White Sails

Location: Odessa, Ukraine

White Sails is the name of a complex of luxury flats in Odessa, with panoramic views across the Black Sea. In addition to flats and penthouses, with floor space varying from 75 m2 to 200 m2, White Sails also houses a health and fitness centre, an underground car park, outdoor sports facilities, a playground and a barbecue area.

ASSOCIATIONS

The name of the complex, White Sails, refers to its waterside location. From the Black Sea, the complex looms up on the horizon like an enormous sailing ship. The light colours of the façades and the billowing forms underline the associations of the name. White Sails not only conjures up nautical associations but is also reminiscent of the streamlined, undulating architecture of designers such as Luigi Moretti, who was the architect for the politically-charged Watergate Hotel complex in Washington in the 1960s, amongst other projects. White Sails was designed by Beletage, a firm with branches in Odessa and Kiev taking commissions both within and outside Ukraine. The firm has demonstrated that it is equally at home in a great many markets and distinguishes itself through the multitude of styles in which it works, ranging from funky modern to contemporary classical. White Sails can be described as modern and monumental. The building – ranging in height from seven to twenty floors – has a façade measuring 32,000 m2, approximately half of which is glass. The building combines a streamlined, undulating shape with extraordinarily fine detailing, resulting in White Sails looking as if it is made from a single piece of material. The horizontal stripes of the glass façades follow the concave and convex lines of the building with ease. The façades have been put together with a tailor-made variant of the CS 77 system for windows and doors, with a hidden vent, designed specially for this project. This system has already proven itself as being exceptionally well-suited to extreme oceanic climates as found here by the Crimea. Yuriy Belikov, the head architect within the White Sails project, praises the collaboration with Reynaers. This went flawlessly, and in his opinion there is therefore no need to say more than that. At my insistence, he adds a simple observation: “The high quality and the precision in the dimensions of the Reynaers façade solutions made it possible for us to work on the White Sails complex at a steady pace.”