Archi.ru wrote about the project of this building three years ago - then Studio 44 won the competition for choosing the general designer of the Academy of Dance, and since then the work has not stopped even for a day. The construction itself lasted two years, which is very little for an object of such complexity. However, it was not only the tight deadlines for the project implementation that became the indisputable achievement of the "customer-architect-developer" triad: the main thing is the quality of construction this team managed to achieve. By and large, this is the happy fate of an architectural project - when the embodied building is almost in no way inferior to the original concept.
The Dance Academy, with a total area of 12 thousand square meters, was built on the site of the former Assembly cinema on Liza Chaikina Street, where the rehearsal base of the Eifman Theater was located for many years. This building was not formally a monument (after the reconstruction of 1958, all structures and floors were replaced in it). However, the architects decided to preserve its main facade - firstly, so as not to disrupt the building front of the entire street, and secondly, in order, guided by the author's plan of 1911, to restore a spectacular entrance niche-exedra with a coffered half-dome. The ancient origin of this decorative element perfectly emphasizes the importance of tradition for the development of the art of ballet: without impeccable mastery of technique, choreographic experiments are impossible. The “background” for the niche is the blank facades of the new buildings of the school (these volumes are pushed back into the quarter and seem to be slightly parted, looking out from behind the “back” of the “Assembly”), however, their surface is somewhat complicated by the architects by laying out QR codes of famous sayings from bricks about ballet. In general, classics and modernity are inextricably intertwined on the main facade of the academy, symbolizing its strong connection with the best traditions of the Russian ballet school and openness to new things.
By the way, about the brick. Light beige Finnish bricks were used here, which was preferred primarily because of the color that matched perfectly with the restored façade of the Assembly. Already in the process of work it became clear that the Finnish standards allow much larger deviations in the size and evenness of the brick than the Russian ones. “In places, the masonry looked frankly uneven and unkempt, and the customer and contractor and I were not too lazy to disassemble these areas and manually align and measure each brick with a ruler,” says Yavein. “We are very proud of the result: this is perhaps the best masonry in the city among all the new bricks.”
The school building was erected on a very cramped site, and the most difficult thing for the architects in these conditions was to comply with all the strict design standards of educational institutions. “The norms have been passed to the limit,” Yavein admits, showing the modest courtyard space into which Studio 44 managed to fit two four-storey buildings - an educational and a residential one, connected by an atrium. The functional program of the "Academy" is really very rich: it is a full board, and the students here not only live and study, but also train, and, if necessary, are observed by all the necessary doctors (the medical center occupies a separate floor). However, least of all the architects wanted to simply distribute all the necessary premises into two "boxes" - it would be boring and hardly contribute to the creation of a creative atmosphere - therefore they prefer the wording "system of buildings" to the definition of "two buildings and an atrium". Through the atrium, as well as numerous passages, consoles and staircases, the buildings lead a fascinating and intense dialogue with each other.
The main public space of the Dance Academy is literally flooded with light and at the first moment even discourages with its scale and planning complexity. The architects worked brilliantly in contrast: starting your acquaintance with the building from its so restrained, buttoned-up main facade, you would never expect to find behind it a multi-level labyrinth with glass walls. The school's internal planning is based on the “aquarium principle”: teachers will always be able to trace the child's path from the dormitory to the classroom or hall, while all the details of the educational process will be hidden from outsiders' views.
The general color of the "aquarium" is light pistachio, and it took agonizingly long time to select it: when creating the children's institution, the architects tried to get away as far as possible from the "feeling of a polyclinic", that is, the interiors are light and clean, but faceless. The softness and expressiveness of the chosen tone is emphasized by the floors and stairs made of natural wood boards, as well as the colorful portals of the dance halls. Outside the atrium, the palette of the Academy's interiors becomes noticeably more complicated: the walls of its classrooms and halls are painted in pastel colors of dozens of shades, and the rooms for kids are decorated more vividly, and the playrooms in the residential block are completely solved in bright yellow. The architects admit that in this way they sought to compensate for the deficit of sunny days in the Petersburg latitudes.
In total, the "Academy of Dance" has 14 ballet halls, including one the size of a stage in the Imperial Theater (there are also about a hundred chairs for parents) and an assembly hall combined with recreation. “Studio 44” is especially proud of the latter: it arose for the same reason of the initial extreme constraint, but it turned out to be effective - some of the wide steps of the main staircase are separated by a white screen, turning into an amphitheater, visible from almost any room of the school.
The collaboration of Studio 44 with Boris Eifman and the school he created did not end with the creation of an educational and residential complex on Liza Chaikina Street. The building adjacent to the former cinematograph - the wooden Dobert-Steikman mansion will also soon become part of the educational institution. It is planned to accommodate the directorate, a library and a video library, as well as several rooms for invited teachers and guests of the Academy. Studio 44 fully preserves it, paying tribute to the uniqueness of a wooden building that has miraculously survived to this day.
