend significant funds on this, but did not arrive at a definite, well-defined solution for the style of the interior. In fact, the customer said that he wanted to have a “classic” interior, albeit in a panel house, without investing in this expression the meaning of the corresponding architectural term, and understanding it is simply a synonym for the word “solid”. The architect had only to “try” to guess the unspoken desire of his client and materialize him. To a large extent, the appearance of the apartment depended on the furniture chosen by the owners. So, under the white Italian table and chairs, the interior of the living room, the elements of the painting were decided, the lamps were selected. On the advice of the architect, the furniture of the turn of the century was selected in an antique shop before the work began; eclectic furniture with Renaissance graphics motifs. The living room contains a rich and high-quality chest of drawers in the style of "Bul", quite acceptable coexisting along with modern furniture, while emphasizing its authenticity and uniqueness. This living room was supposed to combine the functions of the main hall and sofa room, where guests are received and the family watches TV. Some kind of “majestic” scale was required, which, with a ceiling height of two seventy, was extremely difficult to do. The problem is solved due to the development of plastic ceiling. The relief protruding from a centimeter and a half was made from dry plaster. (The same relief is used to accommodate halogen light, which usually requires a suspended ceiling). The same purpose is served by the column, which fixes the center of the zone, which is zoned by interior furnishings. In general, we managed to create the illusion of more space and place quite a lot of furniture. First of all, the work on this project was the redevelopment of two standard apartments, a three-room and a neighboring one-room apartment purchased by the customer. The approved version envisaged the creation of one large apartment of three rooms, with the extension of the kitchen, a developed bathroom and a guest bathroom. The architect proposed to create a separate office, but the owner basically refused to have anything related to work in the apartment. Further discussions took place at the construction site, where the customer visited daily. From an interview with an architect By Sergey Gevorkyan:The style of what happened in the end, it is impossible to determine. It was created under the customer's ideas about a solid apartment, a "solid" style. A distinct author's style was initially absent; there was only a desire to guess what the client wanted, something turned out to be a direct hit, something not. The attitude of the customer to this apartment is rather cold - he obviously expected more. In general, a modern customer does not quite know what he wants. He does not know where to quote the finished form, although in this particular case we dealt with a person who saw a lot in his life, having been in many countries. We believe that such a "guessing" alone can bring about something like "a new merchant's style," or as it will be called now. That is, such a style that will be established as the norm for the home of a successful, respectable person.
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