The Mikhailovka estate, or Mikhailovskaya dacha, named after the fourth son of Nicholas I Mikhail, is located between the tourist Peterhof and the government Strelna. Since the time of Peter the Great, its territory, both simultaneously and successively, was occupied by various residences of people close to the imperial persons: from Menshikov to the Razumovsky brothers, until in the middle of the 19th century the architects Stackenschneider, Charlemagne and Boss turned this place into a rather vast and intricate one. as the tastes of the time required, the Tsarevich's dacha. In the 20th century, the dacha was unlucky - few considered the architecture of the eclectic period to be valuable, at first a children's colony was located in the estate, then a poultry farm, and finally, a recreation center of the Kirovsky plant; if the previous owners first robbed the palaces, and then simply did not care too much about them, then the recreation center began to rebuild and in the 1960s the buildings changed the most. In the 1990s, the ensemble was abandoned, and in 2003, together with Strelna, it was transferred to the management, which in 2006 transferred Mikhailovka to St. Petersburg State University under the Higher School of Management.
Nikita Yavein's Studio 44 has developed a large-scale project to transform the rather shabby buildings of the Tsarevich's dacha into a school for the elite of managers by 2010. We have already talked about it: restoration and reconstruction of six buildings of the estate in the eastern part of the allotted territory, and the construction of new buildings in the western part, which historically belonged not to Mikhailovskaya dacha, but to the village of Korkuli and several other settlements, were planned. Now two important parts have been implemented: the Main Academic Building, located in the largest historical building of Mikhailovka (it was by no means a palace, but the Konyushenny Building), has been completely reconstructed and opened. The building of the student cafe-club was also built. Construction of dormitories for bachelors and masters continues; meanwhile, the school of management is already operating in new premises, recruiting students for the MBA; buildings are functioning, there is something to see and tell about.
Let's start with the reconstruction of the Stables Building, which has become the Main Academic Building. Its spacious building was built later than the Grand Ducal Palace, in 1859-1861, by the prolific architect from the Livonian province Harald Bosse, in the spirit of the moderate neo-Renaissance. Stables, carriage sheds, a bathhouse and other useful rooms no higher than two floors were grouped into long buildings and arranged symmetrically, even a little dryly, by dividing rectangles into equal parts around five courtyards. The large northern courtyard opens to the Gulf of Finland, its entrance is flanked by two respectable buildings with triangular pediments. The southern half was divided into two small closed courtyards by a building elongated along the central axis, and on the outer sides of the large rectangle were adjacent two, also identical and "half-open", that is, with external entrances, courtyards: a bathhouse and a blacksmith's. During the period of the recreation center, these two courtyards were built up with large two-storey volumes - an assembly hall and a dining room, and both inclusions were solved in the style of a historical building, using the method of “mechanical increment, observing stylistic similarity,” according to Nikita Yavein.
For Studio 44, the task of transformation with cleansing of late extensions is not at all new; the portfolio of Nikita Yavein's bureau has already accumulated a number of fundamental reconstruction works with varying degrees of renovation, which allowed the architect to form his own methodology and even an individual recognizable "handwriting" of reconstruction projects, tangible and in Mikhailovka.
First of all, the architects removed the unnecessary elevations of the Soviet inserts, which even the protection of the monuments recognized as discordant, returning the original "flattened" silhouette to the stable complex. Then they planned and implemented the restoration of all the surviving elements of the 19th century - plaster facades with thin rustication, panels and profiling, and interior elements, of which the halls with cast-iron columns are especially good: two of them are located on the sides of the octahedron of the entrance lobby and three in the southern part of the building., closer to the St. Petersburg highway. Thin, fractionally channeled columns with cuboid capitals resemble both the industrial architecture of the Mikhailovka construction period, and - unexpectedly - the late Byzantine churches "on four columns" (such a comparison sounds somewhat fraudulent to the stables in our times, but the architecture of the 19th century is looked back at the lofty prototypes: it is absolutely impossible to exclude that Boss was thinking about such a model directly or indirectly). The cast-iron columns inside echo the impressive openwork stained glass window of the entrance arch of the central axial building.
