In September 2014, the participants of the IAC (Moscow Architectural Club), as part of the offsite forum, became guests of the Aalto library in Vyborg. The library opened after restoration about a year ago. The restoration project was developed by the Finnish "Committee for the Restoration of the Vyborg Library" and the design institute "Spetsproektrestavratsiya". The strongest impression of the result and the unique approach to the restoration of the building prompted a desire to share what they saw and heard from the authors of the project. After all, it is almost impossible to believe that such a happy exception became possible in Russia.
The library in Vyborg is the only Aalto building in Russia and for our country it is also unique in that in Vyborg this modernist building is one of the main attractions. Tourists go to see it, residents and city authorities are proud of it. She is a real cultural center. And after such a successful restoration, the library became a symbol of hope for the revival of Vyborg.
Restoration of the original appearance
The main idea of the restoration was the complete restoration of the original appearance of the building with the maximum preservation of the author's architectural and technological solutions, as well as providing the facility with new equipment that allows organizing the functioning of the library in accordance with modern requirements. They were restored according to the original drawings preserved in Aalto's workshop, photographs from different years, and notes of the author's supervision (the master often made changes during construction). We used only natural materials while preserving the technologies of the original construction as much as possible.
It was decided to keep some elements of the 1961 reconstruction. So, they decided not to remove the massive registration and service department, to leave the organization of the lobby group. Along with a careful attitude to history down to the smallest detail - in the wardrobe, for example, numbers of the sixties were left for use - the library is adapted to modern requirements: special information plates have been developed for orientation in the building of the visually impaired, tables with height adjustment have been purchased for the offices of employees, the storage is equipped with modern systems for books of various categories.
The library staff emphasize that the original layout and arrangement of the library are very convenient for modern work, and everything was thought out by Aalto to the smallest detail.
During the dismantling work, various original details were revealed. In the corridor of the newspaper and magazine hall, a ramp was discovered along which books were transported to the book depository, as well as a sliding door mechanism that fenced off this corridor from the book depository. Niches laid in the 1960s have been opened in the children's library, and an original staircase in the book depository.
The material of the facade of the main entrance of the library is soapstone. During a trip to the Finnish company Tulikivi, which is located in North Karelia, after a thorough analysis of the preserved original sample, it turned out that in 1935 the stone for the decoration of the library was mined from this quarry. True, the stone of 1935 lay at a depth of 50 meters higher than the development is currently underway.
At the entrance to the children's room, wild grapes were planted, as originally planned, and the sprouts were brought directly from Aalto's house. The color of the marquise's fabric is also author's, the shade is really a little different, notes Elena Rogozina, director of the library, and they were made for convenience on automatic control instead of manual control.
It was pleasantly surprised that all the doors of the central entrance are open, in contrast to the usual tradition of leaving only one side open. The doors have been recreated from a bronze profile according to drawings.
Restoration of technological solutions and interior details “The task was to design two main parts: the library itself with its various departments and a group of premises for a wide public purpose - for lectures and the work of various circles … There is a book depository and reading rooms. Therefore, the central part of the building is designed as a closed volume, isolated from external influences. The architectural solution of this part is based on the creation of optimal lighting conditions that meet the hygiene of vision, as well as the development of heating and ventilation systems,”wrote Aalto.
The furniture is made according to original technologies and design by the Artek company, created by Aalto back in the thirties.
The main reading room is flooded with uniform natural overhead light from fifty-seven circular lanterns, each 1.8 m in diameter. The depth of the cone of the lanterns is designed to allow only ambient light to enter the room, protecting books and providing shadowless lighting for readers.
During the renovation, the lanterns were returned to the original shape of the flat double glazing, replacing the domed glazing of the sixties. In the dark, the lamps of the original design reflected from the walls are turned on, in which they only replaced the lamps with more modern and energy-saving ones.
