The site on which it is planned to build a residential complex with the self-explanatory name "Russian House" is located in the quarters behind Liteiny Prospekt, at the intersection of Baskov Lane and Korolenko Street. Three years ago, it was the subject of a dispute between city rights defenders, who argued that the buildings demolished here were the remains of artillery barracks of the early 20th century, and the customer, LSR Group, who, with city permits and archival documents in hand, argued that he was demolishing buildings that had not appeared. later than 1932, although old bricks were used in them. The developer, apparently, managed to prove his case, as the construction is now beginning.
The house, designed by Evgeny Gerasimov, whose buildings and projects in the spirit of historicism are already well known in St. Petersburg, this time, echoing the real estate name, is designed in the spirit of the “neo-Russian style of early modernism” and inherits the phenotype of large apartment buildings at the turn of the century (XIX – XX), castle houses or palace houses that united several quarters with courtyards, sometimes wells, and sometimes more. There are many of them in St. Petersburg, one of the most remarkable is the house of the First Russian Insurance Society, built according to the project of three architects Benois: Leonty, Julius and Alexander, on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt (1911-1914. Although that house is a wonderful representative of neoclassicism, passion for Italy, and in he has nothing Russophile, between him and the "Russian House" in the project of Yevgeny Gerasimov there is some similarity, at the level of typology and sensations.
First of all, Gerasimov uses the same main planning technique, cutting the house with a courtyard open to the street, which, far away - to the last building on the inner border of the site, goes deep into the building. The courtyard becomes the “front parterre” of the house-palace and is formed accordingly - a square, but the main effect is formed by the perspective from the side of the street, in the structure of the red line of which there is a gap, solemnly flanked by two similar buildings. Apartment buildings rarely used such a plan with an open courtyard inviting to enter - in modern terms, "urban public space", but it did happen: sometimes there was even an internal street between the blocks, that is, covered with bars, like in the house of the Russian Insurance Company on Sretensky Boulevard in Moscow.
The second feature of a more general property: the two wings of the U-shaped plan are the edge, tightly closed squares around the courtyards, which can be entered through the arches - not too high, two-story, facing the central courtyard-parterre. The courtyards are typologically St. Petersburg "wells", but it is so difficult to name them because they are large, 2,000 m2 and more, which is rather comparable with the courtyards of Stalin's houses. The “Russian House” as a whole is approximately twice the size of its largest prototypes-profit-making companies of the beginning of the 20th century, if only because it occupies 6 about the largest area: the site of the Benois house is about one hectare, the Moscow house on Sretensky Boulevard is about one and a half, and here - 2.4 hectares and more than 70,000 m2 ground area. In this case, the scale works to enhance the solemnity: the inevitable increase in the number of storeys in depth in our times, subject to the heights of the red line, is perceived not only as a way of multiplying the usable area, but also as an element of the general crescendo, given by the gravitation towards symmetry, the front yard, sharp tongs and towers of high "terem" checkered roofs, lush ornamental relief. Before us is definitely the reincarnation of the Terem Palace, stage-by-stage third or even fourth.
Now about the Russian style: there is not much of it in St. Petersburg, it mostly belongs to church building and, on the whole, is not quite like that, so we will not find a direct prototype for the house of Yevgeny Gerasimov here, although there are many similar examples on the periphery of consciousness, it even seems that where- then there is already a very similar house, just like that; for historicism, this illusion is rather laudable. The authors indicate three prototypes: Fedorovsky town in Tsarskoe Selo, Moscow Yaroslavsky railway station and Moscow's Upper Trading Rows, that is, GUM. Their influence is understandable, for example, in each of them there are different kinds of towers with tents, and in GUM they are also built symmetrically in front of the entrance. The most beautiful part was borrowed from the Fedorov town - the most Petersburg of the named samples: the carpet of reliefs, spied on by Pokrovsky at the St. George Cathedral of Yuriev-Polsky. In the project of Evgeny Gerasimov, the carving turns into counter-reliefs - in-depth silhouettes of fairy birds, and it is they who form the patterned foam on the facades. Here another analogy not named by the authors suggests itself: the apartment building of the architect Leon Kravetsky at the end of Chistoprudny Boulevard, covered with Vladimir-Suzdal crines and lions.
But there is one subtlety. Among the prototypes indicated by Evgeny Gerasimov were two houses of the neo-Russian style of the beginning of the 20th century (the station and the Fedorov town), and one, GUM, of the pseudo-Russian, of the end of the 19th century - but these things, if you look closely, are different. Likewise, the architecture of the Russian House balances on the verge of three sources: pseudo-, neo- and modern architecture.
From "pseudo" - ceremonial symmetry, fascination with the image of a tower from diamond rustic to a motley roof with dormer windows; crushing the plane: windows, rods, ornaments. Let us recall the "classic" house of Igumnov, the house of the French embassy in Moscow, or Nikonov's apartment building in St. Petersburg on Kolokolnaya. But there is another prototype from the middle of the 19th century - the romantic castles of Europe, for example, the Novainstein castle in Bavaria, a Disneyland castle, a fairy tale built in honor of Wagner's romantic music. Or Schwerin Castle in Pomerania. If you look at them, a lot becomes clear: exaggeratedly thin towers, sharp roofs, white color, love for Romanesque biforia windows, united by one arch. All these elements individually are found in many places, but the bravura growth of form - perhaps, will allow us to consider romantic castles as one of the sources of author's inspiration, perhaps not fully reflected. Which, however, is completely natural for the Russian style: not only did he start from the ideas of romanticism and pseudo-Gothic in his search for national identity (he even began with it), but the Russian prototypes themselves, the same reliefs of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus, did not alien to the Romanesque, or South Swiss, or North Italian spirit; from the same place and biforia, inherited, however, and the neo-Russian style.
