country house with a total area of ​​500 m2 Alena Netudykhata

Passing the gallery

Text: Maria Kriger

A photo: Alexey Reydalov

Stylist: Angelica Garusova

Project author: Elena Netudykhata

Ceramics: Leonid Boginsky

Lepnina: Vasily Mikropulo

The painting: Elena Babintseva, Igor Stupachenko

Sculptor: Sergey Yukhno

Magazine: N10 (99) 2005

This house is somewhat akin to theatrical scenery: it is as if woven from spectacular light and luxurious fabrics, a combination of intricate knick-knacks and valuable antiques. You can travel around the mansion, as if you were going through the labyrinths of theatrical backstage, not knowing what to expect at the next door. Designer Alena Netudykhata received the house in the form of a kind of semi-finished product with a more or less adjusted layout and fragmentary decoration: unfinished murals, forging elements, and partly draperies were present in the interior. Separate parts were aesthetic in their own way, but they didn’t want to fit into a single whole. Alena Netudykhat was faced with the task of completing what had been started by previous decorators, bringing together these rather chaotic “arabesques”. “For me it was a very interesting experiment - to combine incompatible, heterogeneous fragments ... Each step in the design of the house was a kind of experience, a discovery,” recalls Alena. - We have decorated some metal elements so that the interior does not look like a knight, we add warm textures - aged plaster, natural stone, wood, velvet and the thinnest lace. Visually, the house has become more homogeneous. The established style can be described as a vintage fusion: it mixes various historical trends. ” In the two-light living room of the first floor there are allusions to the ancient Colosseum: open arched galleries, strict white columns and porticos frame the luxurious “auditorium” with a high fireplace. The classic elements of decor - murals, caissons, reliefs - have become one of the connecting motifs in the space of the house. Thus, monochrome fresco painting, originating in the hallway of the basement, passes through the pool and through the living room of the first floor and goes upstairs through the open gallery. In the dining room, the dummy mimics a gazebo twined with shoots of young foliage; the room flows smoothly into the winter garden, and the illusory plants are replaced by real ones. Constant confusion between the fictional and the real is generally characteristic of the space of a mansion. So, the interior of the dining room is a conscious quotation from Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander; draperies that decorated the pool, reminiscent of the luxurious military tents of the French generals of the XVIII century, and the master bedroom the inhabitants of the house called the papal - because of the abundance of gold and red "cardinal" velvet. As they move away from the front, the guest part of the house, the interior is freed from bright court gloss: the host’s office, located on the second floor, is designed in a light colonial style, the guest bedrooms remind you of the sedate and very homely English living rooms of the middle of the XIX century, and the boudoir workshop - a tribute to the bohemian penthouses of the Renoir and Monet ... Alena Netudykhata:“I generally love fusion ... so complex enough, with elements of vintage and props. The interior is a bit dramatized, and this creates a very bright, individual image. ”