The shelves around the perimeter of the reading room do not stand on the floor, but are a system of hinged shelves. When the plaster layer of the Soviet period was dismantled during the reconstruction, they opened all the original embedded elements for their fasteners, marked their location and then placed the shelves in their original places.
“With the overhead heating system in the library rooms, I tried to eliminate the harmful effects of heating appliances on the bookshelves, as well as the movement of dust through the air,” Aalto wrote.
As a result, the heating system built into the ceiling is hidden behind a twelve-centimeter layer of plaster, but at the same time, during the reconstruction, even the fasteners for pipes, which were in good condition, were cleaned and preserved. The well-preserved heating pipes still had to be replaced with new ones for reasons of reliability.
Initially, the Aalto building was provided with a ventilation system with a network of ventilation ducts in the thickness of the walls. And he wrote at one time that "by improving this ventilation system, it can be turned into a complete air conditioning system." During the restoration, they did just that, equipping the building with modern automatic climate control systems, placing engineering equipment in the technical rooms allocated by the architect, although it was not easy.
The natural ventilation under-window supply valves have been carefully restored and replaced. Electric cables were laid, where possible, in the original pipes.
For many years, the most acute problem of the library was the penetration of water into the building - water threatened the foundation and created moisture that is unacceptable for storing books. Therefore, the main task at the first stages was drainage and waterproofing works. Tapani Mustonen suggested using Swedish material ISODRAN for waterproofing the building, which had to be certified according to Russian standards specifically for the restoration of the Aalto library.
The restorers approached the choice of lime plaster, the historical proportions of its composition and the methods of application, typical for the thirties of the XX century, with particular care. For the application of plaster layers on the ceiling cylinders, devices were made to maintain their proportions. And in order to prevent the plaster from drying out when applied on a hot day, the facades were “wrapped” in special fabrics.
The entrance lobby lamps have survived only in photographs, but in the Paimio sanatorium, designed by Aalto in 1933, several similar lamps have survived - analogs were made from their samples at the plant in St. Petersburg.
Of the new elements added during the restoration, only a small but very functional one can be noted: a glazed inner passage between an adult and a children's library (before, you had to go outside and go around the building in order to get from one to another).
In the lecture hall, a unique undulating acoustic ceiling has been restored, designed by Aalto in such a way that in most of the hall, equally comfortable acoustic conditions were created for both speech and perception: Aalto considered general conversations as important as the lecturer's speech.
A team of like-minded people, without which it is unlikely that something would have worked. The revival of the library began with a visit by Dmitry Sergeevich Likhayev in 1986 and with the initiative of the widow of Aalto Ellisa. The Finnish Committee for the Restoration of the Vyborg Library was created, which brought the issue of restoration of the monument to the international level and systematic work began. An important event was the meeting in 2010 of Tarja Halonen (President of Finland 2010-2012) with Vladimir Putin on the Allegro train, where she asked for help in restoring Aalto's masterpiece and the main funding was allocated from the Russian budget.
From the Finnish side, all these years, the process was supervised by Maya Kairamo, an architect, honorary member of the ICOMOS international committee, general secretary of the "Finnish Committee for Restoration".
For twenty years, the leading architect of the Finnish Committee for the Restoration of the Vyborg Library, Tapani Mustonen, supervised the restoration work and directed a group of Finnish specialists. He was a participant in all design and restoration solutions, taught contractors in original technologies.
Tapani considers the well-coordinated work of the entire team, the understanding of both the designers and the builders of the general concept and ideology of the project, to be the key to a successful restoration. Therefore, for the whole team, representatives of the Finnish committee held lectures on the features of the restoration of modernist architectural monuments and on the experience of restoring buildings built according to the design of Alvar Aalto, the features of the building structure, and together with everyone, the approach and methods of future restoration were discussed.
On the Russian side, the work was carried out by specialists from the Spetsproektrestavratsiya design institute. Most of the renovation work was carried out by local contractors. “Performing reconstruction works at this level would have been impossible if Russia did not retain the skills and abilities of manual work, it was great to see how the craftsmen themselves are proud of the results of their work,” Maya Kairamo said at the opening of the library.
