Legend of architecture
Architecture is a complex art form associated with the duration of implementation and the adoption of many decisions by the participants in the process. It requires constant explanation and argumentation, architects are accustomed to this, they are taught that the project begins with research and is accompanied by a "legend", often very dramatic, giving the key to understanding a set of professional problems, from a place in the world context and the formation of a local tradition to the arrangement priorities within a separate workshop.
The project of the residential complex on Moskovsky Prospekt is one of the examples of a dramatic and complexly formed "legend" that weaves the military camps of the ancient Romans into a single architectural and urban planning system, the entourage of the cattle trade in the 19th century, the difficult fate of classicism in Russia, the preservation of monuments and symbiosis with them, strange the popularity of the pseudo-neoclassicism of the 1950s, new ideas about the standards of modern housing.
Inside history
Now the place allocated for the construction of a residential complex at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt and Obvodny Canal, next to the Frunzenskaya metro station, is considered quite prestigious. And once, at the beginning of the 19th century, these were almost settlements, the border of the real city and the surrounding suburbs, from where food and other goods came to the capital. Some of them had special requirements for transportation and storage. The city's daily needs for beef were several thousand heads, for the placement and resale of which in 1826, according to the project of the architect Joseph Ivanovich Charlemagne, the "Cattle yard" was built. Apparently, due to the location of the courtyard on the border with "wild" swamps and forests, or in connection with the personal tastes and ambitions of the architect, the planning scheme of the ancient Roman military camp with two perpendicular axial streets - cardo (north-south) and decumanus (west-east), with double rows spreading on both sides of the latter for 5,000 horned guests. On three sides, the courtyard was surrounded by a perimeter building 6 meters wide, which was a cross between a fence and a warehouse. In the center of its northern and southern sides, a three-arched gate with a low pediment was built, and in the center of the eastern side, with an exit to the future Moskovsky Prospekt, there was a two-story main building. Stylistically, the entire building was “dressed” in solemn neoclassical clothes, and, according to experts, the architecture shows a transition from Alexander's classicism with its ancient Greek allusions to the Russian Empire style with its romanophilia. This is why he is especially valuable.
In Soviet times, the "Skotoprigonny Dvor" retained its appearance and partly its function, despite the fact that the slaughterhouse and stalls were moved out of town. The industrial revolution of the 1930s led to the restructuring of the "bull" ranks in the production buildings of the Dairy Plant (architects V. F. Twelkmeyer, A. M. Sokolov, I. I. 50-ies for a more respectable, in line with the fashion for the Moscow version of "pseudo-neoampire" (architect V. A. Matveev). The restructuring of the middle of the 20th century also affected the main buildings of the ensemble: the northern wing of the historical building was changed and there, on the embankment of the Obvodny Canal, a little to the west of the original gate, a new entrance building was built. Nevertheless, both perestroika and a difficult life as a fence of an industrial enterprise did not prevent the perimeter buildings from obtaining the status of an architectural monument of the first third of the 19th century. So the perturbations of "Dvor", with the change of owners in the 1990s, the relocation in 2009 of the shops of the dairy "Petmol" out of town, and already in the 2010s, with the beginning of a new period of development of the territory already as a site for the construction of commercial housing, took place as and earlier, within the historical perimeter, defined by the confident hand of Joseph Charlemagne, a follower of Nicolas Ledoux and Charles Cameron.
First call
Studio 44 began work on a project for a residential complex on a part of the territory of the former Petmol plant with an area of 3.3 hectares in 2016. Several urban planning and historical conservation restrictions were set as starting points. All cultural heritage objects included in the perimeter of low extended buildings, of course, were preserved, and the adjacent security zone with a width of 4 to 23 meters was left undeveloped. All other buildings within the perimeter, dating back to the Soviet period, were dismantled. Also, the architects had to take into account the height restrictions on the front of the Obvodny Canal embankment and Moskovsky Prospekt: buildings no higher than 25 m at a distance of 20 m from the red line and no higher than 30 m at a distance of 50 m from the red line. For the rest of the territory, maximum marks of 28 and 33 m were allowed.
