Renders: Beregovoy
The path to the water
The architect of the Beregovoy Ivan Grekov explains in detail how he came up with idea of a wave-shaped house, and explains how the size of the bedroom is related to social values.
Where did the idea of the Beregovoy come from? It has a rather unusual architecture.
We sat down and began to think it over: so, this is a house by the water. And what is water and how could we use it in our project? We realized that the main characteristics of water are fluidity and variability. Thus, flexibility and adaptability became the super-idea for the Beregovoy. We believe that it is possible to construct a building on a particular site in the form that we intend it to be. It cannot be taken out of context and rearranged because architecture is influenced by the environment, the history of the place, and the ideas that prevail in society.
It seems that all architects think so?
Not at all. Today, architecture is basically playing with different shells, that is, design. It happens that a facade,a layout, interiors and landscaping are made by different people, which turns out to be a collage of ideas that rarely resonate with each other, and this is a problem. We are happy that it is us who do everything in the Beregovoy and that the idea of flexibility and variability defines the entire project.
What is the difference between the feelings of a resident whose house was designed by one person, and the one whose house is “made of pieces"?
It's like in a movie: the director selects actors, cameramen, costume designers who he feels suit him and, therefore, the film turns out the way it is. If he was obliged to work with given specialists, it would be difficult for the author to convey his idea: the director sees a certain actor in a certain place, and only he will create the right picture. It's the same in architecture. We've conceived that we have a wave and flexibility on the facade, and an interior designer could decide: "I love Empire so much, and many people also love it a lot, let's make an interior in this style." The image should be complete; all details are important here.
Well, we are done with the idea. But what is a modern house? This is now the name of both typical new buildings and skyscrapers from the 2000s.
Modern houses should meet the needs of society, and ideally, we need to predict the life scenarios of people who will settle in the Beregovoy in twenty or thirty years. They will need a hybrid space that is suitable for living, working, and relaxing. That is, in one building there should be a bedroom, a co-working space, a restaurant for meeting friends and a gym. It will be possible to stay at one place and not to go to other ends of the city.
And how do apartments change? It seems that till now everything is measured by the number of bedrooms as it was in the 1950s.
The world is experimenting with a new type of housing, such as co-livings or apartment sharing. But this is not the only change. Two hundred years ago, it was important what the bedroom looked like, what size it was, how lush the canopy was, and this bedroom space was considered the main place in the house. And now the main place is the kitchen, combined with the living room, although recently everyone demanded that these spaces be separated.
Changes in space usually reflect changes of values in society. Why have kitchens combined with living rooms become popular?
The approach to communication has changed. If earlier people had more time to stay alone and read (they spent most of their lives in bedrooms), now we spend most of the day in common areas. Everything is mixed up because now you can work from home. It is easy to imagine a situation where a husband and a wife work together as freelancers and sit with laptops in the kitchen-living room. Common spaces have become larger, and the size of the bedrooms is no longer so important.
How soon will everything change again?
Although we try to predict, our estimations are not always correct. So we made the Beregovoy as flexible, transformable and durable as possible in terms of architecture and a visual language.
What is the durability? It’s simplicity. You can build a super-modern object, but it will quickly become obsolete.
For example, many of the objects of Zaha Hadid, who is considered to be the driver of modern architecture, already look outdated, because they were designed around ultra-modern trends.
The space should be universal because now people are quite universal: today you are at work, tomorrow you are a freelancer, and the day after tomorrow you have children and spend time with them. It can be said about many projects: young families will live here, or it’s for people without children, or this is for those who work from morning to night. But today you don't have children, tomorrow you do. We want different people to live in the Beregovoy and all of them to have a good time together.
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