The multifunctional complex, consisting of a hotel, a business center and multi-level parking lots, is located right in front of the building of the new passenger terminal of Pulkovo airport and is surrounded on all sides by access roads. On the southern border of the IFC site, within the framework of the same project, the terminal station of the Aeroexpress “Nadex” was built - the express train approaches the place where the old terminal Pulkovo-1, built in the early seventies by the project of Alexander Zhuk and known for five tall light glasses, meets, lined up on its roof - with a new terminal; the old terminal after reconstruction in 2014 is used for local flights, new for international ones. To the north of the IFC there is an airplane parking area; at some distance, to the east, along the highway, there are Pulkovo business and cargo terminals. The business-hotel and parking complex, thus, is located in the center of the busy communication center of the only St. Petersburg airport. Therefore, one of the main and difficult tasks in its design was to optimize flows, find logical and convenient trajectories for various types of transport and passengers, both inside the complex and on the border with external structures.
As you know, the new Pulkovo terminal was designed by the office of Nicholas Grimshaw, which won the 2007 international competition. Its architects also made a draft design of the business and hotel multifunctional complex adjacent to the terminal. Then, for further detailing of the project, Grimshaw architects hired the design firm Ramboll, a subsidiary of the largest Scandinavian concern Ramboll Group, which designs industrial and public facilities. In particular, Ramboll was engaged in the development of engineering systems and the distribution of trajectories from transport arteries to the buildings of the hotel and business center. At the same time, the firm made unsuccessful deviations from the preliminary design of "Grimshaw", noted at two city councils. In particular, the context of the terminal was not taken into account, and passengers were generally asked to walk from the parking area along the transport overpass. At this stage, the architectural bureau "A. Len" joined the design.
"Ramboll" asked us to revise the project, - says the head of "A. Len" Sergei Oreshkin, - we presented our proposals in the form of a sketch, the development of the project was carried out in close contact with the city authorities. To ensure the convenience of movement and relieve the busy transport hub, we proposed organizing the movement of passengers of the Aeroexpress through the glazed gallery, while the airfield is clearly visible from the gallery itself on the right side. Another glazed gallery connects the airport terminal with the territory of the complex: at a distance of only fifty meters from the hotel and the business center is the terminal area of the host side, and we proposed the shortest trajectory to it, which is extremely comfortable even by European standards.
With our project we traveled to London, where we presented the results to Sir Nicholas Grimshaw: our spatial solutions basically coincided with his positions and ideas. The employees of the company were surprised that we appreciated their concept and that our vision of possible solutions turned out to be so close: it turned out that Grimshaw proposed to locate parking lots, a business zone, and an Aeroexpress stop in the same places. I also liked our interpretation of Melnikov's theme with ramps: the path from the parking lot smoothly bypasses the facade of the hotel and, going up through the gallery, leads to the terminal of the host side."
Nevertheless, the volume-spatial solution "A. Len" is quite independent. Unlike the original concept of Grimshaw, which gravitated towards an ordered perpendicular grid, Sergey Oreshkin's composition is based on the contrast of textures, lines and materials. The starting points of the search were the original structural modules and the logic of the motion paths.
In the architectural part of the project, all volumetric-spatial solutions are closely linked with structural modules, their dimensions; the strict beauty of geometry is subordinated to the logic of motion trajectories. The shape of the buildings is dictated by the configuration of the site and the distribution of communication flows. The plan of the business center is an irregular trapezoid, the hotel is a strongly elongated building of two buildings in the form of a book wide open to the airfield. An eight-storey hotel and a five-storey business center are united by the basement floor stylobate. The rear facade of one of the hotel buildings is parallel to the facade of the business center looking at it and is reflected in its sparkling surface.
Unfortunately, in the decoration there were deviations from the A. Len project. The construction was carried out by a Turkish company, the activities of which the general contractor did not control. As a result, the hotel facades are covered with pinkish ceramic panels and cut with hard black horizontals, while the project was supposed to be finished with light beige limestone and light metal horizontal rods. The façade of the business center as a whole was successfully defended, the lines of the rapid diagonals of the devitrification coincided with the main trajectories proposed by the Grimshaw project. The theme of the flight is supported by the golden "wings" of the shutters. Interspersed with a diamond-shaped grid of facades, they add up to the decorative metaphor of soaring, so appropriate in the midst of airplanes. Facade glass - with environmental properties and with a greenish tint. "A. Len" planned to apply light contours of the clouds on the glass, but in the version of the Turkish contractor, the clouds turned into white circles, and they decided to abandon the drawing altogether.
The open part of the roof of the stylobate next to the front facade of the business center is cut with round holes of different diameters: they provide daylight access to the underground bus parking, and figuratively - create a roll call with the glass "glasses" of the old station of Alexander Zhuk.
Behind the building of the business center there are two more underground parking zones with covered ground floors. The A. Len project envisaged natural planting of their roofs with the option of draining the field and creating a garden of modern urban sculpture here. In the midst of a rather aggressive environment, this recreational area would have been an outlet for passengers and guests of the hotel, however, for reasons of economy, the roof was covered with a roll lawn …
Despite everything, ultimately - not so serious, albeit annoying, discrepancies with the project, the main idea: contrasting interaction, was implemented. The ceramic (according to the plan, as we remember, stone) volume of the hotel is slender and almost classical due to the rhythm of wide verticals. The glitter, diagonals and reflections of the glass business center become the second pole. Stone - glass, vertical - and rhombuses, everything is different, but they get along, largely thanks to the happy ability of modern glass architecture to reflect its neighbors. The third pole is conciliatory-absorbing: these are rows of lamellas that enclose the contour of the volume of parking lots, similar to a clot of space that only denotes a wall. Let's add to this the idea of greenery on the roof: the square, carried by a picket fence of lamellas, should have produced a completely anti-gravitational impression - either as it rose from the ground (like a cut out slice of a watermelon), or soared. It turns out that three volumes - with a serious degree of conventionality, but still denote the "three centuries" of architecture: the past with order verticals; dynamics, brilliance and unstable geometry of modernity; and, finally, the transparency and rustic naturalness of the future. In the middle of the tense transport hub, another knot is twisted - a shaped one; a totally useful addition in the middle of a growing airport.
