Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is not the easternmost city in the country, but many perceive it that way, if only because of the firmly learned: "in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky it's midnight." The main and only center of the peninsula, whose remoteness has become the talk of the town, and the nature attracts fans of exotic tourism in Europe and Asia, has not yet had a modern hotel - neither for tourists, nor for business partners of Kamchatka companies, nor even for receiving domestic leadership. Such a hotel - memorable architecture, up-to-date services, two restaurants, one of them with a view, in a word, full 4 stars - is now being built according to the project of architects TOTEMENT on the shore of Lake Kultuchnoye in the center of the city: the city administration is located to the south, to the west of Panteleimonov Monastery, to the east of the Spartak stadium.
The hotel got a plot of irregular shape, stretched along the shore of the lake, the road and, on the opposite side, along a steep slope, which virtually canceled all views from the windows facing north. At the top of the slope there are a couple of typical, rather old and shabby, five-story buildings. To the south, there is a view of the hills and the lake, the project for the improvement of a fragment of the shore of which was also included in the work. The views to the south, east and west, I must say, are exceptional, and the proximity of the road - Leningradskaya Street - not only compacts the plot on the south side, but also provides good transport accessibility. In a word, the place is complex, but not devoid of advantages. In addition to the hotel, from the very beginning it was planned to locate an office center and a fintes-spa, as well as a conference hall, which in the process of work has grown to a solid capacity of 450 seats.
The complexity of the site and the wide range of functions led to a long search for a concept: the architects moved the volumes, varied the shape and layout. However, we must admit that the need to "pack" functions on a small area on a mountainside into a volumetric figure, similar to origami, is a task suitable for TOTEMENT / PAPER with their addiction to difficult goals, provoking contrasting and complex, but thoughtful and consistent solutions, also as well as their love for tectonic stereometry and culture of the Far East. Difficulties have become a reason for them to study in detail and work hard.
When it turned out that the site to the west of the main one could also be freed from communications and attached to the common spot of the "trapezium", there was an opposition of towers: a 15-storey hotel in the eastern part, an 11-storey office in the west. It immediately took shape in a figurative opposition: the hotel tower is streamlined and coal - (or ash) black, with a shimmering drop of a metal visor highlighted in red at the top - neither let nor take a volcano, a hill with a cloud of smoke before the eruption began. The office tower is glass, faceted with wide planes with obvious corners, as opposed to the hotel's rounding. The glass is covered with a scattering of white triangles, designed to mask the stripes of interfloor ceilings, partly to protect from direct sunlight, but above all to make the volume more solid and "icy" - a kind of ice mountain thawed at the corner facing southeast to Petrovskaya Sopka as a spot clean glass.
It immediately comes to mind: "ice and fire" - and the authors do not argue especially. Indeed, the opposition of an ice mountain and a smoldering volcano is key for Kamchatka, a place cold but heated by natural disasters: it reflects both the essence and the contrasting beauty of local nature. It is not surprising that the towers took extreme positions on the left and right, between them stretched a glass stylobate, a push-pull body, not only containing several entrance zones, a lobby, a hall, a fitness room and a conference room, but also becoming a space for figurative interpretation of semantic tensions arising between the two poles. If in the east we have here a conventional "fire", in the west "ice", then between them is the earth with all its beauties and contradictions.
The fitness spa is built into the lower floors of the office area like a three-dimensional puzzle. It has seven swimming pools, one large with 25 m long track, a "paddling pool" and a spa bath; and four more small, in fact, a series of different baths that are part of the Korean bath, designed for tourists from the neighboring country; such baths are a traditional phenomenon and in demand in the Far East. The western wall of the basin is white and dotted with large graphic ornaments, which, firstly, are based on petroglyphs and traditional Kamchatka decor, and, secondly, are thought by the authors as a semblance of a pattern of broken ice, ice drift at the base of an ice mountain. Going out onto the facade, this ornamented shamanic wall raises its "head" and becomes like a kind of angular dragon looking around the surroundings with six asymmetric eyes. I remember Japanese cartoons with their constant transformations from everything into everything and fantasy-fantastic creatures. The legless white serpent is immersed in a glass-metal volume, where the beveled lines of thin bindings interpret the pattern of its "skin" in their own way. At the level of the second tier, people bathing in the bathtubs and the pool will be clearly visible from the street; one bathtub is located directly above the deep niche of the main entrance. On the floor higher in the third tier there is a fitness area, and to the right, to the east, three large cantilever bay windows are facing, hanging over the roof of the stylobate in use; the ledges are glass, so that while pedaling or running on the spot, you can admire both the hill and the lake.
