Nikita Yavein always begins work on any project with a thorough study of the history of the place, and Vyshny Volochok not only became no exception, but also gave the architect a wealth of food for thought. The architects wanted to emphasize two key features of this city in their project - its advantageous geographical position and the system of canals conceived by Peter the Great for water communication between the basins of different seas. As you know, this undertaking of the emperor was brought to mind for more than one decade, but nevertheless Vyshny Volochek really became the center of river transport in Russia, and later, at the end of the 19th century, it was thanks to this that he was able to turn into a large center of light industry - the Ryabushinsky textile production facilities appeared here., Ermakova, Prokhorovs. "The partnership of Kosma Prokhorov's manufactories with sons" owned two factories - "Volochok" and "Tabolka". The latter went to "Studio 44": in Soviet times it was renamed "Proletarian avant-garde" and functioned quite successfully. Somehow her team survived the 1990s, but the 2000s, alas, became a time of decline and degradation - today the factory is empty and slowly collapsing.
“It was water that once gave Vyshny Volochok life and ensured its prosperity,” Nikita Yavein is convinced, “and today it no longer carries any functional load, it does not work for the city. It seems to us that this is a huge omission both for the urban planning structure of the city and for its economy, so in our project we are making an attempt to re-use the city-forming potential of water. Solving the local problem of redeveloping the factory area, we are actually pursuing a global goal - to “reload” the water system of the city, to create conditions for the revival of shipping and water industries”. Speaking about the scale of the goals, the architect is by no means exaggerating: the Studio 44 project does not return anything to Vyshny Volochek, but the water transport connection with Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as the possibility of transit passage of the city by water.
Here it is necessary to clarify that the Prokhorovs' factory is located at a considerable distance from the center of Vyshny Volochok, and on its territory the presence of canals in the city is not felt in any way. On the other hand, the Vyshnevolotsk reservoir is located relatively close to the factory, and it was its architects who decided to connect the city with a new canal 1.2 km long and 160 meters wide, which will pass just through the former manufacture.
After a new canal is brought to the territory of the factory, some of its buildings are flooded and turn into artificial islands. Their Studio 44 proposes to convert them into a hotel on the water and the accompanying infrastructure - a boat station, slipways for boats and yachts, cafes, restaurants. At the same time, only objects built in the Soviet era and not of significant architectural value are flooded (in particular, the weaving shop is being transformed into slipways). As for the historical volumes, erected in the second half of the 19th century from red brick, the architects, on the contrary, carefully preserve these buildings. One of them houses the Research Institute of Water and Water Transport, the other houses the museum of the same name.
The main factory building is being converted into the main hotel building, which can be entered by boat directly from the canal. In general, the connection between the various buildings by water gives this complex a pronounced character of a tourist attraction. However, the architects emphasize that there is an important socio-economic aspect in their project: the system of locks they have developed will provide for the first time access to the reservoir for pleasure boats and fishing boats.
Parallel to the canal, a green pedestrian boulevard is being laid - a wide esplanade filled with a variety of objects, from a fish market to a yacht club (navigation school). These two arteries - green and blue - saturated with various functions, form a new urban center - an architectural environment in which there are all conditions for people to meet.
All new construction projects are designed in the aesthetics of hydraulic engineering and port facilities, and the architects used the most neutral materials for them - glass, metal, wood - so that nothing would distract visitors from the harsh authenticity of industrial architecture of the century before last and the all-pervading water surface. As Nikita Yavein himself poetically concludes, "water fills empty spaces with meaning and energy, connects disparate buildings into a single ensemble and translates their architectural sound into a different register."
