The British publishing house Thames & Hudson, which specializes in art and architecture, and has published, in particular, monographs about Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Stephen Hall, has published a book entirely devoted to one of the famous projects of museum reconstruction of recent years - "New Bolshoi Enfilade "of the Hermitage, arranged inside the eastern wing of the General Staff building of Carl Rossi, designed by Oleg and Nikita Yaveinov. The book summarizes the grandiose and successful undertaking, which, according to some estimates, stretched for twelve years, and according to others for twenty-five years (the building was handed over to the Hermitage in 1989, the design began in 2002). In 2014, the second stage of the reconstruction of the eastern wing of the General Staff was completed - the building became a living and functioning continuation of the main art museum of the country.
The book is a living confirmation of the fact that it is possible to write about a good project five times, and possibly more times, in completely different ways. Its core is a richly illustrated and detailed description of the concept, written by the head of the author's team of the project, the scientific consultant of Studio 44, Professor Oleg Yavein. The description is preceded by several articles: an introduction by the director of the museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, and a brief essay by Aaron Betsky. This is followed by a detailed emotional and philosophical text by Dmitry Shvidkovsky and Yulia Revzina - it is dedicated to both the history of the building and the reconstruction project, interprets the General Staff of Karl Rossi as a “triumphant finale” of the town-planning history of St. Petersburg, combining the plastic embodiment of the idea of Russia as the Third Rome with a triumphant memory of the victory over Napoleon …
A poetic essay balanced by a Dutch critic's rational analysis
Hans Ibelings: for him Russia's enthusiasm for the Empire after the war with Napoleon is a paradox, because "… the classic style of the General Staff is a kind of dedication to the very empire over which the Russians are so proud."
Meanwhile, one of the most fascinating plots of the book is the comparison of the completed project of Oleg and Nikita Yaveinov with the proposal of Rem Koolhaas, who, despite the fact that OMA lost to Studio 44 in the 2002 tender, continued for some time to participate in the work as a consultant to the Hermitage Foundation - Guggenheim "- the book contains Koolhaas' speech in 2004 with a brief description of the project and his proposals to Russian colleagues. Mikhail Piotrovsky calls the "dialogue with the alternative proposals of Rem Koolhaas" especially interesting - which immediately makes him terribly intriguing.
On the other hand, Dmitry Shvidkovsky and Yulia Revzina view the OMA proposal as typical for the modern mainstream of museum renovations, where the new is in contrast to the old. The authors of the essays regard the work of Studio 44 as completely different and even claiming the role of a third way, alien to both deliberate modernity and retro-stylization, capable of relying on “… the“wisdom of the ancients”in order to expand the boundaries of the modern, go beyond the framework of his stereotypes”- it is difficult to think of the best praise for an architectural work.
Hans Ibelings supports the same idea, saying that the architects "… demonstrated their ability to penetrate the very essence of the building, tried to understand what the East Wing of the General Staff Building is and express what it would like to become, have your own will." Ibelings lists several similar, in his opinion, projects of museum transformation (among them, in particular,
reconstruction of the Tate gallery by the Caruso Saint-John bureau), - but here he claims that in comparison with the named works "… Studio 44 takes a less humble position" - the critic explains this with the spirit of constructivism inherited by the brothers Oleg and Nikita from their father, Igor Yavein. However, Shvidkovsky / Revzina also appeal to family history, subtly noting an analogy of a different kind - the internal connection of both the Leningrad avant-garde and the project under consideration with "bygone eras".
But let's get back to the comparison with the idea of Rem Koolhaas. Both projects are based on the properties of a historic building, but in OMA's proposal a museum is a "stunning mosaic" of spaces, an anti-hierarchical labyrinth built around a common entrance. Studio 44, on the other hand, found a solemn axis in the General Staff, subordinated the museum space to it, balancing the unconditionality of the dominant with a multitude of entrances from all sides at the level of the first floor. Both projects read into the architecture of Rossi, but find opposite things, one is a chaotic labyrinth, the others are hierarchy and regularity (however, probably as a result of consultations with OMA, two themes were eventually superimposed on one another, the suite became the main one, the labyrinth is a background layer, so Oleg Yavein's article about the project is called "Between the labyrinth and the suite", and its last chapter, "The Mosaic of Spaces," pays tribute to Koolhaas's idea).
