Star Of The Seas

Star Of The Seas
Star Of The Seas
Anonim

Walking from the Peter and Paul Fortress to the Strelka, you can see several sailboats moored to the embankment, usually with restaurants inside. Once, probably, there were many such ships along the Neva - now they are "retro". But the picture is still typical for the city. This historically typical for Peter picture can be seen in the silhouette of the club house on the Malaya Nevka embankment of the house known as Stella Maris. The house was designed and built by Evgeny Gerasimov, and last year he received a silver medal at the Zodchestvo festival.

The most characteristic and recognizable element of the architecture of this house is the large arched "canopies" over the glazed penthouses of the four buildings. It is they who make the silhouette of the building unusual, hinting at something of the sea in the roadstead. The name is also in tune with the architectural image - Stella Maris in Latin means "Starfish". The poetic name is found in a wide range of disciplines from biology to mythology, but ships are also called so. It turns out a house with a romantic nautical name, a bit like a ship and echoing (very distantly) with ships moored at the embankments of St. Petersburg.

I must say that the house-ship is an image for modern architecture so popular that it can be assumed without a hint that 10 percent (or even more) of buildings have ever been compared to ships. But usually a modern ship, some kind of ocean liner, which itself looks like a house, is suitable for comparison, and the interaction of images occurs, relatively speaking, in both directions: many modern houses look like modern ships, and many modern ships look like houses … And the theme this one has become, we must admit, almost a commonplace. A sailboat is another matter. It's not a shame to compare with it, there are not so many houses that look like a relic ship.

And here - a hint of a ship from some Peter's time echoes another hint - the Holland so beloved by Peter, or rather, the rows of brick houses with sharp roofs lined along its embankments. The rows are long, the houses are similar, the roofs are built-up. Brick and stone alternate. At Stelle Maris, everything is similar, but not so: the roofs are not gable, but rather "sailing", that is, the Dutch house of Peter's (for example) time merged with the Dutch ship of the same time. But all this is a hint. No literal quotes and pseudo-Amsterdam: however, we agree that it would be strange to heap a ship's mast on a house, even in order to remember the founding father of the city. So the house on Malaya Nevka may well be understood as a fairly recognizable example of reflection on the theme of favorite Petersburg themes, but nothing more - this is only one side of the building's architecture.

Its other side is obvious - it is a modern elite-class club house. It consists of four similar volumes, combined in pairs and separated by a caesura in the middle. The lobby on the ground floor leads through from the main entrance from Dynamo Avenue to the embankment exit and to the private marina. Above the first floor there are apartments, there are not many of them, as it should be in club houses, two per floor in each half. Each such apartment has a free layout, designed to the taste of a particular person or family, and view terraces, fully glazed, overlooking the river and the embankment opposite.

The decoration of the building is modern and varied. Brick planes and glass ledges of bay windows and balconies open onto the embankment. Here everything works on the already noticed similarity with the Dutch embankment: brick, abundance of glass, calm rhythm and especially narrow vertical proportions of repeating volumes. On the courtyard facade there is more Petersburg than Amsterdam - the stone cladding dominates here with a strict, depicting milestone blocks and from this reminiscent of a classic rustic pattern. The river facade is glass-water-brick, the courtyard facade is stone. The variety of textures continues in the lobby. It combines marble and matte tiles, bamboo and glass, and the furnishings are woven straw and leather.

So, the house, located near the sea, is small, elite, modern, and evokes associations with at least two favorite Petersburg themes - the Dutch hobbies of Peter the Great and the ship (which is essentially one theme). One more "Petersburg" conversation is connected here - about the embankments. In St. Petersburg, everyone knows this, there are many embankments, and historically they were built up with a "solid facade", as the emperor ordered. But Krestovsky Island is far from the central part of the city, it was once a summer residence, but now it is a parkland and there are almost no embankments on it. There are, however, several fragments, and one of them is located very close to Stella Maris - in front of house number six from the beginning of the 20th century (substantially damaged during this century). The embankment of the new club house was added to this fragment of the embankment, adding its own brick to the process of domesticating the banks of the Malaya Nevka. Maybe from here the architects had a desire to split the volume into four parts - in order to visually lengthen a piece of the embankment, to give it solidity. One way or another, Peter I would have been pleased - such a development on the shores of Krestovsky Island, in all likelihood, would have pleased him - it observes both the letter and the spirit of the rules he introduced.

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