CHPP-18 is located in the very center of Pskov, next to the Mstislavskaya tower of the Okolny town. In the 1920s, in order to build it, the arm of the medieval wall was dismantled; now the building of the CHPP is an object of cultural heritage of regional significance. The building is not typical, author's, it was built by the Leningrad architect Andrei Ol. But the power plant received its protection status not at all for belonging to the architecture of constructivism, but because during the war the anti-fascist cell of Stepan Nikiforov and Mikhail Semyonov functioned here. In the 1960s, the power plant was rebuilt, in the 2000s it was abandoned, and it, wrapped in barbed wire, rotted for a long time right on the embankment. Then the embankment was landscaped, and there were various rumors about the CHPP for a long time. And finally, a project was presented: it should turn into an expensive housing for creative people; specialized media have already determined that such housing is suitable for wealthy people from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The choice of the St. Petersburg architect Nikita Yavein to work with such a project must be recognized as an exact decision. Firstly, he has experience in the reconstruction of monuments at the level of the General Staff, and secondly, his father
Igor Yavein - one of the masters of the Leningrad avant-garde; Yaveinov can be safely considered a famous architectural dynasty of the 20th century. Who else will work with the reconstruction of the avant-garde monument, even if it is of regional rather than federal significance, and also located in the northeast, in the "zone of influence" of St. Petersburg.
The place is really responsible. Despite the fact that Pskov is a fragmented and contrasting city, at the same time a museum and an industrial one, in its old part it retains the remnants of the historical environment, and, at least, is mostly two-story. Nearby, to the north, is the Church of Odigitria at the Pechersky courtyard, a monument of the late 17th century, strange for Pskov, but terribly abandoned. Also very close is the Pskov State University in the "palace" building of the former theological seminary. A stone's throw from the famous churches of St. Nicholas from Usoha and Vasily on Gorka, the 16th century, the latter is surrounded by a lavishly overgrown park of the Red Partisans; near a children's park. Here is the greenery for future residents. A wonderful place, an extremely attractive territory for elite housing: both antiquity, and the river, and surrounded by greenery. And quiet.
Not the entire territory of the former thermal power plant is allocated for a residential complex: about a third of the southeastern part, with small buildings (among the Zhukovsky's house in the Art Nouveau style), the architects do not consider. They have at their disposal the building of the old thermal power plant and the entire undeveloped part of the territory around. It's closer to the river, which is good. Its northern part, behind the tower, is covered with a preserved part of the wall, which is romantic. In the direction opposite to the river, a narrow isthmus stretches to Sovetskaya Street - in the project it ends with a checkpoint and serves as the eastern entrance-entrance to the territory.
The complex is opened to the river by a small area between the building of the thermal power station and the Mstislav tower; it starts from the promenade and is oriented towards the axis of the existing staircase leading down to the river. This square is its main public space, the "urban" part. A café is conceived here, and a preserved chimney of the power plant standing in the middle will add the current chic characteristic of reorganized industrial zones. Contrasting paving with strokes of black-gray stone and cubic stool benches precede a wide staircase - a straightened amphitheater, whose wide steps are conducive to sitting on them and watching the square and the river.
“It can also be used for impromptu performances,” explains Nikita Yavein. The entrance to the mini-square from the embankment is framed on the right by the CHP building, on the left is the former administration building, which in the 1930s was placed right next to the ancient tower. Its late upper floor will be dismantled and 4 constructivist floors will be left. The hinged transition of the 1960s between the CHP and the administrative building will be dismantled and replaced with a similar one, but glass and metal. That, on the one hand, will allow to preserve the historical characteristics of the place, and on the other hand, to arrange the entrance to the square: it will receive a horizontal lintel comparable to an element of a large man-made portal (such horizontal beams with trusses are one of Nikita Yavein's favorite techniques, but here he given, let's say, in miniature). Thus, the square will not be very open, it looks more like a large portal and for those walking along the embankment it will rather be a back street, where you can probably go.
The second entrance from the side of the embankment and the second mini-square are located to the south: here a black-gray pavement appears in front of the CHPP's facade, and to the right along the building there is a long “stupopandus” leading upwards. Inland, you can climb diagonally, and, passing the guest parking in the very middle, exit through the checkpoint onto Sovetskaya Street. In this way, the complex forms a through pedestrian axis leading from the river to the city. However, its availability for the townspeople is a question that is still being discussed. So far, at the presentation of the project, it was said that inside the territory of the complex of townspeople
will "sometimes let you in." But if the disclosure of the territory really takes place, then the appearance of such an LCD-not-behind-the-fence in the center of Pskov will really be able to revive its embankment and will become a small step towards the cultivation of this city, which is still rather dusty and uncomfortable in a tourist sense.
The second axis - the inner automobile street - crosses the territory longitudinally, linking the scraps of streets that were torn apart by the industrial territory of the power plant 80 years ago.
But back to the building of the CHPP - the actual subject of restoration and reconstruction, building No. 1 of the future residential complex. In the diagrams, the architects showed in detail two main building periods.
