The island, built by Peter the Great and retaining to this day the harsh appearance of the era of the first Russian emperor, for almost 300 years was accessible only to the military. And only getting rid of New Holland from the "top secret" stamp, which, by the way, took more than one decade, allows us to hope that in the 21st century the island will become an integral part of the city's territory. As you know, the city and the investor have very big plans for New Holland - from a closed military unit, it should turn into a dynamic, diverse quarter, in which cultural life would rage all year round. This is exactly what became the subject of an international competition, to which, among other 8 teams, one of the most famous architectural bureaus of St. Petersburg "Studio 44" was invited to participate.
Nikita Yavein recalls that the work on the concept of the revival of New Holland began in the bureau with a brainstorming session - the architects were looking for a "key", the main direction that would determine the entire scenario of the project's development. And such a key has become … delicacy and democracy. “You see, attempts to reconstruct the island have been undertaken more than once, and often they were made by the most star architects, for example, Eric Moss, Norman Foster, Eric van Egeraat, but all these initiatives caused an extremely negative reaction from society and ultimately ended in nothing. - explains Nikita Yavein. “I think the reason is, first of all, that these projects, although they promised the city mountains of gold, did not revive the island itself, but only used it as a convenient springboard for placing commercial space.” That is why the architects of Studio 44 set themselves the task of overcoming this “tradition” and treating the existing image of New Holland as delicately as possible - an architectural monument of the 18th century, shrouded in an aura of mystery. In addition, they assumed that the city will accept the idea of renovating the island the more willingly, the more necessary it is for him, the city, to create space there. "What does Petersburg need?" - The architects not only discussed this burning issue among themselves, but attracted several consultants, including Colliers International, the Pro ARTE Foundation for Culture and Art, and the renowned architectural critic Grigory Revzin.
“We realized that when creating a new public space in St. Petersburg, it makes no sense to rely on its scale or, say, innovation, because the main thing missing in the former imperial capital is places of warm informal communication,” says Nikita Yavein. - Today the city has one main public space - Palace Square, which to the greatest extent embodies the features of the sovereign image of St. Petersburg and on which, due to this, Christmas trees, skating rinks, and outdoor games are not very appropriate. So we decided to create an alternative to Palace Square, open to everything informal, experimental and new."
The antipode of Dvortsova in the reconstruction project of New Holland is the inner triangular area of the island, in the center of which is a pond. Now this reservoir, frankly, rather scares off with its appearance, but the architects figured out how to use its potential to the maximum: the system of locks will, on the one hand, preserve the navigation of small vessels (for this purpose, Studio 44 even breaks through a new channel connecting the pond with Admiralty Canal), and on the other hand, it will allow you to purify, heat and freeze water in the pond. Thus, in summer, it will even be possible to swim in it, in winter it can be turned into a skating rink, and if necessary, the reservoir can be drained and transformed into a stage area. In the latter case, the entire square turns into a large open-air festival center, and its "vestibule" is a loggia - a giant arch covering a low-rise forge building with a translucent cover, built in the middle of the 19th century by the project of military engineer Pasypkin next to the famous circular prison.
By the way, in the very prison tower, which, according to one version, we are obliged to use the expression “to get into the bottle”, “Studio 44” proposes to create a boutique hotel and a conference center - the latter will be located in the inner round courtyard, which the architects cover with a translucent roof … Since both of these functions require constant and fairly active transport links with the city, a road is laid through the western arrow of the island. With the help of two bridges, it connects New Holland with the Moika Embankment and the Admiralty Canal, and from it you can get to an underground three-level parking lot on the island itself. Of course, given the complex hydrogeology of the city as a whole and the man-made island in particular, the architects' proposal to build an underground (actually underwater) parking looks too bold, but Nikita Yavein argues that from an engineering point of view, there is nothing impossible in this - the main thing is not to overdo it with the area and number of storeys of this building.
Numerous cultural functions - theaters, art salons and workshops, creative studios and laboratories, as well as shops and cafes - Studio 44 offers to be located in the former warehouses of the ship's timber, which make up the bulk of the development of New Holland. These buildings, which previously served for drying the ship's timber (logs were placed vertically), have a unique structure: they consist of fifty compartments with dimensions of 33x9x20 m. According to the architects, these "boxes" can accommodate a variety of functions - from an auditorium and an art gallery to a small auditorium and loft. By combining these types of fixtures in different combinations, one can extremely flexibly and quickly vary the scheme of functional filling of the complex: the sketches of "Studio 44" clearly show how different the "filling" of historical buildings made of red brick can be.
As you know, there should have been three such buildings on the island, but the last one - along the Admiralty Canal - was never built. The terms of reference of the competition allowed the participants to fill this gap, and only Studio 44 deliberately did not use this opportunity. On the site of the unfinished building, the architects propose to lay out a park - in memory of the ship's forest that was once stored here, they call it the Ship Grove. On the sides of the grove are flanked by multifunctional pavilions made of light structures, designed for large-scale events. According to the authors of the project, tall trees will create a kind of "permeable wall" between New Holland and the outside world and thereby help preserve the romantic aura of an impregnable fortress, while simultaneously transforming it into a picturesque park open to any initiative.