Technical need
The post-industrial era has a paradoxical effect on the structure of urban development and the mentality of urban residents. In place of the gone into oblivion industrial zones with all their inherent infrastructural environment, new market "champions" come - residential and public complexes in dire need of an area as close as possible to the city center. While the city is more and more actively obsolete industry, the townspeople are beginning to feel nostalgia for its material and technical artifacts. Modern technologies, ergonomic and minimalistic devices are deprived of the rough and slightly pretentious perfection of their predecessors, created in those days when the conquest of the next scientific frontier and the invention of the next mechanism was almost a miracle, and the use of their results gave faith in the bright future of mankind. All over the world, technical museums are very popular, attracting adults and children with the opportunity to travel in time in a few hours, from the era of the first, still cast-iron instruments, to the future, when they will be replaced by polymer analogues. In Russia, this fad is only gaining momentum. For seven years now, the reconstruction of the Polytechnic Museum has been going on, which should collect all the newest museum methods for presenting the world of machines and technologies. It is planned to open the Museum of Cosmonautics at VDNKh soon. And these are just a few of the largest projects that should soon make up for the craving of Russians for the technical legacy of the industrial era.
Project"
Museum of Russian Railways”is a clear example of both trends: both the re-profiling of former industrial territories and the demand for educational and exhibition formats on technical topics. Since its opening in November 2017, the museum has shown record attendance: it far exceeds the planned one, thanks to which the exposition passed express testing for vandal resistance (then not everything survived). The record queues of 10 thousand people a day were reduced only by introducing a paid visit during the New Year holidays.
And the implementation of the museum project became possible thanks to a deal between Russian Railways, which own vast urban areas occupied by tracks and railway infrastructure facilities throughout the country, and the Etalon Group development company. The agreements provided for the transfer of part of the territory of the Russian Railways behind the Baltic station to the developer for construction
Residential complex "Galaktika", and in return "Etalon" financed the construction of the railway museum. This interchange system is quite common and has both advantages and disadvantages. The latter include minimization of funds allocated by commercial companies for the implementation of such "encumbrances" of their projects. To the credit of Etalon Group, although the company did not throw money away, it did not treat the construction of a cultural and social facility as a form of tithing, which cannot be avoided, but also does not have to be performed with high quality.
Between the paths
We have already talked in detail about the project of the "Museum of Russian Railways"
here, which makes it possible to limit ourselves to only a brief description of the main design solutions. The Railway Museum has existed in St. Petersburg since 1978 and has changed several addresses over the years, following the vicissitudes of urban planning and market policies. At the next turning point in its history in 2012, a part of the territory of the former locomotive depot near the Baltic station was allocated for the new home of the Russian Railways collection, consisting of more than a hundred locomotives and carriages of the 19th-20th centuries. Studio 44, invited to design the museum, offered to preserve the authentic depot, making it part of the new exhibition complex.
The structure of the old building - in the shape of a horseshoe with a turntable in the center, which was equally suitable for the previous functions and for solving exhibition tasks, was repeated on an enlarged scale in the new adjacent building, where the main part of the locomotive collection was located. And in the old building, service functions were concentrated, such as: a lobby, a cafe, a gift shop, a conference room, an administrative part, as well as several exhibition halls dedicated to the first railways in Russia (Tsarskoye Selo, Warsaw-Vienna, Petersburg-Moscow, and so on.). On the first floor of the depot, the oldest exhibits are exhibited, including Stephenson's steam locomotives.
The two buildings are connected by a glazed passage at the second floor level. The paths kept between the two buildings are also given for the demonstration of a part of the collection that is not afraid of the vicissitudes of the St. Petersburg weather.
Each element of the museum ensemble and each fragment of the buildings included in it is somehow determined by the railway specifics. Somewhere the relationship with the railway theme is only indirectly indicated and we must try to unravel it. So, for example, sleepers are used in the design of small architectural forms of the museum, and the shape of the rail is beaten in the navigation posts. And in some cases, the relationship is the most direct, if not strictly regulated. The museum is a structural subdivision of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, it belongs to Russian Railways and is subject to the entire system of norms, standards and requirements, some of which are logically justified, and the other part had to be taken for granted.
The first is the problem of the direction of the paths. The fact is that the coordinate system of the building to be preserved and the neighboring streets did not coincide with the direction of laying the rails along which new "exhibits" could drive up to the museum building under construction. The difference was small - literally 5 degrees, but insurmountable. Trains, like chess pieces, can only move in a certain way and can also turn tracks only by a strictly limited angle - the angle of rotation of a railway turnout. “No STU (special technical conditions), no references to the fact that new locomotives will come only once a year, we could not solve this problem. We had two options. Or put our building diagonally, but then it is not clear how to bring the locomotives to the old depot. Neither turntables nor special carts will help here. Or, leave the complex in the coordinate system of the street and the existing depot, and lay the tracks at an angle so that they fit the corner of the new building. We chose the second option and we got a very interesting scheme "- this is how Nikita Yavein comments on one of the main problems of the project and, at the same time, the main reason for the unusual design of the roof of the new building, which has become almost the hallmark of the museum.