And of course, the friendly staff of the library made their contribution to the process, they did not stop working during the reconstruction (the library left the building only for a year). The director of the library, Elena Sergeevna Rogozina, who supervised the restoration process on the part of the customer, is a surprisingly caring person. The life of the library is practically her life, so she was constantly aware of all the problems at the construction site and became a real expert in architectural and construction issues. During our visit, she was the main guide, giving us all the details and original design of Aalto and the technical details of the restoration.
Budget and its control
From 1994 to 2010, the international project "Comprehensive Scientific Restoration of the Vyborg Library Building by Alvar Aalto" was funded on a parity basis, both from the Russian side and from international sources. For almost twenty years, the library has undergone minor restoration work, possible thanks to donations from Russian, Finnish and international organizations and individuals.
The restoration process began in full force only in 2010, when, as a result of Russian-Finnish negotiations at the level of heads of government in December 2010, a decision was made on the main financing of restoration work - 255.5 million rubles were allocated from the Russian budget.
Thorough tenders were carried out for all individual areas of work. At the first stage, when funding was limited, work on a particular stage began only when sufficient funds were collected to complete them.
All major works were carried out by Russian contractors and craftsmen with a very high quality, and under strict trilateral financial and quality control of the Russian and Finnish sides, and the library administration.
As a result, the cost of the restoration turned out to be generally cheaper than the same in Europe. The total budget of the project is about 8 million euros, the area of the library is 3000 m2, the cost of one square meter is about 2,600 euros. For comparison, in Europe, such works, according to Tapani Mustonen, are more expensive and cost between 3,500 and 4,000 euros per square meter.
In addition to the wonderful Aalto architecture, the library has a unique book collection: it stores books about Vyborg and Karelia in Finnish, Swedish, German and other languages. Over the years of restoration, the collection has been replenished with perhaps the most complete collection of books in Russia about the work of Alvar Aalto and the building of the library. Among them, for example, a three-volume edition of the biographer Alvar Aalto Goran Schildt, autographed by the author. In total, the library contains 358 thousand items, among other publications - 1.5 thousand copies of rare books of the XVI-XIX centuries.
Brief biography of the library
- Young Aalto won the competition for the city library of Vyborg (Viipuri) in 1927 with a neoclassical project, a little later the site was changed and he developed a second version of the already modernist project.
- The library was built with the money of the patrons Juho and Maria Lalluca and opened in October 1935.
- After the war of 1939–1940 and 1941–1945, the city became the territory of the Soviet Union, in 1940–1941 the library was a branch of the State Public Library. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
- The building did not undergo significant destruction during the war, but after it it stood for ten years in an ownerless state and, gradually decaying, turned into almost ruin.
- In 1955-1961, the library was reconstructed, which was not entirely successful in terms of preserving the original architectural and technical solutions of Aalto, although the architects defended the maximum preservation of the modernist look and did not allow the building to be enriched with order decor (there was also such an option). The architects who worked on the reconstruction project, for obvious reasons, did not have access to the original author's drawings. They were built from different materials - available in Soviet factories, sometimes not quite matching each other in color. The technology was not always preserved - almost immediately the roof began to leak, the wooden wavy ceiling of the conference room did not turn out to be acoustic, as it was originally intended.
- In 1961, the building was opened as the “Central City Library named after NK Krupskaya ".
- In 1995, the library was awarded the status of a cultural heritage site of federal significance.
- Since 1994, the international project "Comprehensive scientific restoration of the building of the Vyborg library of Alvar Aalto" began with the participation of the Finnish and Russian sides. The library continued to work and was closed for only one year during the period of the most active construction work.
- In 1994, the library acquired its modern name - "The Central City Library of Alvar Aalto in Vyborg".
- In November 2013, the library was reopened after restoration.