The conference room is located to the right, to the east and closer to the hotel part. It is very large, recall - 450 seats, and resembles another totem animal, in every way different from the angular Sino-Japanese "dragon". Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya call him, not without tenderness, a bear. Indeed, it looks like a bear: a hexagonal, but streamlined "body" of the hall in the second tier, four large legs, also streamlined, rather complex contours, in terms of clearly reminiscent of the well-known children's picture "a bear climbs a tree" - voluminous legs, supports are hidden in their walls, and inside there are meeting rooms, and maybe a cafe. All volumes, both "legs" and "body", are covered with relief striped metal panels of copper color, which makes our imaginary bear look like a shamanic figurine carved from textured wood, some northern birch. Inside, the ceiling of the hall is flat, but for the sake of the safety of the structure, many farms are provided above it - ventilation equipment is also located in their closed space. Outside, the space of the trusses protrudes above the roof of the stylobate as a flattened dome, similar to the back of a bear and to the top of an old extinct hill. Or, to be more precise, the sleeping hill itself is somewhat similar to a bear, a semi-chthonic creature - the spirit of the earth, which goes under the snow for the winter and brings spring with its awakening; in the TOTEMENT project, the character of the beast, which holds everything on its strong legs, whether it is a complex, or the whole world, is very much felt.
But of course, there is no literalism here: it would be strange to provide a 4-star hotel with a "real" dragon, bear, ice rock, volcano. All topics are carried out at the level of metaphor, albeit quite easy to read; however, the authors do not speak about the dragon at all, for them it is an image of a pool of ice cracking above the warm water. But the main thing is that everything is put together in a harmonious plot of Kamchatka nature: here is snow and ice, here is a volcano, here are “geyser” pools, here is a warm and massive beast, in spirit it is closer to a volcano than to an icy mountain, and seems to be its product, in particular due to the copper color. All of them are united into a kind of close, tightly linked "ecosystem", where the "bear" visible from everywhere plays a central role, similar to the world tree. But once again: this whole plot, directed and deeply immersed in the local nature and culture, is by no means straightforward, it rather provokes guessing and substantiates the form than talks to us "head-on".
Meanwhile, the sculptural volume of the conference room is obvious, it uses one of the well-known and usually winning techniques of modern architecture, going back, for example, to Sancta Sepolcro - Ruchelai's chapel, built by Alberti in the Church of St. Pancratius. In essence, he uses the principle of the pavilion: this is volume in volume, a secret in a box, he can afford to use about greater sculpturality in this case becomes a catalyst for the plasticity of the building An important principle is that such a volume should be seen from different sides, it should flicker behind the stained-glass windows and protrude above the roof, intrigue and lure, serving as a paradoxical sign placed inside and from this even more attractive. All these principles are observed here, the “inner magnet” works.
It is not surprising that the space of the first floors swirls around it and the most interesting solutions appear, motivated, however, functionally: the architects tried to calculate the scenarios of the behavior of numerous visitors to the conference hall during the break. People need to go somewhere, be distributed for relaxation and communication, and the foyer around the hall becomes the initial space. The building has three main entrances, the foyer unites two: one leading to the hotel lobby and the second - the central one, between the fitness and the conference hall. In addition, the height difference on the site is more than 5 meters, and the entrance from the hotel leads us along a wide staircase immediately to the second tier, to the entrance to the hall, and the central entrance is lower, to the first floor. The space under the pillars of the hall is lowered even lower so that the ceiling does not press down - descents from three sides lead to a rather cozy and amazing space, where the sides of the "legs" - meeting rooms are round on the sides, and above our head we see many curved plates, as if a metal skin had been cut transversely; the motif continues on the ceiling of the 1st tier, and in one place this cellular structure flows down to the floor "stalactite", forming an exotic column.
