The underground hall is a new venue that will allow the Bolshoi Theater to hold rehearsals for musical groups of any composition, including joint rehearsals of a symphony orchestra and a choir. It was originally planned that the hall, located at a 15-meter depth, would become a venue for not only rehearsals, but also concerts, but later this idea was abandoned. The main arguments "against" were considerations of the safety of the audience. A year and a half ago, the then mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, subjected the project of an underground rehearsal and concert hall, made by ZAO Kurortproekt, to harsh criticism and ordered that Mosproekt-2 be involved in work on it. Architect Pavel Andreev (under whose leadership the construction of the first stage - the new stage of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater) was entrusted to develop proposals and a design for the interiors of a new spectator zone in the underground part under the outbuilding of the Bolshoi Theater to accommodate a new foyer and rehearsal hall. However, the participation of Andreev's workshop in the project of reconstruction of the famous theater was not limited to this.
“As a result of the analysis of the project already being implemented, we made a number of proposals for changing the planning structure of the underground part, changing and streamlining the movement of spectators,” says Pavel Andreev. - The work was carried out in parallel with the construction carried out in this zone of SS 155, which became a difficult test for all participants in the design, requiring understanding, tolerance, and the manifestation of true professionalism. The great merit that everything worked out belongs to the current head of the team of authors, the architect Yuri Stefanchuk, and the then head of construction, Yakov Sarkisov."
The work on the project of the underground rehearsal hall from the very beginning was based, if not on a conflict of interests, then on the constant opposition of two different points of view on what is the priority function of this space. In particular, the representatives of the city authorities thought that, first of all, it should serve as a representative foyer for holding important events of the state and local scale, while the theater management saw in it, first of all, a rehearsal hall, allowing, among other things, to conduct professional sound recording …
“When we arrived at this facility, the situation there was almost awful,” recalls Pavel Andreev. - The customer clutched his head in horror, as he was supposed to carry out construction, but he accepted the object from the predecessor in a difficult state of missed deadlines, lack of a project, approvals, estimates … works on stage, historical and underground parts, performed by subcontractors, not related to each other by contracts. And then Mosproekt 2 was added with its ideas for transforming the underground space and turning it into an autonomous complex, which, on the one hand, will supplement the theater with a new public space corresponding to the Bolshoi's world status, its functions of an “imperial” theater, and on the other, will provide a comfortable and safe stay for at least 300 visitors, who will have at their service not only a transformable concert hall, but also the whole range of “services” - wardrobes, buffets, even a conference hall”.
The work on the project began with a change in the planning structure of the underground part. The architects differentiated the spectator streams and organized access to the underground part both from the main lobby of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater and directly from Petrovka Street and Schepkinsky Proezd. The new foyer is located at a depth of 8 meters and is connected to the entrance level by stairs, elevators and escalators, which provide services for visitors and the organization of various events not only before or after the performance, but also in parallel with them, be it celebrations, presentations or exhibitions.
The previously isolated space of the rehearsal hall is now transformed with the help of mobile soundproof partitions and a tablet, divided into a number of segments, thus allowing to vary the level and “profile” of the concert venue, creating the necessary conditions for accommodating a large orchestra, an amphitheater for a choir or spectator rows with chairs. Special mechanical equipment, developed by Moscow engineers, will allow not only to carry out such a "transformation" as quickly as possible, but also make it absolutely safe for the audience - when the floor level changes, synchronously sliding barriers will exclude the possibility of a person falling into the resulting gap.
Following the design of the floor of the theater's front space, the central part of the foyer resembles an open fan in its plan, and the semicircular transformable platform, bounded by columns located around the circle, evokes the classic images of Greek and Roman theaters with an open stage. When designing this space, the architects paid special attention to measures to suppress underground vibration noise transmitted from the metro through building structures, and to acoustic treatment of internal surfaces, developed with the participation of German engineers.
As for the interiors of the rehearsal hall, they were developed by the workshop back in May 2009 and were selected by the theater management from among other proposals. Their main theme was the curtain being pulled apart, revealing the walls of houses similar to the Renaissance Roman palazzo. Thus, as Pavel Andreev explains, a space is created in which, in fact, the theatrical performance was born. “Once upon a time, buildings, perspectives of streets and squares of Italian cities served as natural scenery for him, which were subsequently transferred many times into the architecture of theater buildings and the auditoriums themselves in many countries,” says the architect. The color scheme of the interiors is traditional for the Bolshoi Theater - it is a light beige and golden scale. Due to the fact that combustible materials are prohibited for use in underground space, natural stone (granite, marble, travertine) is used, as well as decorative plaster of various finishes, imitation of boiserie.
So, the underground hall resembles a classical theater stage deeply buried underground; Renaissance rather than antique, although it is naturally more natural for the antique to be underground. Thus, the architect finds himself within the framework of the theme of "constructing ruins", which has been popular among Moscow classics for the last 20 years. In this situation, this is logical: the architect metaphorically "digs up" in the basement of the Bolshoi the classical roots of his art in the form of his figurative (that is, never before) a predecessor theater. In a similar way, and by the way, nearby, in the Alexander Garden, two hundred years ago Osip Bove built ruins of a Greek Doric ("Grotto", 1821) under the walls of the Kremlin, which, of course, never existed there and could not have been there.
It is not the first time that Pavel Andreev has come across important architectural monuments of Moscow: it is he who, in particular, owns the projects of contextual reconstructions in the historical center of Moscow, as well as works on the restoration and reconstruction of GUM and Manezh.