As a result, a central space, surrounded by the perimeter of historical walls with an impressive "legend", which confronts architects with a choice: accept the proposed rules of the game or go against them, remained for the project of a modern residential complex. Studio 44 chose the first option. “In working on a future project, we are trying to follow a rigid recipe dictated by the urban planning situation itself, by the logic of its historical development. I really do not like to resist the site and impose my will on it. It seems to me that when you go with the flow, in the good sense of the word, you can achieve more. And if, as in this case, the site has a pronounced and rigidly fixed perimeter, its own history and structure that has survived in temporary and functional perturbations, this must be followed and developed in order to obtain an effective spatial solution as a result "- this is how Nikita Yavein comments on the position of his bureau on work in a historical environment.
The architects deliberately and consistently recreated the orthogonal structure of the layout, emphasizing its genetic connection with the Roman military camps, and with the classic Empire ensembles, and, of course, with the original layout of the Stockyard. The versatility of the "legend" obtained thanks to this continuity made it possible to develop the volumetric-spatial and imaginative solution of the complex, creatively combining various techniques and methods of working with the structure and a wide range of stylistic references.
A City with Open Gates, or the Power of Orthogonal Planning
The territory of the residential complex is crossed by two perpendicular streets, two compositional axes, of which the main role is given to the north-south axis. The wide promenade is designed as a boulevard, running from the entrance arch from the side of the Obvodny Canal, preserved in the style of the Milk Factory entrance (project by V. A. Matveev), to the historical buildings. Unfortunately, the southern gate slightly does not coincide with the axis, but this does not affect the overall composition of the boulevard, in the center of which there are raised flower beds with trees and openwork pergolas. The axis perpendicular to it, passing from the east, from Moskovsky Prospekt and the Main Building to the west, penetrates the two main buildings (block "A" and block "B"), leaving wide passages in them. The architects decided not to overlap them with arches and confine themselves to decorative portals stylized as a simplified order system.
The two main blocks of residential buildings form open squares measuring 115x65 m. The blocks are almost identical, with one exception: a kindergarten for 100 places is built into the first floor of the eastern facade of block "A", because of which it was necessary to sacrifice the final break of the perimeter and complete resemblance to the ancient Roman prototype, as well as a through passage from Moskovsky Prospekt to new residential complexes in the depths of the block, which most likely can be regarded as a plus for future residents, who are hardly ready to put up with constant traffic on decumanus.
In addition to the gaps along the "east-west" axis, each building has two more rectangular arched openings with a height of two floors, marking the axis of symmetry going from north to south, and connecting the courtyards measuring 82x32 m with the outer shopping and pedestrian streets that occupy the security the area between the main buildings and the historical perimeter.
The courtyards are completely free of cars thanks to the underground parking, which occupies almost the entire area available for development within the protected zone of cultural heritage sites.
The result is a well-built orthogonal system, in which arrays of buildings, new and historical, are interspersed with public spaces, equipped with additional markers of axes and cardinal points: arches, portals, rows of trees, which will help to orientate a resident or visitor who is lost in this system. resorting to the help of moss in the trees or the North Star in the cloudy St. Petersburg sky.
The irresistible logic of the layout and the strength of the orthogonals allowed the structure proposed at the very beginning of work on the project to survive the change of two developers, who clearly appreciated not so much its classical purity and connection with historical prototypes, but the efficiency of the space output, the prospects for leasing public ground floors and a priori solved the problem intra-quarter security.
The last argument, dictated by the introverted nature of the resulting development, which is actually a “city within a city” with perimeter residential buildings built inside the perimeter of historical walls, somewhat contradicts the idea of lively trade and developed service infrastructure on the internal shopping and pedestrian streets, but only life will show how hospitable the future complex will be and will the good ideas of the architects, who called this project “a city with open gates,” not fall under the pressure of the collective opinion of residents interested in privacy.
