We talked in detail about the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater in an article dedicated to the results of the competition - a classical building with a pediment and a portico is deservedly considered a symbol of the city and one of its main centers of culture, but the famous troupe has long since become "little". The need to reconstruct the theater has been discussed in Perm for the last 20 years, but more and more theoretically, since the city lacks either architects capable of developing a modern project, but appropriate and worthy to coexist with a historical building, or funds to bring these ideas to life. The situation changed radically when international architectural competitions began to be held in Perm, and Sergey Gordeev, a young, wealthy and very fond of modern architecture, became a senator of the Perm Territory. The Avangard Foundation, headed by him, organized a competition for the best design of the new building of the Opera and Ballet Theater. Well-known foreign bureaus were invited to participate in the competition, which designed and built several theaters and concert halls. Our country was represented by Sergei Skuratov - according to Gordeev, "the best Russian architect, capable and able to compete with Western colleagues." By the way, for Skuratov, this is also far from the first work on a theater project - he took first places in competitions for the Theater for Future Generations (UNESCO), the Ballet Theater named after I. Anna Pavlova in Moscow, Opera Bastille complex. And all the more important for the Russian architect was to thoroughly think over the project for Perm, to make it not only beautiful and memorable in a competitive manner, but also elaborated in terms of functions and everyday life, 100 percent realizable.
One of the most difficult contradictions in the terms of reference was the requirement to design a complex larger in area than the existing ensemble, and at the same time not distorting the scale and proportions of the latter. Skuratov and his team had dozens of options - extensions at the back and sides, a building that “hugs” the existing theater, a new volume symmetrical to the old one - and all of them were ultimately dismissed precisely as “confusing” the original scale. The fact is that the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater is located in a park bounded by Lenin, Sibirskaya, Sovetskaya and 25th Anniversary of October streets, and Skuratov valued the existing architectural and park composition almost more than the historical building itself. “When a facade with a portico closes the park's perspective, people of various professions and nationalities immediately understand that they are facing a theater,” explains the architect. “This is a classic, recognizable image that has become a city-forming image in the world's cultural consciousness, and it would be a crime to distort it, so we decided to develop it.”
The topic of development and growth in general has become key for the project. The architect proceeded from the fact that the theater is not only and not so much an architectural monument as a living creative organism, constantly improving. And those transformations that the genres of opera and ballet are experiencing today, the classical theater building is no longer very typologically suitable. So the scenario of construction next to the historical building of another one, somewhat similar to it, disappeared. The architecture with the "Bilbao effect", that is, defiantly modern and shocking, seemed just as unacceptable to Skuratov. For the new building, it was necessary to find an image somewhere in the middle - it had to be delicate in relation to both history and nature, and at the same time it had to be immediately recognized as a theater, moreover, a theater of the 21st century.
Classicist architecture, with all its expressiveness and monumentality, has one very essential feature - it is absolutely self-sufficient. And you can only look for inspiration in it if you work in the same style. Since this does not in any way apply to Sergei Skuratov, from the very beginning he turned his gaze not to the theater, but to its surroundings, interpreting the historical building as an example of park architecture. “The location in the park has always made it possible to enrich the compositional solutions and external spatial connections of the building with the help of such objects, for example, as side wings, projections, wings, front and service portals, stairs, ramps,” the architect rightly notes. “But all these possibilities were not realized in the existing theater, probably because the vast park around it was of much later origin. It was destroyed on the site of the stone Gostiny Dvor destroyed in 1929. Today's theater, in addition to the main, rather modest entrance on the main facade, has only an even more modest, inconvenient service entrance on the east side. In fact, this is a closed volume, not just cramped and outdated, but also devoid of the necessary functional connections with the outside world. And it was precisely the desire to provide the theater with these connections that ultimately prompted us the concept and composition of the new volume”.
