Prominent House

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

The Art View House, located between the Mariinsky Theater and New Holland, was commissioned in August. It took seven years to build: the unique site created unique constraints. I had to coordinate some decisions not only with the KGIOP, but also with the Ministry of Culture, argue with city defenders, look for technologies for underground parking near the water, and also carry out noisy construction work in accordance with the schedule of the music school next door. But the result pleased many: the house received several awards, took pride of place in the bureau's portfolio, and also closed an important urban perspective.

Клубный дом Art View House на набережной Мойки Фотография © Андрей Белимов-Гущин / Евгений Герасимов и партнеры

The site is about one-fifth of the block stretching from the Moika River embankment to Dekabristov Street, which once completely occupied

Lithuanian castle of the 18th - early 19th centuries. The Lithuanian Musketeer Regiment was quartered in the castle, then it was rebuilt as a city prison, burned during the February Revolution, and later the ruins were also demolished. The plot, which was advantageous from all points of view, opened up ample opportunities for solving urban planning problems, but something, as they say, went wrong. At first, they wanted to build thermae on the site of the castle, but in the end, the quarter was only partially built up with houses for Soyuzverf employees, leaving gaps (for more details see the article "The Fatal Place of St. Petersburg", p. 38). A little later, a typical four-storey school appeared here, and in 1961, at the confluence of the Moika and Kryukov Canal, which can be seen far from the embankments, there was a kindergarten. Already in the 2000s, he fell in love with the townspeople for the bright colors like Piet Mondrian and the ivy-covered walls, but in the end it was recognized as a discordant element: the "cube" did not support the scale and facade rhythm of the building, knocked out of the panorama.

In recent times, the first project for a critical site, on which a kindergarten was located, was developed by Erik van Egeraat. But the emphatically modern building with a white "wave" on the facade was not accepted by the public. Then the bureau of Evgeny Gerasimov was invited to design, which chose a safe, but proven approach, prioritizing the task of restoring the spatial structure of the quarter. “The house should stand so tightly, clearly and confidently that there is no doubt about it,” explains Evgeny Gerasimov.

The construction was suspended for two years for the sake of archaeological excavations and research of the foundations of the Lithuanian castle by specialists from the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences; excavations began in 2014. Archaeologists have found and documented many artifacts, some from the time of Peter the Great; then the foundations were taken out.

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1/7 Archaeological excavations, foundations of the Lithuanian castle Image courtesy of Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners
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2/7 Archaeological excavations, foundations of the Lithuanian castle Image courtesy of Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners
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3/7 Archaeological excavations, foundations of the Lithuanian castle Image courtesy of Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners
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4/7 Archaeological excavations, foundations of the Lithuanian castle Image courtesy of Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners
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5/7 Archaeological excavations, foundations of the Lithuanian castle Image courtesy of Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners
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6/7 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment. Foundations of the Lithuanian Castle © Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners
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7/7 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment. Foundations of the Lithuanian Castle © Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners

Art View House is another multi-piece work "in styles" that the bureau is so successful at. At the stage of the project, we analyzed in detail allusions and quotes: "some of them serve as a reminder of the Lithuanian castle, some help to fit the house into the waterfront structure, and also (which is important) designate its belonging to the category of elite housing."

Yevgeny Gerasimov himself, when asked what was more important - remembering the Lithuanian castle or adjusting to the environment, answers: neither one nor the other.“The reminiscence is based on neoclassicism of the 1910s, which, in turn,“reworked”both the Empire style and the Northern Art Nouveau that preceded it. It is a landmark and easy to read. If you walk along Vosstaniya, Nekrasov or Radishchev streets, you can see several similar buildings: gray, neoclassical tenement houses."

Modern, according to Evgeny Gerasimov, the house is made even by the fact that it was built today. And the architect calls things of the 21st century rather technical than artistic: a two-storey underground parking, a fire extinguishing system, open layouts, the material is reinforced concrete with a ventilated facade instead of brick. The facade, by the way, is 90% made of natural granite and Jurassic marble. The remaining ten are decorative elements cast from architectural concrete based on models by sculptor Vladislav Manachinsky.

