We have already talked about the project of a house on Pobedy Street, 5, not far from Moskovsky Prospekt and Strugatsky Square, in an area where Stalinist houses alternate with Soviet "walls" and post-Soviet-postmodern buildings. The bureau of Evgeny Gerasimov built a new premium-class elite house into this rather colorful, but urbanistically comfortable context, folding its facade of three themes: below the northern modern-neoclassicism, in the middle the image is closer to Stalinist architecture, the upper floors hint, although not persistently, at glass long columns of the nineties. The house grows out of the ground, one might say, chronologically: it can be imagined three times overbuilt in different periods of the St. Petersburg classics of the XX century. The project developer is LEGENDA Intelligent Development.
The construction was completed, the house was commissioned in December; On February 17th, a press tour was conducted on it. Architect Yevgeny Gerasimov and director of LEGENDA Intelligent Development Vasily Selivanov showed reporters the new house, allowing them to evaluate the textured materiality of the resulting building.
Travertine columns of a stocky Doric order in front of the entrance, with real wide, arched flutes - almost like in Paestum. Rough rustic basement tier, according to all the rules of superposition, progressively lightened above. Traditional lion's muzzles on the castle stones, above, on the facades - quadrifoli flowers, reminiscent of another office building, a building in Kovensky Lane (there are inserts in the form of fleure de lys). The same, only more polished, travertine in the hall, wood, ornament, Latin inscription in bronze letters on the floor, a huge antique chandelier. Stalinist architecture used cheaper materials. The Art Deco of St. Petersburg might look similar, if, say, the revolution (or coup?) Of 1917 - the house seems to be catching up with two qualities at once: the quality of the classicizing plastic and the stone, natural material.
However, he absorbed a lot from the environment: it is enough to walk along the neighboring Moskovsky Prospekt to see a similar superposition of rusta, borrowed by the architects of the 1930s from Michelozzo, relief inserts that look like pinnacle obelisks above the cornices. The house may well be understood through the Stalinist environment, and then it turns out that the high, three-story top rods echo the row of imposing columns of the House of Soviets by architect Noah Trotsky on Moscow Square. Architects have often acted in this way for more than three hundred years: they found clues in the surrounding buildings, reproduced recognizable elements and built their work into a number of neighbors. The new house embodies the ideas of Stalinist architecture of the Moskovsky district in a new, modern quality, polishing and improving, but firmly attached to the base. However, the creators of the building spoke about the same on the excursion. ***
In the thirties, the Moskovsky district was planned to be made a new, Soviet city center, the participants of the tour were told, but the experiment was not completed, not even all the streets then received their names. Meanwhile, this quiet and, in its own way, following the comfortable principles of “new urbanism”, the area has now become one of the most attractive: thanks to a good housing stock, developed social and transport infrastructure and the relative proximity of the historic center. This is what prompted the appearance of a premium home here.
Vasily Selivanov said that the history of the house began in 2011, when the company acquired plot No. 5, one of the last on the red lines of the front part of the Moscow district; soon the bureau of Evgeny Gerasimov started designing. “Of course, there was a fundamental understanding that the house should be in the neoclassical style - the so-called“Stalinist Empire style”. From the very beginning, Evgeny Lvovich (Gerasimov - K. S.) agreed that it should be such an honest, high-quality, thoroughbred architecture. And our house turns out to be a rare exception when the building exactly corresponds to the idea and the first sketches, Selivanov emphasized.
The client's desire coincided with the architect's vision. “We somehow immediately saw the house together,” says Evgeny Gerasimov. - It was obvious to us that the Moskovsky district, which in the minds of many is associated with Stalinist architecture, is one of the most successful places for rethinking its style. The complexity and, on the other hand, the creative task was to make a Stalinist house of thirteen-storey height."
For Evgeny Gerasimov's bureau, this is the first experience of working with Legenda Development, but this is not the first time the bureau has done projects in historical styles. “The order-based traditional architecture, as opposed to the modernist, is a significant part of our creative activity. As the head of the company and the architects who work with me, it is interesting for me to search in both directions: both in the field of modern shaping, and in terms of rethinking the historical heritage,”the architect explains his position.
Speaking about the features of the house, Vasily Selivanov mentioned the design and planning freedom necessary for housing in the elite segment, which is achieved by the absence of load-bearing walls in apartments: the entire load of the building rests on the stiffeners. However, the "apartmentography" of the house allows you to avoid redevelopment - the project provides for 16 types and subtypes of solutions for apartments.
The creators of the house paid special attention to details both outside and inside. The chandelier of the entrance hall, according to Vasily Selivanov, is “a real piece of history,” it was rescued from the building of the Palace of Culture named after the First Five-Year Plan, which was demolished for the construction of the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater. At this time, the architects were working with sketches of the interiors of the house and specially for the large chandelier from the Palace of Culture they designed a high, double-height lobby.
Speaking about the results of two years of work, Evgeny Gerasimov pays special attention to quality. “We say that architecture can be different, but quality is what we need, what we lack today, and the question of style can be considered the second. Everything has the right to life, the main thing is that, working with any style, we strive for maximum quality. Here you can literally feel it: here is the reception desk, here are the mailboxes, here are the doors, here are the elevators, here is the chandelier, here are the stained glass windows by graduates of the Academy of Arts under the direction of Andrey Zhuravlev, here is the sculpture, again, by the graduate of the Academy Vlad Manachinsky. This is not an imitation: real wood, stone, brass. Look at the plinth, which was made first on machines, then by hand. Each stone is unique."
Even the name of the house fits into the overall respectable style. Developers deliberately did not come up with an additional extra-name for the project, as is customary today in the real estate market, leaving the address as the real estate name. “It’s better not to come up with the address we have - Victory Street, building 5. Everything is set by this. There is Addres in the city and we hope that this will also become an address with a capital letter,”says Selivanov. “The house on Victory Street, the theme of victory, precisely in its antique transcription, the heraldry of Ancient Rome, the synthesis of arts that we see - this is both color and sculpture, this is fonts, everything came together here,” adds Evgeny Gerasimov.
