The buildings of the VA Almazov Federal Center for Heart, Blood and Endocrinology are located on the edge of the picturesque Udelny Park. This large scientific and medical center was founded here in 1988: the project of the complex was developed at LenNIIproekt (architect Sergey M. Zeltsman), and the construction was carried out under the patronage of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation. However, in the early 1990s, due to economic problems in the country, the construction was frozen for more than 10 years, and it is not known whether work would have resumed if it had not been for the upcoming 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. The first start-up complex (polyclinic, blood transfusion station, administration) was eventually commissioned in 2006, the second (350-bed clinic, 54-bed intensive care unit, 16 operating rooms, etc.) was commissioned in June 2009. The third stage, the project of which was developed by Studio 44, is a treatment and rehabilitation complex with a conference hall, scientific, educational and laboratory research blocks, and should be built by 2014.
Despite the fact that the Heart Center occupies an entire block, there is not much space left for the construction of the third stage on its territory. The main building, which in the plan resembles the letters W and V placed on top of each other, is freely positioned exactly in the middle of the site. To the left of it, closer to the western border of the site, a 9-storey Perinatal Center is currently being built, which cannot be called compact either. The only place where Studio 44 could painlessly fit its complex was a narrow strip of land along the northeastern part of the medical district. The land plot with an area of only 3.68 hectares is bounded by the red lines of Akkuratov, Migunovskaya streets, the 3rd line of the 1st half (which almost deserves the title of the most paradoxical toponym of St. Petersburg) and the 4th highway planned for construction. The technical assignment received from the customer abounded in functions, and all over it turned out that the architects had to build a long and high building, which would form a new street facade of the entire complex, but cut off the existing buildings from the roadway. The idea of such a "wall of China" did not inspire Nikita Yavein at all, and after a long search, an alternative was found.
The architects decided to make the medical building high-rise. A very compact oval tower (and against the background of its immediate surroundings, the 20-storey building looks really almost a skyscraper) is shifted to the corner of the site in order to minimize the impact on the “neighbors”. However, according to fire safety requirements, it is impossible to place hospital wards on all 20 floors, therefore, operating rooms, a functional diagnostics department, administrative and educational and scientific premises are located above the 12th floor (the last from which firefighters can evacuate people). On the roof of the building, at a height of 83 m, there is a helipad. In addition to meeting the requirements of the same fire safety (evacuation using a rescue capsule), the helipad serves as a guarantee of the timely delivery of donor organs. The fact is that the nearest appropriate clinic is located on the other side of the city, in Kupchino, and the delivery time for donor organs is no more than three hours: given the constant traffic jams, you simply cannot do without a helicopter.
The vertical zoning of the building is easy to read on the facade due to the use of various finishing materials: the basement is clad in natural stone; the middle belt, where the wards are located, has a double "skin" - the porcelain stoneware walls are doubled with a glass screen to protect patients from street noise. The technical floors are recognizable by the lattice pattern, while the operating and administrative blocks are glazed.
The architects took the multifunctional hall for scientific conferences and exhibitions into a separate volume, considering that it is troublesome and irrational to combine such different structural structures as a hall and a high-rise part with a core of rigidity. In addition, such a solution will separate the flows of patients and researchers. The composition of this block is based on a combination of two one-story rectangular volumes of the entrance group with a green operated roof and a six-story multifunctional hall. The latter is designed in the form of two cylinders inserted into each other - a “deaf” high volume of the hall itself and a transparent vestibule and foyer “wrapped” around it.
The cylinder in which the hall is packed has completely blank walls. To compensate for its visual cumbersomeness, the architects installed this volume on columns, due to which the lower part of the building rose to the height of the third floor, and the space beneath it was fully visible. Illumination of the multifunctional hall is provided with the help of skylights, which provide only reflected overhead light, which is best suited for viewing exhibitions, and will be curtained during the display of video images. In contrast to the deaf inner volume, the outer cylinder is made in the most transparent structures. Its walls are a continuous stained-glass window that rises from the ground floor to a height of 13 meters. This volume contains lobby halls, a foyer, a cafe dining room, and all vertical communications are located along the perimeter (2 open stairs, 4 staircases and 2 passenger elevators).
Another block was designed as a separate volume for reasons not constructive, but technological. There is an area for MRI and radiation diagnostics, the equipment for which (in particular, magnetic resonance imaging) is hypersensitive to external influences. This building has the smallest height (only 3 floors) and a strict square shape, which provides a decent place in the overall composition of the complex for a modest size.
All three blocks are interconnected by the stylobate part and the basement, and with the existing and under construction buildings - with the help of transitional galleries. Along the red line of the quarter, they are lined up in a spectacular chain of volumetric geometric shapes - oval and round cylinders and a cube. The high-rise volume visually "fixes" the corner of this quarter, simultaneously fixing the gate of the 4th highway and its turn, and the two lower buildings serve as a kind of steps leading to the Perinatal Center.
Thus, the architects managed to divide the complex functional program of the complex into separate, simple components available for plastic comprehension. Therefore, probably, the architecture of the new medical and rehabilitation complex turned out to be laconic and clear. And the use of the same textures and materials as in other, existing and under construction, parts of the complex (the only exception was the radical blue color present in the decoration of the clinic and polyclinic building, which the authors of the project refused for the sake of greater coloristic restraint) - should become an additional guarantee quick and painless adaptation of new buildings in an already established medical district.
