In January 2019, St. Petersburg will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the lifting of the blockade. By this date, the city plans to build a new museum of the blockade and defense: it should become not only a continuation of the current museum in Solyaniy Pereulok, but also a fundamentally new institution for St. Petersburg: an interactive platform with an emphasis on preserving memory. The complex should include a museum and memorial zone, a fund depository, a research memory center with an archive and a library. Height limit - 25 m.
The museum will be located on the "arrow" of the Smolny embankment in the bend of the Bolshaya Neva - next to the Smolny Cathedral, the Tauride Palace and the "Universe of Water" museum. It is also planned to build a junction for the Orlovsky tunnel - it should connect the banks of the Neva. So far, the area of 1.73 hectares intended for the museum belongs to the State Unitary Enterprise "Vodokanal".
The closed international competition was announced in May and was held in one stage. The participants worked on the space-planning solution of the museum building and the adjacent park, the concept of the museum space and transport infrastructure. Among the jury members: Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, writer Daniil Granin, chief architect of Moscow Sergei Kuznetsov and many others. The short list includes nine architectural firms. The winner will be chosen on September 8, taking into account the opinion of the townspeople (you can vote at the exhibition and
here).
We invite you to get acquainted with the projects.
Mamoshin's workshop
The architects presented the museum in the form of a fort, saturating the building with the symbols of the “tablets of the blockade”: 872 window caissons by the number of days, 124 “keystones” by the number of weeks, 29 columns by the number of months, more than a million names of those killed in special cells. In the center of the composition there is a memory hall with a luminous lantern in the form of a ten-pointed star. The building will be faced with stone from the battlefield - the Karelian Isthmus, the shores of Lake Ladoga. The entrance to the museum represents the breaking of the blockade ring.
Romanov Bureau
Here the ring is formed by deaf cubic blocks "fused" into each other. Behind them hides a chamber space reminiscent of a city courtyard-well - a memorial open-air hall with an “eternal flame” of 900 shell-candles surrounded by “shadows of the dead” - stylized niches in the walls. The exposition of the museum is chronological and is built around a spiral, which, according to the authors, "leads to victory and peace."
Zemtsov, Kondiain and partners
At the heart of the image is again a ring - a mound, from which massive blocks of the building "break through" outward, similar to the closed ranks of soldiers. Exhibition spaces will be located in these buildings. The exposition is structured chronologically and thematically. The visitor moves along a barely perceptible slope, under oppressively heavy floor slabs. The underground floors are reserved for storage and parking. The main volume of the building is connected to the "arrow", which will be given to the Institute of Memory and the library.
A. Len
This project is perhaps the most cheerful one: light finish, calm lines and openness. A large rectangular volume opens onto the Neva with a public amphitheater open to citizens, which grows into a square in front of the building. The roof of the main unit is in use. Sergey Oreshkin focused on the possibility of creating a museum cluster: a park with an exposition of defense equipment is connected by alleys with the Universe of Water Museum, Smolny Cathedral and the Tauride Palace.
Studio 44
The plan of the museum resembles a Suprematist composition. In the heart is the “defending city”, seven thematic towers: sorrow, fire, everyday life, science and culture, hunger, cold and production. They stand at the top, ringed with an amphitheater staircase, from which the volumes of the entrance groups break out. On the adjacent territory, Nikita Yavein proposes to create a memorial garden, a grove, a city beach, a hotel, an art school and other museum pavilions.
Design Institute "Arena"
The heart of the composition is a memorial: a small cube hidden behind the wall of the "city" - the main museum building. It is inscribed in a ring of massive white plates, similar to megaliths. There are gaps between the plates, and inside they have passages through which you can go around the entire building. The museum is surrounded by a spacious laconic square with islets of greenery.
Snøhetta / Norway
The Norwegian bureau proposes to split the complex into several elements: the main building, pavilions similar in style and a landscape park with an open-air exposition. The main volume is a laconic cube with windows and terraces with panoramic views that seem to include the city in the museum's exposition. Natural light plays an important role in shaping the interior space - it leads visitors up the ramps to the large roof terrace.
Thomas Herzog Architekten / Germany
Architects hide a significant part of the museum underground. The main exposition will be located on the -1 floor. The ground volume is a truncated inverted pyramid set on a rectangular glass floor. The "walls" of the pyramid are made of corten steel. The above-ground space is spacious and light; it is planned to set up a landscape park around the building.
Lahdelma & Mahlamäki / Finland
Finnish architects based the composition on the idea of a spiral, which symbolizes "historical continuity, the resilience of the human spirit and at the same time the fragility of human life." The main volume of the building - a cylinder with a rectangular block inside - is hidden under an artificial embankment; its authors propose to plant it with meadow grasses. In the center there will be a spiral staircase that will connect the main exhibition on the ground floor with other spaces. Above the ground, the spiral makes the last turn and creates an expressive horizontal, delicate in relation to the historical environment. Perforated metal, enamel, gilding and white porcelain are used in the decoration.
