The Lithuanian castle, built at the end of the 18th century at the intersection of the Moika and the Kryukov Canal, first served to house the Cavalry Regiment, and then became a city prison for criminals. The original building - an irregular 5-gon with round towers at the corners - was erected by the architect I. E. Starov, a famous master of classicism. It was rebuilt into a prison by the no less famous I. I. Charlemagne, which significantly changed the internal layout of the castle, but retained its external appearance. Perhaps it would have survived to this day, if not for the February Revolution - the workers freed the prisoners, and the castle itself was burned.
And only in the 1930s, residential buildings were erected on this site, and then a kindergarten - a three-storey modernist "cube", noticeably knocked out of the general rhythm of the embankment development. In 2007, this building was privatized by the well-known Okhta Group, which had extremely ambitious plans for it - Erik van Egeraat himself was invited to develop the reconstruction project. But the crisis tempered the ardor of investors, the kindergarten was not demolished in the end, but only minimally reconstructed, turning into a hostel "Graffiti". As the name suggests, its facades are adorned with vibrant geometric compositions in the style of Piet Mondrian. In this form, the building even managed to become a tourist attraction, although the hostel was originally conceived as a temporary measure. The development of a new project was entrusted to the team of Evgeny Gerasimov.
The bright "cube", despite all its popularity, was recognized by the KGIOP as a discordant element of the urban environment, and Evgeny Gerasimov agrees with this definition. It's all about the location of the site - it closes the Moika perspective from the side of Bolshaya Morskaya Street and is clearly visible from near and far points of both embankments. And although the building of the hostel “holds” the panorama in its own way, it is quite obvious that it does not fit into its surroundings - visually crushed by the higher roof of the building behind it, it violates the scale and rhythm of the facade of the embankment development. “We never doubted for a moment that the optimal urban planning solution for this place would be an object capable of regenerating the historical and urban planning environment,” says Evgeny Gerasimov. “In other words, with the help of the new building, we tried to restore the planning and volumetric-spatial structure of the quarter, in particular, to return the original perimeter and close the development line from the side of the Kryukov Canal”.
When building a residential building on the site where the Lithuanian castle once stood, the architects practically borrowed the plan of the latter. The underground part of the new building, occupied by the parking, is precisely the pentagon, which made it possible to use the area allocated for building as efficiently as possible, and the above-ground volume in the plan is the letter R, with the inner courtyard inscribed between the sticks. As you might guess, the latter is located on the roof of an underground parking lot.
Embedding the house in the panorama of the Moika River, the architects tried to make it flesh from the flesh of the embankment development, which mainly dates back to the 19th century. Hence the proportions and scale of the projected building - two-section and six-story, it has a number of elements and techniques that make it akin to its closest neighbors. Thus, the main facade has a symmetrical solution with a dedicated central part - the niche of the main entrance, flanked by two large oval windows. The first floor is faced with volumetric stone rustic, the rest - with a more delicate texture of natural stone, the shade of which varies from dark beige to almost cream.
The authors were definitely inspired by the Petersburg neoclassicism of the 1910s: the characteristic attic pediment inscribed in the balustrade above the roof, the brutal rustic fur coat of the first floor, pilasters stretched to a height of three floors leave no doubt about this. Although the choice of a light Ionic order, flutes on pilasters and generally saturated, but dryish decor refer us to the earlier architecture of historicism, and the oval windows flanking the entrance could, of course, be found in a neoclassical building, but are more common on the facades of houses built in the spirit of northern modernity.
Nevertheless, the main source for architects - which is felt quite clearly - remains the Lithuanian Castle. It was a distinctly Empire building, at the corners of which, partly buried in the array of two-storey buildings traditional for late classicism, there were large, wide and squat round towers. Paying tribute to their predecessor, the architects also hung round towers at the corners of the main facade, however, their proportions are much more vertical and graceful. The towers are echoed by two triangular bay windows flanking the entrance - all together makes the main facade of the house overlooking the embankment unexpectedly plastic, stucco and volumetric, and from a distance it resembles a castle - not that laconic and squat, Lithuanian, but some kind of castle from the Hungarian XIX century, romantic and almost toy.
Another motif of the Lithuanian castle is a large, tall, but schematic triglyph frieze that crowns the main body of the building. A very similar frieze adorned the castle of Starov-Charlemagne, and in this case the motive looks definitely a quote. Neoclassicism did not use such elements. However, the triglyph frieze is also found on the neighboring Empire building - and the frieze from the facades of Evgeny Gerasimov visually continues its horizontal, striving, as we have already said, to fit into the historical building as organically as possible.
And finally, the attic pediment, which we previously identified as neoclassical, can be understood as a reminder of another pediment that crowned the entrance building of the Lithuanian Castle. It is curious that for neoclassical architects, the shape of the attic with a triangular top was a reference to the Empire style. In this case, two themes: the Empire prototype and the neoclassical style - quite unobtrusively merge into one, giving free rein to art critics-interpreters and (which is probably more important) - a multi-component contextual rationale for the project of the new building.
So, in the new project of Evgeny Gerasimov, many historical allusions are found: some of them serve as a reminder of the Lithuanian castle burned down during the revolution, some help to fit the house into the waterfront structure, and also (which is important) designate its belonging to the category of elite housing.
But in its architecture, you can find a lot of modern. In particular, one of the characteristic features of modern historicism is the multi-composition of quotations, the possibility, upon closer examination, to discover signs of different styles (in this case, Empire, modern and neoclassical). In addition, wide windows indicate modernity, as well as the absence of a characteristic support console, a kind of "double chin" in the corner towers, and a crowning tent-like turret or faceted dome, which in the late 19th - early 20th centuries were practically indispensable.
Since the towers are unsupported and crowned with nothing, the unsupported vertical theme weakens and the building begins to be perceived as consisting of horizontal layers - basement, main and two upper, lighter and simpler, reminiscent of superstructures that were often built over tenement houses before the war … Two things follow from this. Firstly, this building has less tectonics than there was in its historical prototypes, but in spite of all the conservatism of its facades, there is a completely modernist gravitation towards horizontal. Two themes, classical tectonic and modernist "ribbon", intertwine in a rather bizarre combination - which makes the building recognizably modern, belonging to our time.
Secondly, the upper floors receding from the edge, in this case similar to later superstructures over a historical building, set the theme for imitating several life cycles of a building - when a completely new house pretends that it has been rebuilt several times. That can also be considered a "sign of the times." Finally, the stepped silhouette created by the receding sixth floor is the most recognizable feature of a modern house built in the historic city.
By the way, the attic floor, although it is hidden from passers-by behind the cornice, will do a good job when viewed from afar: behind the new house, thanks to its height, as if behind a screen, the Soviet buildings of the quarter will disappear.