Second call
The design methodology from the genius loci site also predetermined the approach to the stylistic design of the future residential complex. The presence of "own" classical monuments, the constructivist transformation experienced by the ensemble in the 1930s and, finally, the neighborhood with the "pseudo-neoclassical" buildings of Moskovsky Prospekt, provided a wide range for creative searches. The image of the complex was supposed to be an organic fusion of the three architectural traditions of St. Petersburg, which made the solution of the problem more interesting for the architects of Studio 44, and the result - to some extent programmatic, embodying the author's interpretation of the "Petersburg style", discussions about which continue in the northern the capital is not the first decade. And solving this problem became another challenge for the team.
Nikita Yavein comments on the problem of the “Petersburg style” in the following way: “Unfortunately, the topic of the formation of a modern architectural language, at the same time organic for construction in the center of our city, is discussed haphazardly in the expert environment and, as a rule, only in connection with discussions of controversial projects in which the term “Petersburg style” is cynically used to justify professional mistakes or incompetence. And the most surprising thing is that the architecture of the 50s of the XX century, which my father called "pseudo-neoclassicism in the era of the cult of personality", was chosen as the most frequently used model for interpretations, or rather, the kind of it that was built in our country, although quite rarely, in imitation of the post-war development of Moscow. While for St. Petersburg a completely different neoclassical tradition is more characteristic, which can be traced on the examples of buildings by E. A. Levinson and to some extent I. I. Fomin. They represent a geometrized version of neoclassicism, in which large volumes of simple forms are solved according to the same ordering principles as classical monuments. It was this approach that we took as the basis for the project of the complex on Moskovsky Prospekt, where we tried to show how we understand the St. Petersburg style. We strove to ensure that the architecture of the new buildings inherited the genetic code of its predecessors - both the Empire style of the 1830s and the Empire style of the 1930-50s - and that it would become an organic link between them”.
Outpost of style
The design of the four monumental blocks that form the residential buildings became a natural development of the given planning system and the principles of the formation of a new architectural language. The refusal to use large plastic articulations, such as projections and bay windows, made it possible to focus all the viewer's attention and artistic expression on tectonics, the subtleties of drawing and proportioning of the facade structure, reminiscent of a simplified three-tiered order system, which is crowned by a double attic floor with a colonnade bordering the perimeter of the resulting terrace. The floors located below are divided into three levels: the first one, one floor high, is intended for service and retail infrastructure and is not decorated in any way. The next levels are united by two floors and differ in the number and shape of pilasters covering every second wall. At the lower level, they are double and rectangular in plan, at the upper level, they are single and semicircular. The structure is decided in an emphatically laconic way, without capitals, bases and other canonical elements of the order set. The rejection of them is another sign of the "Petersburg style" from "Studio 44", which prioritizes not decor or its imitation, but proportions and tectonics.
The external facades are faced with natural light beige stone. But not entirely. In the corners, stone order structures break off, revealing brick walls recessed by a meter, with simple and round windows - an unexpected but thoughtful nod to the constructivist project of the Dairy Plant - and thin white belts marking the level of the ceilings. Such a completely post-modernistic joke, demonstrating to the attentive viewer all the conventionality of the front facade and order system, which was leaned against a simple brick building as a decoration. Which, in fact, is the pure truth.
It is not surprising that the courtyard and axial promenade facades are made in facing brick and the stone order echoes on them in the form of belts and pilasters only serve as a reminder of the triumph of the order and rhythm of their smart fellows working as the “face” of the residential complex. Nevertheless, the structure given from the outside is retained here. Only the way it is presented is changing. To the already mentioned decorative stone "guests" are added purely brick techniques, such as the alternation of structural and smooth masonry, reminiscent of pilasters. *** As a result, the residential complex is perceived as a whole. The expressiveness of the technique declared by the authors and restraint in its interpretation help to form a harmonious ensemble. Monolithic volumes, dressed in order structures, rising above the historical walls, despite their apparent compactness, especially against the background of new buildings under 60 meters high in the background, claim to be a full-fledged urban planning dominant. The residential complex, like an island or rather an outpost, marks the border between the old and the new city, connecting the traditional and new Petersburg architecture.