It was impossible to confine oneself to operations of purification and restoration: the school of management needed a place. Therefore, the architects of Studio 44, having dealt with the Soviet-era outbuildings, covered four out of five courtyards with new roofs, including them in one way or another with the composition of the warm part of the school building, whose area, to be sure, has significantly increased compared to the historical stables. The northern courtyard remained open - it turned out to be an excellent courdoner, almost of a palace look, facing the Gulf of Finland: it is here that the main entrance to the building is located. On this side, the inclusions are minimal, only restoration: a person entering the school from the front entrance is greeted by a restored original building. Inhabited cells along the perimeter of the courtyard are occupied by classrooms for teachers' rest.
All internal reconstruction is subject to several principles. The layout is clear and logical, with auditoriums clustered around atriums lit by daylight. The central axial building received a glass roof and its longitudinally elongated space turned into an atrium - here we observe a paradox, since historically it has never been a courtyard, but the person entering will have just such an impression - a glazed courtyard, almost a cloister, supported by rows of historic biforia windows along parties. This bright, all-glass, gable-ceilinged hall acts as the distribution core and community center of the school building. The effect of the cloister, I must say, is very important, since it endows the school with a distant but readable resemblance to a European university, for which such a courtyard is a necessary part of the image. It's amazing how Nikita Yavein discovered and developed this "Hogwarts theme" in the pragmatic building of the stable, however, now, it turned out, it was found and emphasized.
Nikita Yavein, I must say, has the gift of discovering new themes in reconstructed spaces that successfully overlap with old meanings, contributing to the transformation of a building into something new without losing the old: once Grigory Revzin wrote that the architect was able to place
inside the renovated building of Promstroybank there is a Roman aqueduct. A more recent example is a promising suite discovered by Studio 44 inside the eastern wing of the General Staff given to the Hermitage.
The two southern closed courtyards, previously open, accommodated three medium-sized auditoriums (this is for bachelors), but they did not lose daylight: along the axis of each volume, between the audiences, there was a glass, also gable roof, illuminating the space above the stairs - an extended, elongated transversely to the main axis, a small atrium. The atriums in the side outer courtyards (where the dining room and assembly hall of the recreation center were dismantled) are solved in a similar way, only here they connect and divide smaller audiences with glass walls, more like office meeting rooms; here they will study for MIB and MBA diplomas.
Another feature of the approach: all inclusions look emphatically modern and build their dialogue with the elements of a historical building - no, not everywhere on a contrasting comparison, but everywhere on the modernist principles of transparency, reflections, laconic large forms.
In addition, in the spaces of the atriums, transitional between the external and internal, the elements of interior comfort coexist with the facades that used to be outside, but now they are inside - this combination has the qualities of the representativeness of the palace vestibule, when you seem to have already entered somewhere under the roof. but the scale does not allow one to relax. You experience similar sensations in the lobby of the Zakharov Admiralty with its interior rustication, or on the front staircase of the Kremlin BKD. In this case, in the atriums of the school, it is dictated not only by the author's intention, but also by the circumstances of reconstruction, when the external facade becomes part of the interior of the atrium.
The immanent contrasts of the transitional space are emphasized: not only the decor of yesterday's facade walls and the double-height scale, but also open extended staircases, and especially their black color, work for the representative qualities that make the incoming person gather internally. The floors in the second tier of the atriums and the staircase are charcoal black, while the floors on the first floors are lined with large gray-black zigzags. Which, of course, is not a classical chess cage, but inevitably makes one recall the textbook picture of Ge, in which Peter I interrogates his son.