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1/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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2/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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3/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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4/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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5/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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6/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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7/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Ilya Priporov / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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8/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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9/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Ilya Priporov / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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10/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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11/11 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners

The finished house is really built into the panorama of the Moika and Bolshaya Morskaya "like a native", even despite the fact that it stands apart, and is not part of the typical for St. Petersburg "continuous" development. If you go around it, at the same time paying attention to the neighboring houses, you will easily find "roll calls". Gray color, high pilasters and pediment are at the neoclassical music school. ON. Rimsky-Korsakov, a rounded end, reminiscent of a castle tower, and bas-reliefs - at the houses of the Shipyard, similar rhythmic cornices - at the Kryukov barracks. The place itself is very Petersburg, there is water, bridges, lanterns, ordinary buildings of different years and iconic buildings. From this point, one can grasp the main epochs at a time: from Peter's New Holland to the new stage of the Mariinsky Theater during the times of Governor Poltavchenko. The house on the Moika enters into resonance with the entire environment.

The house has four facades, all different. The main one overlooks the embankment of the Moika River: symmetrical, ceremonial, with a pediment, measured pitch of bay windows and two oculuses on either side of the entrance. On the side of the Kryukov Canal, due to the peculiarities of the site, a "fold" has emerged: the house has stepped into the depths, there is more free space, which makes the building look more powerful and solemn from this side, the tension of a tightly stretched string appears in the pilasters, and due to the lack of bay windows, the facade is perceived as more "vertical". In the cramped Matveyev Lane, where instead of cars one can hear the scales and play of tunable instruments, the steppedness of the building is noticeably noticeable, here the facade is simplified, approaching the “courtyard” part, which is also interesting: between two powerful firewalls, reminiscent of thick fortress walls, there is a delicate “core” with many windows in which the sky is generously reflected.

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1/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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2/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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3/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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4/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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5/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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6/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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7/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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8/8 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment Photo © Andrey Belimov-Gushchin / Evgeny Gerasimov and partners

Art View House, like most other buildings of the bureau, turned out exactly as it was intended. Evgeny Gerasimov gives the main merit in this matter to the developer, in this case, Okhta Group, comparing it with a movie producer: “Everything should converge - the skill of a director, screenwriter, actor, costume designer, make-up artist and composer, cameraman, pyrotechnic and so on. Further. But the Oscar for the best film is given not to the director, but to the producer. Everyone is united by the main figure - the one who invests money, and without him everything falls apart. It is the same in architecture: with the current level of computerization, any project can be drawn, the technical capabilities have also grown. But no matter how talented architects are, it is impossible without the will and desire of the customer to spend money and make good architecture."

The house is compact - the sixth floor cannot be seen from the adjacent streets, the whole building fits into the lens, which is a rarity. Apartments are "piece": there are only 24, each offers a classic view, or even more than one: the Mariinsky Theater, New Holland, St. Isaac's Cathedral. The layouts are open, the area grows from 99 to 219 m².

Another sign of an elite house is the central lobby at 125 m², reminiscent of the lobby of a star hotel. The interiors of public spaces were designed by the London studio Project Orange, which also used natural materials: marble, granite, brass, precious woods, Murano glass.

It turned out to be not easy to build a two-level underground parking under the house, which is indispensable for a house with such a status. The proximity to the Moika and the Kryukov Canal, wet soils were not the only components of the engineering task, it was necessary to take care of the neighboring buildings. The neighboring house on the Moika embankment was in disrepair, and the transformer box on the side of Dekabristov Street, feeding the new stage of the Mariinsky Theater, was a newly identified object of cultural heritage. This means that the precipitation should have been no more than 2 cm. The complexity factor was also increased by the emergency sewer, which ran 5 meters from the pit fence along the Kryukov Canal at a depth of 11 m.

The leading design engineer of the bureau, Sergey Nenashev, said that before digging the foundation pit, six wells were drilled 45 meters deep to study the soil, and then about a thousand more - to fix it below the design mark using jet grouting technology. This made it possible to fix the pit and prevent soil mobility under the house and in the surrounding areas. The escalation of the soil was done according to the top & down technology, which is not very widespread in our country, in which the building grows up and down at the same time. The house at 104 Moika Street was strengthened in a gentle way; after the completion of construction, the city authorities repaired the collector. Ultimately, the precipitation turned out to be below the permissible level.

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4/6 Art View House club house on the Moika embankment. Excavation of the foundation pit through temporary technological openings © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners

The house on the Moika thus becomes a vivid example of the professionalism of the workshop, which manages to materialize its ideas even under difficult circumstances and technical conditions. Fitting into the strict rules of the St. Petersburg context, at a cursory glance, it seems to have stood here for a long time, although it provides its inhabitants with all the advantages of completely new, modern housing - on a par with the comfort of life in the scale and surroundings of the historic city.