1.3.2024
Vesper Tverskaya
Vesper Tverskaya is a new project by Babayants Architects, an award-winning architectural bureau.
Context
The apartments are in the Vesper Tverskaya clubhouse, designed by the Speech Architectural Bureau in the style of historical buildings. All interiors were already finished, and engineering systems, kitchen and bathrooms, and outlets for lamps were installed. The clients asked Babayants Architects to develop a design concept preserving the existing finish as much as possible, and fully furnish the interior. This is the first project of this kind in the bureau’s portfolio and a rather difficult task for architects who always implement projects from start to finish.
Task
Babayants Architects always apply an architectural approach to interior working with volumes, lines, and light. In Vesper Tverskaya, there is a different approach – a creation of interior concept as emotion. All elements are united and filled with a common meaning with a slightly guessable flair.
For the first time in their practice, the architects selected absolutely everything for this project: decor, including handmade Klein Reid porcelain vases, textiles (drapes, bed linen, towels, and bedspreads), accessories such as book holders, kitchen utensils – dishes, glasses, cutlery appliances, entrance mat, and home fragrances.
Concept
In Vesper Tverskaya, the pivot objects are the objects of the French designer Mathieu Lehanneur: a Pillars console made of green Irish marble and an Inverted Gravity marble coffee table on a base made of glass.
Already at the first acquaintance with the space, Artem Babayants, founder and chief architect of Babayants Architects, “saw” the objects of Mathieu Lehanner in the interior. Intuition was right.
The charm and plasticity of French objects, elegant and slightly naive forms, and play with gravity became the basis of the interior concept. Their uniqueness is no less important: all objects are collectible design items that are custom-made for the project.
At Vesper Tverskaya, the architects were curious to try an atypical combination of collectible pieces of furniture by European designers with works of art by Russian artists, for example, a round panel by Alice Spots above the Pillars console by Mathieu Lehanner. The union turned out to be very successful and sophisticated.
In this project, Babayants Architects were also fascinated by the theme of glass. Glass is tested for strength by the heavy weight of marble in Mathieu Lehanner’s objects. And in the bedroom, it reveals a new side – in the color gradient with which the Dutch designer Herman Ermix works. The objects of Herman Ermiks are pieces of art: a perfectly uniform gradient of color fills the glass, but leaves it completely transparent. In the bedroom, there are items from the Shaping Color collection of glass furniture: a panel above the bed with a transition between two delicate shades and an armchair. In the dining room, there is the Hub dining table on a glass leg, designed by Piero Lissoni for Glas Italia, and the Focus pendant lamp by Yuji Okitsu.
In the living room, the weightless Inverted Gravity table is surrounded by objects with streamlined, rounded shapes: the Standard sofa with folding armrests designed by Francesco Binfare for Edra and the Le Club armchair by Jean-Marie Massaud for Poliform.
The office in Vesper Tverskaya deserves special attention. The overall atmosphere is tactile, muted, natural, and reminiscent of the aesthetics of dried flowers.
According to legend, every element of the interior came here by chance, as if the clients encountered pieces of furniture at different points in their lives, fell in love with them, and brought them to the office so that the space would acquire new stories and things. But in fact, everything in the interior was carefully chosen down to the smallest detail, so here one can only find a neat, subtle hint of this legend.
In the office, there is a harmonious contrast of linear design (Hector shelving designed by Vincent van Duysen, Molteni&C, Scriba table by Patricia Urquiola, Molteni&C, Barbican work chair by Rodolfo Dordoni) and volumetric objects (Marenco sofa by Mario Marenco, Artflex, Pion and Vesper tables by Sancal, armchair Capitol Complex designed by Pierre Jeanneret, Cassina).