The effect is multiplied by the cool greenish transparent glass that reflects details. On long staircases located along the walls of the southern building, where on one side is the facade of Harald Bosse, and on the other, the audience wall covered with structural glass, the reflection can be doubled if not (let's be honest, this is unrealistic), then psychologically expand the narrow space.
The representative seriousness of the atriums, which is quite appropriate - after all, they prepare for the MBA here - is balanced by techniques that soothe the human eye: an abundance of wood, from exposed roof beams to glass balustrades; daylight, light gray-white color of the walls, interior and different from the fawn-colored facades imitating limestone from the outside. Meanwhile, in rooms that are definitely interior - for example, in lecture halls, cool geometry disappears, techniques become freer and more modern: what is at least a wavy ceiling made of wooden planks over contrasting black and white rows of seats.
The reconstruction, therefore, looks quite bold and large-scale: the building was seriously altered, changing the function, volume, adding many details. The sensations that the visitor will experience will hardly allow him to independently, without prompting, guess that the complex used to be a stable - this will not be possible for any visitor and not right away. Much has been preserved and restored, but a lot of frankly new ones have also been added, the building has changed and has become different. In the resulting complex, there is not much awe in front of the former Konyushenny courtyard, no one blew dust particles from the monument, although they did not deliberately break it. This is a common problem with renovations: if we expect only conservation from them, we will be deeply disappointed. No, the resulting building is new from the old.
More precisely, there is a balance of three components. Everything that is possible: the walls and their decor inside and outside where it was intact, cast-iron columns and the same lattice of the arched stained-glass window, were preserved and repaired. This is a genuine historical part of the building, there are at least half of it here and it is (now) in good condition. What is important, because after ten years of neglect, the complex of the former stables was almost a ruin. The second part is new, there is a lot of it, since four courtyards are covered and turned into parts of the building, and the middle building has become an atrium; the structure of the building has changed radically, but not only the structure, but also the feeling of the interior,now saturated with the texture of modernity - transparent, cool, metallic. Even the tree is not what the 19th century saw it. The third part is silhouette and proportions. They are both new and old: since the architects dismantled the buildings of the 1960s, the complex returned to its original "flattened" state, and the roofs did not receive any extra mansards - they are pitched, although in some cases they are glass. The restoration of the silhouette, which did not prevent the addition of quite a lot of useful space, is a tribute to the history of the monument. All three components: the old, the new, and a certain dictate of compositional justice, which forced the removal of the "discordant extensions", make up one whole, and it is exactly the reconstruction, since the building has been transformed, rethought and now lives completely differently.
The largest element of the modern part of the reconstruction "sprouted" outside, behind the contours of the historic building, between the southern building of the former stables and Petersburg highway. This is a large conference hall with 450 seats, which was not available in the historic building. Its sharp-oval volume, more than half buried in the ground, is covered by a flattened dome, outside covered with decorative triangles of a geodesic type. It is located 20 meters to the south, deliberately placed at a slight angle, as opposed to the strict layout of the main complex, and is connected to it by a completely glass passage. The feeling of a flying saucer docked to the training building is very sharp and precise. This volume is deeply and completely alien to Bosse's neo-Renaissance historicism, which he does not hide, although he makes an attempt to hide in the ground, "to pull his head into his shoulders." The interior of the conference room echoes the exterior: the decorative ceiling panels are the same triangular as the outer covering of the dome, figuratively they are one whole, which emphasizes the network of light stripes reflected in the mirror metal of the balcony for VIPs. Meanwhile, the conference hall itself does not occupy the entire space under the dome - in the lateral parts of the oval there are IT services and computer classes.
The accentuated distinction between the historical complex of the Main Academic Building and the "flying saucer" of its conference hall became the core of the entire concept of the campus of the school of management as a whole. The tension of contrast is most evident here, as the historic and modern buildings are side by side. However, in reality everything is harmonious. One of the modern buildings conceived in the western part of the campus - a cafe-club, has already been built and is open to students. It deserves a separate description and we will talk about it a little later.
