apartment with a total area of ​​500 m2 (St. Petersburg) Alexey Morozov, Andrei Shmonkin

Passing the gallery

Text: Lyudmila Likhacheva

A photo: Peter Lebedev

Architect: Андрей Шмонькин, Alexey Morozov

Magazine: N6 (62) 2002

The desire of the owners of the apartment was simple in appearance and difficult in essence: "Stylishness plus comfort." And yet the architects deciphered the hidden meaning of the intention. Stylishness is a state of mind, attitude, lifestyle, adequately equipped with design tools. You can imitate style, never stylish The ideas of the customer and the authors about style and comfort happily coincided. Stylish design is the purity of lines, high simplicity and calm, restrained dignity. Nothing ambitious, catchy, arrogant: "How was Lady N dressed? - I don't remember, but very elegantly." As for comfort, for modern man it is associated with the logical clarity of layout, freedom of movement in space, and the absence of unnecessary barriers and boundaries. From here - thirst for the extensive premises, only conditionally divided into functional zones. The compositional center of this apartment, its “solar plexus”, can hardly be called a room or even a hall. The word "territory" will be appropriate. And the point is not in the number of square meters (and there are one hundred forty), but in the quality of organization and decoration of space. How to "fit" such dimensions in human terms? How to visually lift the ceiling height of only 2.8 meters? Finally, what and how to fill the "territory" without sacrificing either space or comfort? The authors of the project answered these questions so well that the guest involuntarily escapes admiringly: "Like in the movies!" Indeed, the impression is that the design here interprets the techniques of cinema: focusing, cropping, and the imposition of distant and close-ups. Being in one of the four parts of the "territory" (in the kitchen, dining room, fireplace or cinema hall), you perceive the neighboring microlandscapes with side vision, each of which is unobtrusive, at the level of nuances and semitones, endowed only with its inherent mood. The kitchen is light and airy. Here hi-tech announces itself loudly: two chairs on thin silver legs cling gracefully to the glass top of the bar counter. In the solemn dining room, noble wood comes into its own hands, the domination of which is "confirmed" by the warm light of the lamps through linen lamp shades. Behind the cooking and eating strip there is a relaxation zone. Despite the fact that the fireplace and cinema hall are solved in the same range and furnished with imposing furniture from CASSINA, their character is different. At the fireplace, the owners are faithfully awaited by cute “coat” pillows. The cinema hall is notable for its “liveliness” of temperament: on the floor in anticipation of a vivid spectacle, the “Dutch cow” sprawled out - a huge spotted carpet, made according to the design of architects. A fireplace has been ingeniously mounted in a column: the original planning defect has been skillfully turned into dignity. The symbiosis of different zones is more than organic - these are four atmospheres, four states, but of a single whole. Similarly, in a confidential unit, the bedroom without the slightest tension “goes” into the bathroom, except that the shades of straw and baked milk “wear out” along the way to marble whiteness. Only one step - and the visitor is in the kingdom of mirrors, chromed metal and greenish, like sea water, glass. And finally, the study is autonomous and luxurious and refined: even the plant in the tub is matched in tone. The authors are right: this is more than minimalism with its flirtatious slash. Rather, a new version of organic architecture, one of the leading figures of which, Alvar Aalto, taught: "Architecture should encourage life." Alexey Morozov: "They say art requires sacrifice. If this is true of this object, it is only in the sense that the customer together with us" overwhelmed "it. achieved absolute comfort - spatial, visual, tactile, psychological. We would characterize the product of our joint efforts: more than minimalism ".