The foyer from the side of the main facade and the central entrance is double-height, further divided into two tiers by a balcony. The floor and ceiling of the second tier are quieter, white-black, geometric. Two types of patterns: flowing, inherent in a volcano, where ash twists and lava flows - and ice-broken, meet, moreover, the lava "flows" rather below, and ice "falls asleep" from above; roughly what happens from time to time in Kamchatka, but it is served, of course, brightly and beautifully, as part of the introductory extravaganza that impresses the viewer from the first steps.
In the fourth tier of the hotel there is a restaurant, it slightly hangs over the roof of the stylobate, the view from the inclined stained-glass window is on the bay, hills, the dome of the hall fits into the landscape. The design of the restaurant is simple and restrained, with parabolic contour supports that mask the T-shaped supports. Levon Airapetov compares them to boats: "Kamchatka fishermen, while resting, dried the boats, placing them vertically." However, the ceiling here is a solid wave, and because of the illuminated cutouts that accompany the parabolic outline, it seems that the pillars are in some way "floating".
The lower, main restaurant is separated from the hotel tower by a technical floor with ventilation outlets, and visually - by a bevel-ledge of a small "coupling" that cuts off its volume from the main one, turning it into a basement. “We are in favor of a clear division of all volumes and a clear manifestation of their function,” the architects explain.
The second restaurant on the top floor is much brighter, it is also a sky bar with a view of the surroundings. It is he who is covered with a drop-shaped curved metal visor. The sky bar floor is designed in red, it should be reflected in the metal of the visor, forming the same effect of a smoldering volcano mentioned at the beginning. The pillars are also metal, with an inclination in different directions, a metaphor for cataclysm, as well as lamps - glowing cracks in the ceiling. However, the embossed geometric "shamanic" ornaments on the walls and the lamps conceived by the authors made of twisting glass ribbons under the ceiling emphasize the controllability of the "cataclysm", broadcasting: yes, we are at the top of a volcano, but paradoxically safe.
Having set a tense counterpoint in the volumetric solution, the architects developed and strengthened it in the interiors, saturating it with details, textures, color, small volumetric-spatial plots, complementing the main ones. For example, at the corner of the hotel corridors, an extension is provided - a miniature hall for spatial relief, and in the rooms, whose design is developed in several individual versions, a TV and shelves are built into one asymmetrical niche.
It is quite obvious that the richness of form and meaning is combined here with the degree of detail, which in some places approaches “total design”. We emphasize that the project is not a concept at all, TOTEMENT has done all the detailed design, selected finishing materials, mainly from the geographically closest Chinese manufacturers.
A separate chapter was the work with the standards for the seismic hazard zone. “If you follow all the rules, nothing but a box of terrible proportions with small windows can be built here,” Valeria Preobrazhenskaya admits. On the territory of the hotel, it was required to take into account the danger of an earthquake up to 9 points, immediately behind the road - up to 10. In these conditions, the architects developed all the calculations of stability together with TsNIISK, the only institute that seriously deals with this topic in the country; used seismic supports, putting, in a very simplified way, shock absorbers made of rubber and steel on a set of reinforced concrete ledges of the foundation, which made it possible to reduce the 9-point limit to 8-point. Several special technical conditions (STU) were developed and approved, and, in particular, the same fire safety specialists who worked in the Zaryadye park were involved. All this is a short summary of some absolutely titanic efforts, which resulted in large stained-glass windows of the stylobate, floor-to-ceiling windows in offices and parts of hotel rooms, an incredible number of cantilevers for this place, however, rather restrained, since everything is inscribed in real calculations and all approvals have passed.
Some editors of well-known magazines sometimes like to say: anyone can come up with it, but let's build it. So, here incredible efforts have been invested not only in the invention of a complex, interconnected and meaningful form, but also in implementation, starting from complex engineering calculations and ending with a detailed layout of all facade panels in order for their drawing to converge. As far as I know, the work took about two years and was carried out with a detailed analysis of the details. The customer considered the design of the rooms on a 1: 1 model, comparing it with the proposal of a Korean company. We chose the TOTEMENT option. The building frame is now completely cast in concrete.
So the building, on the one hand, becomes a metaphor for the wild Kamchatka nature and its internal struggle, framed only by the episodic, or very archaic, presence of man. On the other hand, in order for this metaphor to be convincing, beautiful and modern, it is necessary to respond to the challenges of this nature, overcome it, for example, calculate strength, check the validity of human limitations; what TOTEMENT architects are doing, fighting for the reality of their ideas with conviction and passion.
