Building on Nevsky Prospekt is a responsible business, so many different things have merged in this sound. And the place is cult, and the ensemble is holistic. Nevsky Prospect itself is, to some extent, the facade of its city; it requires both attention and respect. Even in that part of it that Evgeny Gerasimov has been developing in recent years - behind Vosstaniya Square, closer to the Lavra than to the Fontanka. Here, on the odd side, five years ago, a house with an arch was built, a laureate of several diplomas, related constructivist techniques with the favorite St. Petersburg typology of a house with a long walk-through courtyard - an inner street. Not far, on the opposite side of the street and a little closer to the center - in 2008, another house of Evgeny Gerasimov, Le Grand, was completed.
This house consists of two parts, and the difference between them is so clear that at first glance one might think that we have two houses in front of us, one behind the other, or one is built into the other as in a shell. In fact, everything is both simpler and more complicated. Above the stone-faced volume of a residential building, neatly built into the development line of Nevsky Prospekt, rises a glass ellipse of two-storey penthouses. Bristled with metal cornices and furnished with metal posts, typical hi-tech. The resulting effect is akin to that produced by Sir Norman Foster's New York Hearst Tower - a glass skyscraper inserted into the box of a classicist building of the early 20th century.
Here, however, it is not a skyscraper and the base of the house is not old - but the theme is obviously the same - the interaction of Art Deco and hi-tech, traditionally calm and metal-energetic, well, or old and new, in the end. And it should be noted that the mutual penetration of the two principles is felt more on Nevsky than in New York.
The stone volume of the main house continues the line of neighboring apartment buildings of the 19th century and assimilates their three-part scheme: at the bottom there are wide shop windows, and the rhythm of the upper floor is half that of the main part. The facades are volumetric and multi-layered, covered with flat stone rusticum and pierced with verticals. At the same time, the discreet stone façade allows for glass and metal. The rows of bay windows on the side of the lane are the most notable example, but there are also gray horizontal lines of the interfloor rods and the same gray inserts in the window openings.
On the other hand, the columns of the glass-metal volume of the penthouses also appeared here for a reason. As befits the contextual architecture of St. Petersburg, a classicistic allusion is "stitched" into the ellipse - it is hard not to notice its resemblance to the rotunda that crowns the most pompous palaces. The metal "hedgehog" is not very similar to the dome - the ellipse of the penthouses even more resembles a wide ship's pipe. But the corresponding classic silhouette - sustained and hinted - is created.
Something similar is observed in the internal structure of the building. The house is relatively small, but it surprisingly uses at least three layouts. On the lower floors, there is a miniature passage between the shops - which is quite logical for the commercial part of the building. Above the shops, at the level of the third floor, there is a covered courtyard with lifts, which unites two typologies: the “chain” of courtyards characteristic of St. Petersburg apartment buildings and the idea of an atrium, which is popular nowadays.
But the essence here is not planning techniques, they are the result of finding an optimal solution for a complex area, a small and extended into the depths of the lane. The main impression is the first: the contrast between two dissimilar volumes, traditional and metallic-modern. Contrast, skillfully used and pacified in a timely manner.
