Zilart. Tufela Grove

Oleg Torbosov, founder of Whitewill, tells us.
I conclude my series of reflections on the territory of the former ZIL automobile plant and the Zilart residential cluster being built on its territory with a photo post from the Tuffel Grove Park. Initially, I accidentally called it "Truffle Grove" in the stories, but it turned out there were no truffles here, subscribers immediately corrected me, and I went to Wikipedia to clarify the etymology. With great probability the toponym "Tuffel's Grove" was formed from the Russified German surname of the landowner Teuffel.

"Zielart" stands on the border with this new park, which is 10 hectares in size. The photos show the monolith of the first two buildings adjacent to the park: Tower and Diamond.

The main ideologist of the arrangement of this area was designer Jerry Van Eyck, who let a spectacular pergola made of corten steel, which rusted beautifully through the entire park. Jerry called this structure a caterpillar - a caterpillar. Under the canopy of this winding metal "caterpillar" 1.3 kilometers long there is a walking area on two levels: upper and lower with cafes and shopping pavilions. Scattered among the bushes are various groovy benches, some of which even spin.

Another interesting feature of the "Tuffel Grove" is that all the paths of the park lead to the museum center "Hermitage-Moscow", which in the future will become one of the main points of attraction of the location.

I picked up the copter to get an aerial view of the park. We flew along a large sports area with exercise equipment, courts for volleyball, basketball, and a big tennis court. The pavement has faded a bit since opening and doesn't look as bright as it did in the first photos.

Next is a large children's area with slides and rubber surfacing, and beyond that a large pond-pool with emerald water. The blue lagoon effect is made possible by a unique multi-stage purification system of five lines. The water passes through filters with sand, then disinfected by ultraviolet radiation and the final stage is exposed to ozone.

It's kind of impossible to swim, but you can. On the day when I was shooting, the heat was +30 outside and there were a lot of local boys in the water, and in the shade of trees and bushes on blankets sunbathed older residents of "Zilart".

My inner urbanist is watching with interest and pleasure as a former rusty industrial zone has been transformed step by step in five years by the forces of the city and developers into a great new neighborhood to live in. We study with interest similar cases in London, New York, Paris, Berlin.

Of all the projects being built on the territory of "ZIL", "Zilart" is the first one where there is something to show and photograph, so I wrote about it. "Shagal", "Nau", "Nagatino Island" and "Ess Technopark" are still under construction, but I'm sure in the future and they will definitely get into the lens of my iPhone, becoming the heroes of the column in which I write about the new houses of the center of Moscow.

Well, I have already photographed for you some of the next projects - two new aesthetic premium complexes: Titul and Ordynka.