The city of Perm is famous for its theater, collection of wooden sculptures, and last year's international competition for the building of the museum. Moreover, it is famous for its military factories. There were factories here before, but during the war Perm became the center of the "labor front" - military production and people who worked for them were evacuated here. The factories were brought by rail, laid along the banks of the Kama, and so they were placed next to the road and the river. Now it is difficult to approach the river - along it stretches a continuous industrial zone, connected by railways.
But this is not the only nuisance, there are many urban planning problems in the city. Areas are cut off from each other; it is also difficult to move from the “historical” half of Perm to the “socialist” (socialist city), since they are separated by a ravine with the Yegoshikha river; there are constant traffic jams in the city. In a word, there are so many problems that three urban planning teams are working on their solution at the same time: Perm, Dutch and Moscow. The head of the latter, Alexander Vysokovsky, when the question arose of designing a new building for the city administration, suggested that the mayor of the city invite the architect Ilya Utkin. Ilya Utkin, in turn, tried to make his project wider than “just a building”, and to take part in solving urban planning problems in a separate part of Perm.
Moreover, the area where the administration building is planned to be built is one of the most problematic in the city. This is in the literal sense of the word "knot" - there are traffic jams, and the only protected area in Perm, and "patchwork" ownership of plots. This is the place where the historic part of the city suddenly ends, ending in a ravine and a graveyard overgrown with trees. The checkered layout of the 18th century also comes to an end - a grid of small rectangular quarters, typical for urban planning of classicism. Several relatively small and straight streets suddenly bend and pull together to one bridge over a ravine, forming something like a river delta. On either side of it are wooden houses, the remains of old Perm, which are rotting and crumbling. Among them - in some places five-storey buildings, in some places a new stall-tower construction, and even one cottage village. There are two churches at the edge of the ravine. Either a city or a suburb. And constant traffic jams; somewhere it is difficult to pass, somewhere - to pass.
Designing for this place in Perm has been going on for a long time, and the proposed projects can even be classified according to typology. First, in the place of the "delta", where several streets merge into one bridge, a large road junction is being designed, which should "hang" over the protected houses. Secondly, several so-called "dominants" are being designed around the junction - glass towers swirling in a fashionable zakha-hadidov whirlwind. And finally, a competition was recently held for the building of the city administration - a site was allocated for it to the north of the "delta" -interconnection, in front of the park with a monument to the historian, politician and founder of Perm Vasily Tatishchev. The palace building turned out to be in a completely non-palace place - on the side of the road.
Ilya Utkin proposed a project that combines all three themes, including at the same time: an attempt at a non-trivial solution to transport problems; towers comparable in height with the abovementioned dominants, but designed in a classicist style; and a palace-like city administration building.
The complex consists of three buildings, lined up in one line strictly transverse to the delta of the streets. They are interconnected: at the bottom by a common rectangle of the underground-garage part, at the top - by hinged pedestrian bridges. At ground level, there are roads for cars, but there is no roundabout and the pattern of the streets is largely preserved as it was, in the form of a triangular fork, but a little geometrically aligned. The main artery, Lenin Street, continues to bend as it does now, but it gets rid of the pedestrian crossings (which were moved above) and widens. Above the ravine, a highway is separated from the bridge, which allows you to bypass the complex from the northern side (this track is connected with the road above the ravine, conceived in the Vysokovsky town-planning project).
“The main idea of this solution,” says Ilya Utkin, “is that pedestrians and cars do not interfere with each other.” A road junction is notoriously difficult to cross on foot - but it's also okay when it's on the edge of a city. And if in the center? Now it is difficult to get there, and after the construction of the interchange it may become impossible to get through. Ilya Utkin's version solves this problem.
