Three new buildings, whose construction was completed by the architects of Studio 44 in 2015, supplemented the ensemble of the medical complex, the construction of which on the site of the Komendantsky airfield, north of the Udelny Park in the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, began with a decree of the mid-1980s. At first, the medical center was called the cardiological center, then it became the federal center for heart, blood and endocrinology. The building of the eighties, which occupies the central part of the territory, was built for over fifteen years from 1988 to 2006, with stops due to lack of funding. Its intricate plan resembles a winged insect, and whimsically alternating volumes of different heights are faced with porcelain stoneware, apparently at the end of the construction epic, in the mid-2000s. Later, by 2010, a curved volume of the perinatal center, strung on a round tower, appeared at the northern summit of the trapezoid.
Three buildings of "Studio 44" are intended for a medical and rehabilitation complex. They stretched along the northeastern border of the site of the medical center, which is now called the research center and bears the name of V. A. Almazov. For the new complex, only 3.6 hectares were allocated - a fifth of the territory built up by the time the design began, as we can see, is already quite dense. Initially, it was required to build a building with a height of one hundred meters, with a high throughput, wards for three hundred patients, operating rooms, intensive care units, a diagnostic department, a cryostorage, and in addition, with a cafe for one hundred seats and a conference hall for six hundred. The first design tender was won by a company that intended to place the skyscraper closer to the center of the site, close to the main, old building. Then the project was taken up by Studio 44, which significantly changed the concept: calculations showed that the tower cannot be placed in the initially selected place, since this would violate the insolation standards. So it was moved to the east corner of the lot. In addition, the architects of Studio 44 brought the conference room into a separate block. It turned out to be two laconic volumes: an oval one-hundred-meter tower and a round conference center thirty meters high - on the one hand, they echo the rounded volumes of the old building, and on the other, they look solid and simple, more laconic than their predecessors. The idea to add a third block - a black two-story cube, which housed a cryostorage of umbilical cord blood and a department of high-tech diagnostics - was born later, when it turned out that for the correct operation of ultrasensitive equipment, maximum isolation from any vibrations and mechanical interference is needed. As a result, a chain of three simple geometric volumes lined up along the red line of Tbilisi Street: an oval, a cylinder, a cube. Their height is reduced by a factor of several: the height of the cylinder is slightly less than one third of the hospital tower, and the cubic block, respectively, is still exactly half below.
Despite the obvious isolation of the three volumes, they are nevertheless connected by a ground stylobate, and underground - by a common basement. This ensures horizontal communication between the core buildings. Here are two unconnected communication channels. The first is for employees and patients, the second is for cargo: food, medicines, and for garbage disposal. In the high-rise block for these purposes, side loads with lifts to the ground level are arranged. The entrances of the stylobate section are accented by large, energetically raised metal canopies "originally from the eighties", which appeal to the old building of the center and maintain the integrity of the complex.
The architects adopted fire safety standards as the starting point for the vertical zoning of the hospital tower. From the first to the twelfth floor, there are departments with wards for patients - this is the maximum height that the rescue equipment available to the Ministry of Emergencies in this area of the city reaches. Then there are three floors with operating rooms and intensive care - for staff and immobilized patients, there are other requirements for evacuation, respectively, these departments can be located higher. Since it is these floors that are the most technologically advanced - there are a lot of sophisticated equipment and clean rooms - the thirteenth and seventeenth floors were made technical to accommodate climate and ventilation systems. Thus, the resuscitation and operating blocks are separated from the upper and lower floors by layers, which are marked on the outside by stripes of yellowish porcelain stoneware. Operating rooms and intensive care are connected, in addition, by internal additional elevators. The last two floors - the nineteenth and twentieth - are given over to administrative and research premises. There is a helipad on the roof for the evacuation and delivery of donor organs.
Glass shields provide sound insulation from helicopter noise. By the way, the second - insulating - glazing layer is also available on the first twelve floors to protect the wards from noise, since in the future Tbilisi Street will probably become a high-speed highway. Parts of the building are clad in a glass cover, multi-layered, and look different depending on the lighting: we see glittering glass, then - the walls behind the ribbons of fully glazed gallery balconies that encircle all twelve lower floors. You can go to the balconies for a walk, and you can go around the tower around the perimeter.
The second volume of the complex, given to the conference hall, is built not of one, but of two cylinders: the lower two floors are eight meters wider than the upper ones, and the upper tiers thus receive a kind of "stand" in which the lobby, cafes and bypass are located. corridors - for entering the stage and the hall. The lower circle is glass, the upper one is lined with yellow porcelain stoneware - the color is set by the first building of the medical center, which is also yellowish. The fact that the facades of the hall are deaf is due to its function: if necessary, the hall is illuminated through skylights, which are curtained during film screenings.
The volume of the hall stands on supports hidden inside the glass part, and thus, the space under it is completely free, which increases the area of the cafe. From the first floor, the hall can be accessed by two open staircases or lifts. The roof of the entrance group, which at the same time serves as a kind of bridge between the middle and third blocks, is made exploitable: it is landscaped and you can leave the cafe on it and go to the third block - however, only in the warm season.
The visual connections between the first and second blocks are obvious: the two-part structure of the second block is included in the rhythm of the alternation of glazed and faced parts and belts of the first. This connection is reinforced by the cylindrical shape of both blocks.
The black cubic third block clearly stands out from all the buildings in the center, old and new. In the course of its design, the requirements for the equipment that was supposed to fit inside changed: the architects had to change the layout and arrangement of windows. In order for them, despite the amendments, not to look chaotic on the facades, they decided to tint the windows, subordinating the cladding to the general black color of porcelain stoneware. Thus, a play of large geometric figures of various materials and textures began between the three buildings: the "black box" adjoins a stepped cylinder, part of which is shiny glass, and part of it is yellow and stone (the imitation of a stone looks quite convincing). The theme is picked up by the hospital's one-hundred-meter tower, but it is transparent, two-layered, its surface is more complex: the double-skinned balconies of the hospital ward floors are adjacent to the gratings of the technical floors and the light glass of the operating theaters that allows maximum daylight to pass through.
The cubic building is two-story and, since it houses, in addition to diagnostic devices and tomographs, a cryostorage of stem cells and umbilical cord blood, it is connected by a gallery-passage with the building of the perinatal center. The appearance of this black volume, a kind of "kaaba", among the streamlined and generally light and glass cases of the center, on the one hand, is unexpected, on the other, it is necessary: it has become a visual counterweight.
The choice in favor of the high-rise tower of the first block also seems to be optimal: the tower compositionally revives the horizontal, as a whole, outline, sets the visually necessary vertical here. Three new blocks fit perfectly into the dense ensemble of the complex. On the one hand, they are completely self-sufficient - modern, laconic, clearly outlined. On the other hand, they do not conflict with the nearby buildings of the center. Rather, they lead the themes embedded in them to a kind of impressive geometric absolute, almost megalithic, as Nikita Yavein likes to do in his projects.