Carpet reliefs inspired by Pokrovsky are responsible for the neo-Russian style of the early 20th century in this house; the interpretation of biforia, "pressed" by a common arch - such were common in the 1910s; tongs open to the plane of the facade; the pillbox columns at the base of the corner towers are related to the squat chthonic columns of the northern Art Nouveau. The bay windows of the corner towers - smooth, drawn in a strict arc, interspersed with neat quadrifoliums, which remind of the "Romanesque" house in Kovensky Lane, ten minutes' walk from Baskov, are becoming a memory of the Art Nouveau proper: it was built by Evgeny Gerasimov for the same customer of LSR. It is curious what the "Russian House" does not have - there are absolutely no platbands of the "piece set" originating from the Russian XVII century and equally beloved by Shekhtel, and Pokrovsky, and Pomerantsev.
And finally, the modern interpretation of the form does not disappear either: the first five floors are lined with a solid uniform grid of wide stone strips with an ornamental core, uniform, not subject to tectonics and even due to the fact that biforium is inserted into each cell - tending to horizontal proportions. I remember the project of Evgeny Gerasimov for the competition
to Tsarev's Garden in Moscow - the winner, by the way. The project, in which Evgeny Gerasimov took a sample of the "pre-Petrine style", now developed in the "Russian House". Two-story bay windows also look quite modern. As a result - of course, if you look closely - there is a feeling of “reverse reconstruction”: we know many apartment buildings of different styles with upper floors set up in the thirties, we are used to them. And here the opposite situation is imitated - as if neo-Russian towers were added to the house of modern "ornamental style", and a couple of, and somewhere more "terem-looking" floors were added on top. In this architecture, you can see the plot of retro development - as if the style has changed, and now on modern, even conservative houses, they set up floors in the style of a century ago. This sprouting of ornamental modernity into historicism - a reflection of oneself - is probably the most interesting feature of the project.
To this fan of analogies - and practically every Gerasimov house, designed in the spirit of historicism, contains, as a rule, two or three layers, and not an unambiguous stylization - two more can be added. The first one is with Stalin's avenue. The neo-Russian style strove for asymmetry, looking for a pastoral-fabulous folk soul in ancient Russian architecture. The two towers in front of the long courtyard are not like that, they are completely ceremonial and resemble the beginning of many avenues, Prospect Mira, for example, in Moscow, or Gagarin Square. It's hard to say where it comes from, but this layer of Stalinist Art Deco often appears in Gerasimov's houses, possibly enlivened by the scale of the buildings. Other analogs also cannot be avoided, although one would like to push off from it as soon as possible: in modern Russian practice there is already quite a lot of experience in the pseudo-Russian style, mainly in church construction, but copying there, as a rule, is more accurate and the scale is not the same. But there is also the so-called palace of Alexei Mikhailovich and "Izmailovsky teremok" - the quintessence of the terem direction in our construction. So, the house of Evgeny Gerasimov differs greatly from them: it is much more laconic, more collected and clean, at least whiteness. It is much closer to the samples of Art Nouveau, if you look closely, and the aforementioned "modern" basis, the checkered frame, does not allow it to merge with the splash of absolute kitsch, which is so dangerous in our time. While connoisseurs of modernist minimalism may not see the difference, it is nonetheless.
The rest of the house is equipped with everything that is required by modern standards of elite housing: a kindergarten is built into the lower floors of one of the courtyard buildings; cars are denied access to the courtyards, and the townspeople, on the contrary, are allowed to enter the main parterre courtyard; in the lower floors there are cafes and shops, apartments are equipped with blocks for air conditioning, so as not to spoil the facades. The interior decoration of the premises and corridors combines Russian, Byzantine, classical and modern motives. Columns, marble, natural wood, bas-reliefs and plaster moldings - everything here is designed to create a sense of luxury. The main color of the complex - white - also dominates the interiors.
In short, this house is in many ways an experiment; There are not so many residential complexes in the neo-Russian style now, and in Evgeny Gerasimov's portfolio this house is another step towards a new experience, a fascinating example of mastering a new page in the volume of “historicism”. It also strikingly achieves a balance between respect for the context and the courage of self-expression. The authors did not disguise the new object as a background historical building, but made it the dominant feature of a small lane. In this, of course, there was a risk, but in this case it seems justified. The dominant role of the new facility was facilitated, first of all, by the very scale of the territory, which allowed - what is important - to create a public green zone here. A large, solid and bright ensemble formed around it breaks the monotonous and fractional structure of buildings characteristic of the neo-style era. The authors boldly and enthusiastically compete with their historical neighbors, not hiding the young age of the new building, but not sticking it out either, paying tribute to their predecessors, but not at all forgetting about themselves.