In designing the new theater, the architects used the principle of versatility, creating new entrances and thus incorporating nature and the city into the sphere of active theatrical influence. Instead of the former strict division into zones "street / theater" and "external / internal" Skuratov creates in the park a system of buildings connected by common functions and a public space that is constantly open to the public. At the same time, the existing theater remains the center of intersection of the main park directions and perspectives, and the architects took special care to ensure that after reconstruction, nothing would interfere with going around it, as before. It was possible to achieve such visual independence of the historical building, first of all, with the help of the L-shaped composition of the new volume. Skuratov managed to distribute all the functions prescribed by the terms of reference in the complex in such a way that the main volume of the new stage was hidden behind the existing building, and its wings seemed to embrace (albeit at a respectful distance) the canonical facade with a pediment.
The long side of the letter L is located along 25th Letiya Oktyabrya Street, that is, parallel to the eastern facade of the existing building. In this wing, there are art, cafes, rehearsal rooms and a small hall for 200 people - the so-called experimental stage, designed for chamber performances of modern ballet and opera. The entrance to this part of the building is decorated with a perspective portal with a ramp - a spectacular white-stone bell is sloped towards the main building. Such a curtsey to the existing theater, on the one hand, is instantly recognizable as a very Skuratov gesture (suffice it to recall his residential building at 11 Burdenko, the high-rise part of which is slightly turned and bent as if nodding affably to an earlier building located diagonally by the same author), and on the other hand, it allows you to create a cozy public space on the border of the theater and the park.
The “foundation” of the letter L is, in fact, a new stage with a hall for 1,100 seats, warehouses for scenery and costumes, a lecture hall, the Diaghilev museum, an atrium space of the foyer with bars, buffets and a restaurant. The bulk of the newly built space, including loading areas for scenery and restaurants, warehouses and parking lots, are located on the north side, which made it possible to maintain the usual orientation of the theater. And the relief of the park - a slight slope towards the Kama - allowed the architects, without raising the height of the new building, to raise the new entrance groups, likening them to stage platforms noticeable from afar. And if a developed ramp leads to the promising portico, then the main entrance to the new building is designed as a giant loggia with an oval 11-meter oculus, unambiguously referring to the famous Pantheon. And although Perm is very far from Rome, not only geographically, but also climatically, Sergei Skuratov decided that this hole should be left open: in the evenings, drops of rain or snowflakes falling through it will be highlighted, and the overall dimensions of the loggia are such that theater visitors will always find, where to hide from precipitation. The oculus theme has also become one of the central ones in interior design - overhead lights in rehearsal rooms and lamps in the foyer and auditorium have the same oval shape, and in the latter case, the plafond is surrounded by a scattering of twinkling stars.
The choice of facing materials has also become a tribute to the harsh climate of the Perm Territory. The facades of the new theater are wrapped by Skuratov with energy-saving glass, on the inner surface of which a matte white coating is applied, symbolizing frost. The second layer behind the glass contains composite panels with a thin layer of copper (0.1 mm), and, depending on the functional areas, they are placed close to each other, or a technological gap is left between them and the glass, or a space with escape stairs is organized. Sergey Skuratov, who always very generously imbues his projects with literary and historical parallels, emphasizes that warm copper reflections symbolize not only copper pipes and the sought-after theatricality, but also "brass bands in the Perm city garden of Diaghilev's times" and the extraction of copper ores, which has been famous for centuries Perm Territory.
The superposition of milky white glass and mysteriously shimmering reddish copper gives the building a truly magical glow, which in daylight is noticeable only to a very attentive eye, but in the dark, that is, during and after performances, it will be emphasized with the help of special lighting. And this duality of the appearance of the new theater, coupled with its extremely rational planning and composition, is perhaps the most important and successful find of the architect in this project. Partially opaque glass in the daytime deprives the architecture of the theater of any pomp, dissolves in the surrounding landscape and makes it modestly reflect the historical building. In the evening, it is precisely this that includes architecture in a spectacular spatial performance, when the theater, as if by magic, expands its boundaries and turns all passers-by into enchanted spectators.