2-3 low-rise annexes of the 1960s are slated for dismantling; the rest is preserved and restored. And here's another interesting thing: the corner, the most noticeable now from the embankment, the volume is late, although it was in the 1960s, apparently, a little stylized as an avant-garde. It, like all other elements of the 1960s, will be covered with gray-brown bricks with ceramic tiles. Both bricks and tiles - handmade and local Pskov production - rhyme with the stone of the city wall and the medieval architecture of the city as a whole (looking ahead, I will say that the same finishing materials are used on the facades of new houses). In relation to the later extensions of the CHP, the architects allow themselves other liberties: their windows are framed by protruding black metal frames, a round window has appeared below, a corner ledge has a protruding glass bay window - it is easy to see that all the "edits" made bring the volumes of the 1960s closer to the style of the avant-garde … A curious paradox arises: an amateur will most likely consider the entire building a monument of the avant-garde. On the other hand, everything is done according to the canons of the Venice Charter: parts of different times are at least separated by color.
So, the CHP building became a residential building. The architects turned the main kiln hall into a spacious atrium about 15 meters high. Light enters in through historic shed lights and through large windows in the north wall, where direct sun will only penetrate in the summer at sunset. But in the evening, the windows of the giant lobby glowing from inside will pleasantly illuminate the square. Inside, a spectacular, thanks to the constructions of the 1930s, a covered courtyard is formed, inside which the architects even planned trees.
The windows of the living rooms of the apartments in the southern part of the building overlook the atrium, almost like the street, - this is an infrequent solution, usually staircases turn into internal light wells. But the lobby is bright enough to light up the living rooms, and interesting enough to look out of the window. The effect of such a gaze will be unusual - it will be a gaze from the window not to the street, but to the intermediate space of the lobby.
There are stairs along the east and west walls of the atrium; they will be clearly visible through the large windows, and the loggias planned nearby will allow you to admire the courtyard from above. The elevators are hidden at the northern ends of the corridors; and two more staircase and elevator blocks are built into the middle of the southern half of the constructivist building. Not a single facade and not a single old lintel of the building was damaged by the elevators, the architects assure. Almost all apartments in the CHP building have three rooms, 2 bedrooms and a living room. Only in a narrow volume, a pencil case built in the 1930s, stretched out in the southwestern part along the embankment, was there one four-room apartment with many windows overlooking the river. But the ceilings are everywhere - 3.8 m, very high. Industrial buildings tend to provide space for their apartments.
The site is located on the high bank of the Velikaya River, it is not for nothing that a fortress was built here. The difference in heights is about 8 m, so in the western part the first floor of building No. 1 is completely open to the embankment: it is there that a cafe can appear. The first floor of the eastern facade is completely absorbed by the slope. But then the architects planned a two-tier parking lot inside the hill: its lower tier is located at the level of the first floor of the CHP house, so that it will be possible to enter the house from the parking lot.
The CHPP will be complemented by two completely new three-storey residential buildings: one is located in the depths, east of the parking lot and is a narrow square, "looking" at the river (slightly obliquely, across the square). The second house, square and with a completely enclosed inner courtyard, was hidden behind a section of the wall and the Mstislavskaya tower. They are similar: both resemble
the house built by Studio 44 in Kronstadt continues to search for an ideal inaccessible to most Russians - low-rise housing. There are no elevators. But in the basement there are storage rooms and the entrance to them is from the outside. This is a variant of a quiet semi-urban life, which suits the center of Pskov so well, because she has not completely left there, despite the efforts of the industrial outskirts. Residential complex CHPP-18 revives this almost lost way of life at a new modern level, re-instills it in the city, which a hundred years ago all lived just like that.
A game is planned between modernity and historical allusions in the architecture of the two houses. The square house resembles a pyramid with a cut off top and entrances to the courtyard cut crosswise on four sides. Inside the peristyle: on the ground floor, a covered gallery on pillars bypasses around the courtyard. Such monumental stereometry, even in a relatively small volume, is part of Nikita Yavein's author's language, which is quite modern. Different-sized windows are also an actual technique of architecture of the late XX and early XXI centuries, now they are less common, and in this case they are motivated by the historical context: after all, it is known that in modern architecture they are often associated with ancient Pskov architecture, with medieval chambers and walls (although, of course, no medieval wall showed such a degree of freedom and could not afford so many windows, so the reception is rather a stylization in a square, a response to our ideas about medieval architecture, and not to it itself).
The piers in the upper floor of the U-shaped building, deprived of the cornice, look like serf battlements, which is in tune with the wall and even seems to make up for itself - when viewed from a distance, from the river - its lost spine. But the pitched roofs and ventilation exits, designed in the form of pipes - let's say, serve to fit into the silhouette of the old city. From a distance they will merge with the contours of the hip roofs, about which city defenders talk so much.
Generally speaking, such a house, or rather a residential complex, is a dream in many ways. Live in an ancient city, 10 minutes from the Kremlin and many monuments, by the river, right outside the wall of the 16th century, and even in an old constructivist power plant. From the point of view of an architect, this is also a dream: to fulfill many of the precepts of correct restoration, and maybe even to a large extent even “open” the building of the 1930s for people, to present it, to emphasize it. To "twist" around it a certain knot of the embankment space, to add to the city something that it did not have for at least several centuries - a half-area, a half-courtyard with a cafe, with an amphitheater of steps on the slope. To offer the old CHP a new scenography of life and interaction with the city. All these interesting tasks are solved here in a complex, clever and delicate manner. Moreover, low-rise housing is simply a rarity, almost none of the architects in Russia works with it seriously. And Nikita Yavein has at least the second example in his portfolio.
