Badaevskiy Brewery, Redevelopment

A Redevelopment Project of an Old Factory Area in the Heart of Moscow The aim of the Badaevskiy Brewery project is to redevelop the six-hectares old factory area, between the Moscow River and the vector to Minsk, and to transform this famous but largely abandoned and run down site into a vibrant destination point in central Moscow. The factory grounds and river embankment are to be opened to the city; the old industrial structures are to be assessed, with more than 30’000 m² of them restored and brought back to life through new internal organization and uses; and more than 100’000 m² of new residential, office and retail program is to be added in order to rejuvenate the site. Short History of the Site In 1875 the famous brewery was founded as the Trehgorniy Factory, located just outside of the Moscow city walls, four kilometres from the Kremlin. The factory grew typically for a manufacturing complex of that time, characterized by a brick industrial architecture, with a monumental representative front and a disordered agglomeration of support buildings growing organically at the rear towards the river. In the 1950s, the Kutuzovskiy Prospekt cut through the old random city blocks and, lined up with the uniform neoclassical 12 storey residential buildings, formed the straight western vector of the now prominent radial scheme of Moscow. At the turn of the 21st century the construction, across the river, of Moscow City introduced a radically different high-rise scale and materiality to the site and to the whole of Moscow. Constraints and Conditions of the Site Since the closure of the brewery in the 2000s, the buildings fell into ruin, and despite sporadic uses, remained largely abandoned. Today, from the three original main factory buildings, built between 1875 and 1912, only two buildings remain. The current urban and heritage regulations, have given cultural heritage status to the ensemble and require preservation of the original brick factory structures. The remaining part of the site is open for new development, within a height restriction of 75 metres. The Given as an Inspiration for the New The found structures and the history of the site inform and inspire all our urbanistic and architectural interventions: the elevation of the new building, as well as the spatial continuity of the park and gardens beneath. We found it extraordinary and especially appealing to use the opportunity to push such a radically different urbanistic approach in a city which has traditionally preferred tabula rasa concepts, in the Soviet as well as the post-Soviet periods.. Renovation and Revitalization of Historic Structures: Buildings 1, 2 and 3 Through the clearing of the unimportant and unprotected structures, the site opens, for the first time, to the city and the neighbourhood.. Building 1, a pair of historical structures of 20’000 m² will host a food market, fashion store, co-working space with conference centre and a large gym. Building 2, the lost heart of the complex, is built anew in solid brick to its original design, following historical documents. The 3’000 m² building will retain a large grand hall space and bring back some of the original functions of the complex with a small local brewery. Building 3 is a 15’000 m² complex agglomeration of separate parts on 8 floors. New functions, such as a traditional Banya, arts centre, childcare facilities and a maze of apartments are opportunistically jig-sawed together. A City Block Lifted up in the Air The new building on the site could be described as a piece of city lifted up in the air. This "Horizontal Skyscraper" is the result of a research phase where we tested and tried out all kinds of building typologies along the riverfront, but whatever we tried felt wrong. The greatest problem was that any new structure on the ground would have divided the site into privileged and less privileged areas, into front and back sides, and the amount of public green would have been reduced to a minimum. It was obvious that we started to lift up in the air the piece that we had tested on the ground before, although we were hesitant to come up with a building typology which is so remindful of the "Wolkenbügel", one of the most heroic icons of the Russian Avant-garde. But here it didn't look heroic or monumental. The building does not fly; it rather sits on many slender stilts like an elevated lodge in the forest. The stilts connect the building with the ground and the park like trunks of trees. The single operation of elevating the new building 35 metres up in the air brings three key advantages for the project: first, the new green area, an urban park, emerges in the vacated land under the hovering structures, between the heritage buildings and the river front; second, despite the substantial densification of the site, the historical buildings retain their direct connection to the river and their clear visibility and access to the city; and third, all the flats in the hovering structure are top floors with prime views to the Brewery, Kutuzovskiy Prospekt, Ukraina Hotel, the State Duma, Moscow City, and beyond to greater Moscow. Public Green and a Place for All The greatest benefit of the Badaevskiy Brewery development is that it creates new urban spaces accessible for all: along the Moscow River it opens up a new and highly attractive stretch of promenade and boulevard with restaurants, bars and shops. Between that river promenade and Kutuzovskiy Prospekt, a new landscape is implemented that maximises the green areas with transitions between public, semi-public and private zones, and gradual shifts from lawn areas, to low greenery, to high forest-like planting. The entire plot is kept exclusively pedestrian and permeable to provide easy and direct public access from the river promenade to the microcosm of activities in the new Badaevskiy Brewery project and opening, for the first time through this site, new links between Kutuzovskiy Prospekt and the Moscow River. Herzog & de Meuron, 2018.