Linkor is located on Petrogradskaya Embankment, in the very heart of the so-called Business City. This is an actively developing area of the Bolshaya Nevka embankments (Vyborgskaya, Petrogradskaya, Pirogovskaya, Aptekarskaya), where today mainly class A business centers are being built from scratch or reincarnated from industrial complexes. This concentration of business activity is primarily due to geographic considerations. Delovoy City is just a stone's throw from the main highways of the Petrogradsky District (Kamennoostrovsky and Bolshoy Prospekt), as well as the Grenadiersky and Sampsonievsky bridges and the Gorkovskaya, Petrogradskaya, Vyborgskaya metro stations. In other words, it is very easy to get here from anywhere in the city, which large companies consider a prerequisite when choosing a location for their main office. An important role is played by the neighborhood with the most famous cultural symbols of St. Petersburg: the location of the office next to the house of Peter the Great, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the museum-apartment of Fyodor Chaliapin not only caresses the vanity of businessmen, but also serves as an additional very significant landmark in the city's space.
"Linkor" was built on the site of the former defense enterprise "Dalsvyaz". A few years ago, this territory was acquired by Industrial and Construction Bank (PSB) and was originally going to build its head office here. But then PSB merged into the structure of VTB, and the site on Petrogradskaya embankment began to be viewed as a development project under the management of the Baltic Financial Agency "Development". However, oddly enough, it was the initial intention to create the main branch of a large bank here that played a key role in the formation of the architectural appearance of the future building.
According to the head of Studio 44, Nikita Yavein, Linkor, of course, owes its maritime character to some extent to Aurora and the nearby Nakhimov School, but, first of all, to the customer, who compared the bank with a reliable ship, whose "stability" allows you to save your business in any economic storms. And since the business center was originally supposed to be built using the frames of the two existing buildings on the site, the architects immediately likened themselves to shipbuilders, and the construction site - a giant shipyard, where the skeleton of the future ship was already assembled, and it remained to be sheathed and divided into decks.
The ship theme in the architecture and interiors of the business center is emphasized everywhere, but not too intrusively. The architects wanted to create a vivid, memorable image of the building, but not become hostages of the invented brand. The most expressive of the "Linkor" turned out to be the front facade facing the river. It is sharpened like a ship's bow, glass cladding in places is not brought to the edge of the sides, metal frames are exposed - it seems that the "Battleship" is not yet ready to get off the slipway into the water. The building is also similar to the monolithic hull of a ship, thanks to the almost seamless joining of steel-colored glasses (which, perhaps, most of all makes the "Linkor" similar to the "Aurora"), and, of course, the rounded "bottom" raised on the supports, which made it possible to organize spacious parking. Thus, by the way, the architects saved numerous employees and visitors from wandering through the underground labyrinths, which cannot but be recognized as an extremely successful planning solution, because the comfort of arrival and departure is one of the indispensable conditions for class A business centers. And in this way, Nikita Yavein realized his long-standing professional dream - to implement on the scale of an entire building the famous plastic technique of Le Corbusier to create "tightening" portals. The administrative buildings in Chandigarh and the Chapel in Ronshan immediately come to mind, although the pillars-"legs" on which almost all of his residential units stand, seem to be an even more obvious quote from the great Korby.
In general, it turned out that this form of a building, which is by no means the most familiar for a business center, is capable of giving the project a number of functional advantages. For example, the very shape of the vessel, wide at the bottom and smoothly tapering at the top, ideally corresponds to the price and typological hierarchy of office premises. The "hold" with flexible planning rooms, which is democratic in terms of rental rates, has been occupied by large departments of large companies, smaller and more expensive offices are located higher, and the most prestigious ones are even higher. The upper "decks" with view terraces are reserved both for offices and for restaurants and cafes available to all citizens.
The ship theme is played out in an interesting and subtle way in the interiors of the business center. The complex consists of two buildings, which are connected by an atrium 25 meters high. And in order to get away from the banal glazing of the space between the two buildings, the architects seem to attract them to each other so that in the slightly inclined walls you can catch the outline of the ship (and the atrium itself - why not a hold?). Under the transparent ceiling, seagull lamps are placed on long cables, and a rather narrow white staircase leads to the upper level, whose lightness and elegance give rise to associations with a gangway.
"Linkor" is often called the latest creation of the pre-crisis development of St. Petersburg. Expressive and emphatically modern architecture, very expensive finishing materials, high-class engineering solutions - today it is only the business-state tandem that can implement a project that possesses all these qualities. However, now such mutually beneficial alliances are being formed more and more often, which means that office construction of the highest level in the city on the Neva will continue. And, perhaps, the main merit of “Studio 44” is that by “launching” its “Linkor”, Nikita Yavein's team proved that the time of modest and inconspicuous business architecture is in the past. Directly on the course - large avant-garde objects that, with all their visibility, are able to avoid both cheap sculpturality and deliberate outrageousness.