The ridge of the gable roof on the straight sections of the horseshoe-shaped body goes at an angle, due to which oblique slopes appear, and on the rounded part, the roof forms a dashing hall, emphasized by a number of triangular pylons lined up outside the glass stained-glass window and supporting the entire overlying structure of the covering.
To distribute the "exhibits", a transborder had to be installed in front of the new hull, which allows to move cars and locomotives sideways with the help of transversely laid rails and special freight carts moving along them.
Such a double coordinate system and a slanting roof were needed to create an additional observation deck inside the new building - a bridge structure laid over the exhibits.. Walkways, together with suspensions and ties fastening them to large-span trusses, are an integral part of the roof structure, ensuring its rigidity. “The bridges do not just hang, they, like the trusses, are the supporting element of the frame. If you remove them, the house will fall apart,”explains Nikita Yavein. "But even more important than their constructive role is that they make the structure of the pavement habitable." In the meantime, there is no need to know about it.”
In the first case, wandering between the rows of locomotives, a person quickly loses the feeling of the “crown of creation” and thinks about the triumph of technical thought over humanitarian values. But as soon as you rise higher and look around the entire space of the main museum hall, you recall the first childhood acquaintance with a toy railway, in which rails looped between the models of stations, along which you guided a small steam locomotive with a pair of carriages by your own will. It's funny, but among the many photographs of visitors and amateur experts, top angles are especially popular.
In addition to the psychotherapeutic effect, the upper tier allows you to appreciate the inventively built space of the museum, as well as the advantages of architectural and constructive solutions.
The thorns of implementation
Steam locomotives, locomotives and carriages reign inside the museum. Their glossy multi-colored sides form a chaotic mishmash, which, upon closer inspection, forms a clearly structured sequence (chronological and typological) of the museum exposition, full of all the latest attractions and tools to captivate adults and young visitors.
We must pay tribute to the developers of the exposition: they showed remarkable ingenuity and provided options for the most demanding taste. Here you can see and even set in motion the models of the first steam locomotives. Or look into the office of the Minister of Transport and examine the documents on his desk. Next to the models is a real, but longitudinally sawn steam locomotive, allowing you to see in detail the locomotive interior, where the steam pushes the pistons that make the wheels turn. There are also other simple and interactive exhibits that make every visitor think about changing their profession and go to the train drivers or, in extreme cases, long-distance train conductors.
It is difficult for architecture to fight such a rival, especially given the specifics of museum funding. Nikita Yavein comments on the situation with the implementation of the project: “This museum is the first project in my practice, when almost the same amount of funds was allocated for the implementation of the architectural and construction part as for museification. We were forced to work in conditions of the most severe economy in order to keep within the budget of less than one and a half billion rubles, which for a project of 20,000 m2, which includes the restoration of the historic depot building, is just a meager sum."
But even in this situation, it is easy to see that the lion's share of the success of the exhibition is the merit of the architects. The experience of "Studio 44" in the design of museum complexes and transport facilities allowed the designers to solve many issues in advance, even at the concept stage, which made it possible to create an exposition of one of the best railway museums in Russia and the world. A well-thought-out layout, a two-tier bypass system, constructive and architectural solutions precisely found in style, not conflicting, but organically complementing the brutal exhibits - all this was incorporated into the project and implemented with the quality that can be expected in our conditions.
Two in one
It is not easy for an architectural firm, like any creative team, to escape the trap of specialization. One or two successful projects - and a stream of similar orders from customers begins, striving to receive a guarantee of success, even at the cost of losing originality. But going beyond the set limits is a risk that guarantees greater freedom and new opportunities.
The history of Studio 44 can serve as an example of successfully confronting the bonds of specialization. Now it is almost impossible to say what the main scope of the workshop is. Their portfolio includes dozens, if not hundreds of projects, a significant part of which relates to reconstruction projects in a historical environment, but is by no means limited to them, including urban planning concepts, residential complexes, transport infrastructure facilities, cultural centers, museum buildings and much more. Such a wide range gives the team advantages, allowing them to use the accumulated knowledge and combine the typologies themselves to go beyond the boundaries of stereotypes.
This is exactly the kind of museum built by Studio 44 for the Russian Railways Corporation in St. Petersburg. In it, the architects were able to combine the experience of designing station complexes (in
Petersburg, Sochi, Tuapse, Astana and others) with the practice of creating concepts for the most complex museums, such as the Hermitage in the General Staff Building, the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad and the History of Kazakhstan.
Railway infrastructure is a special genre in which the brutality of powerful structures and total obedience to the laws of the paved tracks and the logic of train movement along them are combined with enduring romantic and literary associations. And in order to create a railway museum, you need to feel all its power and poetics, and then find for it, on the basis of a well-thought-out scenario of the museum exposition, an equally strong and bright architectural shell that can coexist on equal terms and even enhance the impression of visitors, giving they have the opportunity to see a seemingly familiar world from a completely new perspective.
