«Garden Quarters»: Ecoreconstruction of the City Space
In the modern society the quality of life has become the most important criterion. The concept includes: ecology, living comfort, the conditions of urban environment surrounding the house, safety and the possibility of interesting and useful leisure activities. Nowadays it is not enough to lay the lawn and build a children’s playground beside the house. It is necessary to apply a complex approach to organizing the outdoor amenities such as: transportation scheme, landscaping concept, developing recreational and sports areas. Ecological parameters are also of great importance – it would be perfect if the entrance door opened into a park or a green field.
It is only those developers that realize new projects on a large scale that can create an entirely new urban area. But very few manage to meet the increasing requirements that are applied to modern premium-class residential complexes; far fewer manage to exceed the expectations. The complex of club houses “Garden Quarters” that is located nearby Frunzenskaya metro station is among them. It is situated in the middle of the historic Khamovniki area, covers 11 hectares and creates a unique urban space that meets the current requirements for quality ecological housing.
When working on the project the architects had to initially decide how to create an open living space and premium-class residential houses that comply with safety standards on a site that is located in a historic part of Moscow. Along with the chief architect of the project Sergey Skuratov the team found the best solution: to build 4 separate residential quarters with private courtyards and place them in a separate park area that is filled with various interesting elements that both the residents of the complex and regular citizens can easily access.
When developing the project of the complex “Garden Quarters” 3 directions of green building were chosen: energy saving, the use of environmentally-friendly materials, and the organization of a park structure within the living space.
Energy Saving System
One of the elements of green building that is used in the “Garden Quarters” is energy saving. Its main goal is to secure heat insulation and a lot of preliminary work is done in this respect. The 180-mm-thick heat-insulating layer will allow the project to comply with very strict standards of energy efficiency. This is the way developers manage to achieve high-quality heat insulation of the walls. With the help of the innovative technologies of the AGC Company they used special windows made of wood and aluminum that have double-camera glass units and passed numerous tests on heat conduction.
The interstorey space in the buildings is 3,9 meters; the windows are 3 meters high and the glazing surface turns out to be very large. Therefore, the infrared emis-sion coming from the warm house into the cold street is increased. Usually this is-sue is solved with the help of black-out curtains; it helps avoid the heat loss caused by infrared emission. On the other hand, however, it is not reasonable to have panoramic windows and cover them with black-out curtains. The glass units are equipped with special coating: when used on the windows that face the North it helps reduce the heat loss; and for the windows that face the South the developers use another sort of coating that keeps thermal emissions away from the inner space. This helps to avoid a greenhouse effect and to decrease power demand for air conditioning.
Another energy saving element is the VRV system that allows residents to maintain certain climate conditions in the apartment separately from other apartments. Moreover, every owner is to pay for the exact amount of cold that was consumed. This way we encourage people to think about how much energy they con-sume and apply a reasonable approach to it, i.e. not to turn on the A/C and open the windows at the same time. The house is equipped with a uniform cooling center and the VRV system that provides individual service to every apartment is not located on the balcony but is placed on the roof of the buildings.
Materials
The developers use solely quality natural materials to build the houses of the complex. They use 4 types of material for the façade facing, brick being the major material. The architects deliberately chose it since this is the way architect R.I. Clein built several sites of the “Kauchuk” factory (1914-1915). All positions preserved and the factory still operating it was safely transferred to Ochakovo. The clinker brick that is used in the “Garden Quarters” strikingly differs from regular brick and has low absorption of water. Regular brick water absorption reaches 18% and is always 10% higher; water absorption of clinker brick is no higher than 4% and in reality it amounts to 2-3% only.
What does it give in practice? In Moscow winter is known for very low temperature and frost is often replaced by thaw, consequently regular hand-formed brick is filled with water and is subject to crack when frozen. It wouldn’t be a problem, if everything froze once a year and thawed in spring. In Moscow, however, this cycle can repeat many times and the working life of regular brick is dramatically reduced. Clinker brick that is used in the construction of the “Garden Quar-ters” is produced in Germany and has minimal water absorption: it does not swell, it does not absorb water and does not crack.
The second facade material is Yurassic marble. When choosing the type of marble the developers opted out cheaper stone that is usually extracted with the help of the explosion method. As a result there appear micro-cracks even on larger plates and with time water can be found in them. The architects chose German marble of very nice warm colours. Its extraction does not engage explosions.
The third façade material is Finnish copper. This material is very interesting as it beautifully ages with time. One of the objectives we have is to let the houses “live through the time”. Copper is a beautiful, luxurious but very soft material thus it cannot be applied directly to the façade. Supported by our partners we produced special cassettes that can provide necessary rigidity with copper sheets placed inside.
Finally, the fourth material is glass. Besides large windows in the construction stage there is a house with a lot of glazing surface planned by the architectural workshop “A-B Studio”. The glazing starts from the ground level and ends on the roof. Along with façade materials we should also mention others. Tracks of the complex are paved with clinker brick. Thanks to its low water absorption, good endurance and even texture it is the best paving material. The architects use granite slabs of 2 colours (darker and lighter tones) for horizontal surfaces. For the interior design we also try to use natural materials such as wood to ensure ecological compatibility of the residential complex.
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Witten by: Arkady Volovnik