Two of the three buildings are office centers; one, the northern one, is the administration. All of them are done very strictly in a style close to Art Deco, and are united by an asymmetrical, but extremely strict composition around a common center. The role of the center is taken over by one of the two office buildings: it consists of four identical towers set at the corners of a common pedestal. The towers are lined to the full height with flat pilasters, connected in three levels by arched bridges and when approaching the bridge from the side of the ravine are perceived as solemn propylaea - the gates of the city. They are similar to Chicago skyscrapers, but even more reminiscent of the cinema architecture depicting the 1930s. The impression is supported by a winged sculpture placed in front of the towers and visible in the alignment between them. However, the road does not pass through a giant "triumphal arch", and at the last moment, allowing the traveler to enjoy the experience, turns to the right.
The four towers are the unconditional center of the composition. To the south of them is another office building, with exactly the same square plan, but half as low and similar to a ziggurat (step pyramid). Inside, this pyramid is hollow, and the steps are successively closed, forming an atrium with a glazed top. A very unusual atrium, this space has nothing to do with glazed courtyards in supermarkets.
To the north of the towers is the city administration building - the protagonist of the project, since it was this building that served as the reason for the design. In relation to other, earlier projects, the administration building was moved to the south. Tatishchev Square appears in front of him from the side of the city and forms the second front square of the complex - according to the project, Lenin Street approaches the corner of the square, then turns and goes along it. The square with the monument to the founder of the city is becoming more noticeable than it is now.
The change of location made it possible to make the building large and solemn, quite palatial. It uses the well-known typology of the Palladian palace. The front facade facing the city is marked by a recessed portico-loggia with two projections on the sides; the facade facing the greenery of the ravine is designed as a park - with a protruding semi-rotunda.
The scheme is the most classic, and it is curious that it is typical of manor architecture and country palaces. Probably, the semi-rural environment of reserved houses and an overgrown ravine played a role here. However, the classical scheme is superimposed on a very large volume - there are six above-ground floors and two underground ones. The building is definitely larger than any classicism palace, even larger than the Stalinist theater (located a little further down Lenin Street): it has six floors, divided into two "large" tiers. The dimensions force the author to look at the famous scheme, again through the prism of Art Deco. And the proximity of Perm factories - to introduce motives of industrial architecture: according to Ilya Utkin, they are inspired by the forms of ribbed and stepped cylindrical vaults above the atrium.
The complex turned out to be exceptionally solemn. There are two squares, and skyscraper towers, they are also a triumphal arch, a pyramid, and a palace. In fact, this is a new city center, designed for a place that has never been there, but where it could theoretically be. Ilya Utkin himself undoubtedly calls such an intervention with the structure of the city "surgical", but considers it necessary - now there is a "hole" and, at the same time, traffic jams in the center of the city.
But what is typical, it is very difficult for an architect to make such an intervention. Its architecture is classically tough. For almost any classics, especially if it is taken for an urban planning project, solemnity and certainty, centricity and rigidity are characteristic. Almost all known urban planning schemes of classicism were orthogonal grids superimposed on top of "natural" chaos in order to cultivate it and put it in order.
Order in this case is a key word.
The complex of Ilya Utkin is designed to streamline, moreover, two things at once: on the one hand, the existing urban planning chaos, and on the other hand, future construction plans. But this kind of intervention is, by definition, surgical. In other words, it is impossible to build something so big without touching anything at all, without straightening it or changing it. This is a very large project, it is an obvious dominant, self-valuable and more than noticeable. Such a thing cannot be created without interfering with the existing environment, and rather radical intervention.
As a classic architect, Ilya Utkin considers it necessary to create a city-planning complex. What is true: such a complex will pull both parts of the city to itself and will become an unconditional accent.
And as a person, Ilya Utkin does not like surgical intervention in the urban environment, he is sure that every old house is good in itself and feel sorry for him. Only now they are rotting in their reserve, either in the center, or on the outskirts. With such a life position, which Ilya Utkin adheres to, it is very difficult for an architect to build something large. But maybe this is good - if a person with such a life position is engaged in a large urban development complex, there is confidence that any intervention will remain within the framework necessary to create a real urban center.
And yet - this complex is a rather unusual version of the office City. As a rule, and everyone is already accustomed to this, such solutions now consist of different glass towers, and here is a very strict kind of Art Deco.
