The well-known writer Dostoevsky, studied by teenagers at school and widely read in the West, spent his life in Petersburg mainly in rented apartments - then it was so. Historians of his work have dozens of addresses. And there is only one museum in the city, where the writer lived his last years and where he died - in Kuznechny Pereulok, 5, in Kuchina's apartment building. The entrance to the museum is at the corner with Dostoevsky Street, down the steps, through the basement. The apartment itself is on the second floor, with a cast-iron balcony; the museum theater occupies the first and basement floors. The museum is extremely active: performances, evenings, master classes; exhibitions for April-May 6 pieces. It is not surprising that he desperately does not fit into space; for visitors with limited mobility, there is simply nothing to do here, solid steps.
In December 2017, museum director Natalya Ashimbaeva and architect Yevgeny Gerasimov, teamed up with businessman Andrei Yakunin (son of the former head of Russian Railways and co-founder of VIYM) to create the Dostoevsky Petersburg non-profit foundation. Yakunin started raising money, Gerasimov made the concept of a new wing of the museum for free and plans to finalize the project for free as well. The organizers emphasize that the project is non-commercial, the building will be transferred to the state. Charitable contributions are collected, an approximate estimate of the cost of construction is 700 million rubles. In April, the architectural concept was approved by Smolny.
The foundation plans to build a new wing next to the museum: to the left of it, in 1971, a house was dismantled - the same profitable, very similar to the Dostoevsky house-museum - in this place a new wing was conceived in dimensions close in size to the demolished house, that is, practically in regeneration mode. The public reacted sharply to the project, there are two complaints, the first is that two lawns on the sides of the road to the courtyard fall into the spot of new construction. They have already been removed from the list of ZNOP (public green spaces), but opponents of the project consider them a public garden, and the director of the museum, Natalya Ashimbaeva, clarifies that the formal size of the square, according to modern standards, is from 400 m2, and the built-up lawns are smaller. A real small park with full-sized trees will be preserved and landscaped inside the courtyard.
The second, more interesting problem was the modern style of architecture of the new building of the museum. Have appeared
accusations that the project "is killing Dostoevsky's Petersburg", as the building is invading the whole fabric of the old buildings. Proposals were made to restore the house demolished in 1971 and to settle the museum there.
Several paradoxes are outlined here, however, they are all predictable. First, the fund wants to donate a museum to the city; it would seem that museums and non-profit projects are usually welcome, but the public is protesting. The second - Evgeny Gerasimov, known for many solid stylizations, wants to build a modernist museum building, and he is criticized for this. Architects would not criticize, probably, because unlike the times of Roman Ivanovich Klein, who built the current Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, now museums in the style of historicism are not built - there are exceptions, but there are not many of them, for example, the museum in Yoshkar-Ola.
The wary attitude of Petersburgers towards modern architecture is well known; many believe that in the context of historical development, only historicism can be built, stylized, so as not to violate the integrity of the urban environment. However, on the one hand, over the past half century, the concept of environmental modernism has taken shape quite well - modern architecture, but not destroying the context, delicate enough to adapt to it in terms of parameters - height, proportions, and neutral enough so as not to “shout”.
On the other hand, the museum is in some way the pinnacle of modern culture, a place where it comprehends - and in every possible way emphasizes - its difference from the culture of the past, compares itself with it, studying genuine artifacts. If in the 19th century the museum often used stylization in order to immerse the visitor in the atmosphere of the era, becoming a kind of theater, now museums are most afraid of counterfeits. Everything new in the museum is emphatically new, any stylization is perceived as a replica-fake, an insult to museum affairs.
Evgeny Gerasimov has several more arguments against the building-repetition of the demolished house No. 7 on Kuznechny lane. If the house is completely restored, then it will not fit at all for the new building of a modern museum - at least b about Most of the windows will be "blind" dummies, because the two lower floors of the building are planned to be occupied by the theater hall, and the upper two - by the lecture hall and the library. Of the entire set of functions, only exhibition spaces need sunlight, and even then, I must say, not always. The second argument is that the surrounding environment is historical, classicistic, but not all of it belongs to the time when Dostoevsky lived in Kuznechny: the InzhEkon building is neoclassic of the 1910s, the Kuznechny market is neoclassic of the 1920s. But this argument is of secondary importance, it is noticeable that for the architect the museum typology is much more important, which in our time does not imply stylization in any way.
Gerasimov gives examples of modern museum buildings: small, built into the urban environment on a large scale and proportionally, but different from it, not hiding their age. One of them is the Museum of Drawing in Berlin, built by Gerasimov's longtime partner Sergei Tchoban.
Perhaps these examples, which help the architect to place the idea in the context of the typology of museum construction, are still one of the main components of the concept.
As for the rest, Yevgeny Gerasimov emphasizes, the project is preliminary, “just a concept”; the internal structure is currently better developed than the facades, "there is an active search for their solution", - specifies the architect. So now we can only talk about “the interpretation of the metaphorical meanings of architectural solutions,” the bureau emphasizes.
What is known?
Contextual characteristics: leveling the height along the cornice of the old house, cutting the wall according to the floors, - apparently, will remain, as well as the highlighting of the entrance by the vertical atrium.
The new wing will merge with the old building, but at the same time it will be separated from it by an atrium that looks like a small dead-end lane inside with a panoramic lift at the end and a stained glass window from the street side. “The atrium is an image of a courtyard-well as the seamy side of human life, where the action of most of the novels takes place. - Evgeny Gerasimov explains. “Dostoevsky brought out into the light the most secret nooks of the human soul, that which is usually hidden - so we bring the courtyard-well to the fore,” the architect emphasizes. The windows of two houses - the old tenement wing and the new wing of the museum - look at each other through the narrow space of the atrium courtyard, increasing the feeling of being cramped. Walkways are thrown between the buildings - a symbol of a transition, a "teleport" between the old and the new, or even an iconic mirror between the house-museum and its modern "reflection".
“The original memorial part of the museum is preserved in the old building,” says the architect. - And the new wing is designed to attract readers of new generations. There is Dostoevsky the realist and Dostoevsky the innovator; his work, as it were, was refracted through the prism of time. We understand bridges as a transition from one to another, a metaphorical teleport, and the atrium is a portal of passage through space and time."
The architects prefer not to talk about the facades yet - they are finalizing it - although it is obvious that a laconic-modern solution has become fundamental for Yevgeny Gerasimov. It must be said that the history of the Dostoevsky Museum project is not the only case in the history of modern Russian architecture when the public stands for a copy of a lost building, and an architect stands for a modern version. Knowing St. Petersburg conservatism, one can assume that the concept still faces a lot of difficulties - however, any idea must be defended, honed, and brought to perfection. What if, when the project is ready, it will convince opponents with its gracefulness and bring St. Petersburg closer to the views of European capitals on the development of the context of a historical city, make it possible to enrich the environment with a non-conflict neighborhood of the new and the old?
Now the fund is engaged in the legal registration of the site. Further, according to the plan, the stage of the project and it for discussion at the City Planning Council and the Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Construction is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2019.