It should be remembered here that in the traditional art history view, the architecture of the General Staff Building is indeed dual, and can even be understood as a reflection of the character of the Russian Empire of the 19th century: on the outside there is a ceremonial facade, inside there is a cramped and indistinctly boring bureaucratic filling (by the way, the ministerial town included not only offices, but also the apartments of employees; besides, it was built by several contractors, hence the inconsistencies). One would think that Rem Koolhaas strengthened the second feature inherent in the internal structure of the building, bringing to the public view what classicism preferred to hide in the closet: the marginal, random properties of spaces - and endowed the underside of the Empire image with a cutting-edge interpretation.
Oleg Yavein denies the aforementioned widespread interpretation of the architecture of the General Staff building. He is sure that there is no contradiction between its facades and the internal structure, that the circumference of Palace Square is not an author's gesture, but a continuation of the context, and even that the famous acute angle is not a forced measure, but a thoughtful technique. In addition, “Rossi originally drew continuous lines of enfilades in the plan,” writes Oleg Yavein, “and in the process of work the architects made sure that the existing premises fold themselves into an enfilade around the building's perimeter. If we look at the plan of Rem Koolhaas, we will see that he deliberately confuses the same detour, breaking the route line in zigzags, or even interrupting with dead-end branches.
The main plot of the Studio 44 project was another, large enfilade - it, this core of their new regularity, was also subtracted by the architects in the architecture of the ministerial building. It turned out that five courtyards gradually decrease from south to north, towards Zimny - no one had noticed this feature before - forming a gigantic perspective structure, the axis of which points exactly to the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The architects blocked the courtyards, raised their floors to the level of a representative second floor on platforms similar in section to the drawbridges of St. Petersburg; the isthmuses of the buildings between the courtyards were reconstructed and provided with majestic, typologically - completely temple, and figuratively Roman, and in some ways even Assyrian doors; at the beginning and at the end were placed solemn amphitheater staircases. It turned out like a Roman forum. And on the whole - the project, undoubtedly imperial, gravitates, however, towards the enlightened Catherine's, and not the ceremonial Nikolaev ideal, and thus the building also bifurcates somewhat, albeit within the framework of the general empire paradigm. However, the early Enlightenment Empire style, and not the ceremonial-military Napoleonic style, merges better with the museum function.
Many of the meanings laid down in the project have a taste of the end of the 18th century - with the only difference that the people of the Enlightenment were more keen on natural science, and the authors of the museum were more interested in history, primarily of the building and the city. The main axis found by the architects, for example, was embodied in the form of a glass path drawn in the floor and stairs of the suite - and resembles both a sundial in the floors of baroque temples, and dashes from Foucault's pendulum on the floor of Isaac, provoking to think about how this space embedded in the structure of the universe as a whole or the city with its logic and history in particular. In addition, the authors draw analogies between the modern automatics of transformable museum halls (which controls expositions of the latest art and giant doors that cannot be easily opened) and the mechanisms of the New Hermitage of Felten, on the occasion of the enfilade that happened to be on the line of the axis of the suite, and his recently restored hanging garden »On the roof: trees were planned in the covered courtyards, also a kind of hanging garden, which, however, has not yet been arranged. Hanging bridges unexpectedly remind of passages, adding to the theme of Catherine's enlightened absolutism, from which the Hermitage began as a collection, a note of historicized romanticism, which was already relevant in the time of Russia, although it did not touch him so much.
Figuratively, the closest is the almost ideal plastic embodiment of abstract thought in the pre-war projects of the Paris Academy, in the works of Bull and Ledoux - they were loved by the Russian (although more Moscow) Empire style - and by the architects of the eighties of the XX century …
As you can see, the book provokes a variety of reflections, providing them with a lot of material: in addition to the statements of different authors, it contains a fairly detailed history of the search, honestly tells about what was not possible, and, on the contrary, many plans and photographs illustrate what has been implemented. Thorough restoration of the ceremonial interiors, rows of skylights above the halls of the upper floors, and especially the lofts above the vaults of the triumphal arch, which are open for inspection - there are still many details that make sense to pay attention to. We add that this seems to be the first work of contemporary Russian architects, published in hardcover by a foreign publishing house, in English, with a view to the readers of the whole world (the Russian-language version complements the English one).
