The idea of a memorial complex in honor of the defenders of Sevastopol 1941-1942 at Cape Khrustalny dates back to the early 1970s, the history of its implementation lasted about forty years, it was returned to it in the mid-2000s, but it was only possible to advance until the construction of two Soviet monuments: Bayonet and Sail "in honor of awarding the city with the title of hero (1977) and sculpture" Soldier and Sailor "(1981-2007). Buildings began to be designed and even foundations were laid, but they were not completed. A new design period began in 2017 - at the same place, on the territory of 54 military plants, it was decided to build an opera and ballet theater in addition to the memorial complex: for some time the project by Coop Himmelb (l) au authorship was vigorously discussed, but Wolf Prix publicly refused it at the beginning of 2019. At about the same time, at the beginning of this year, the National Cultural Heritage Foundation, which manages the plans, ordered two more projects, no longer of an opera and theater complex, but more of a museum one, consisting of two parts: a memorial to the Glory of Sevastopol, to the west of the sculpture A sailor and a soldier, and a museum and educational complex, in a larger area to the south, beyond Kapitanskaya Street. Later, in the summer, another project appeared, then there were changes in the composition of the builders, and now the plans are more than vague (in contrast to two similar museum and educational complexes of federal significance, in Kaliningrad and Vladivostok). It is not known how the further design of the complex in Sevastopol will develop.
The project of architects "Studio 44" is one of the projects proposed at the beginning of 2019. Their invitation is not surprising: just remember that the company's portfolio includes such well-known projects of federal significance as the reconstruction of the General Staff building for the Hermitage collection or the Sirius school in Sochi - there are many examples of both museums and educational institutions from school to university. The authors, on the one hand, invested in the concept their knowledge about the specifics of the functional typology of the complex, and, on the other hand, reflected in it the sum of ideas about the “classical” Crimean seaside landscape, partly reviving images from old paintings, for example, the landscape of Artillery Bay depicted in the middle of the 19th century by Carlo Bossoli, who was chosen by the architects as the headpiece for the project.
This approach endows the museum project with lyrical delicacy, which contrasts sharply with the vector of the "natural" development of the views of Artillery Bay from the obelisk-memorial to the hotel-Turkish one adopted in recent decades (the latter is especially vividly represented by the residential complexes Cristal beach and Cape Khrustalny on the very shore) …
Nikita Yavein's project reversed this extensive tendency by 90 degrees, towards the search for urban-planning identity - which, perhaps, would be good.
“For us, the prototypes of the Crimean imperial residences of the 19th century were important: the Livadia Palace and the palace in Oreadna. It seems to us that they correctly capture the feeling of southern architecture, characteristic of the mountainous Crimea: terraced buildings that creep along the mountain, follow it, form bridges, pedestrian and spatial connections. Where stairs play an important role - remember not only the famous Odessa staircase, but also many others. Our museum and educational center does not seek to reach the sea, focusing on the mountain, and does not grow with new verticals - we decided that there are enough verticals here. Terraces and stairs are more important in it”.
Some of the terraces already exist on the territory, since it is located on a hill with a height difference of about 15 m, descending to the sea. The architects keep the retaining walls, complementing them with new ones, as well as megasteps of laconic volumes no more than 2 floors high. Each has its own function, and the conglomerate not only looks, but also “works” like a city, where each of the buildings, tightly stitched together, has its own task and size, due to both function and relief. Terraced gardens are conceived on the exploited roofs, that is, the "city" - to some extent also a park on the mountain.
The similarity with the city, growing historically and gradually, was intended to support two historic buildings of the barracks of the Menshikov Fort: the project provided for their preservation, as well as the preservation of the remains of the embrasure wall. Over the past year, the buildings have somehow managed, unfortunately, to be demolished.
But the project, we emphasize, provided precisely for the preservation of historical buildings, on the visualizations of their roofs - hip, hip, while the roofs of all other volumes of the complex are flat. The project, and in general, is quite tangibly connected with the history of the place. And the history, of course, is military, the coast of Sevastopol for a long time consisted of fortifications to a large extent, the remains of many of them are intact, and frankly, we would like them to survive our time … In addition to the Menshikov Fort on the other hand, there are remnants of The seventh battery with a stone parapet and an arsenal tank buried in the ground - the architects propose to conduct archaeological excavations in this place, to museumize the found remains and connect them with the museum and educational complex, equipping another entrance from the sea. Thus, the museum complex turns out to be similar to a southern seaside town, which grew up with old fortifications, behind them and on them, having mastered the remains of defensive structures - something similar to an "imputed" plot, a technique popular in our time; and although the fortifications are not medieval at all - as Nikita Yavein aptly put it, “Sevastopol is a city repeatedly destroyed” - the image turns out to be similar to some Greek town on Venetian bastions in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. There is only one culture, Sevastopol is a well-known colony of the ancient Greeks, and on the site under consideration there is even a small fragment of the vineyards of ancient Chersonesos, although the center of the ancient city is far away.
And meanwhile, despite all the overlaps of allusions and silhouettes, the architects are far from trying to create a replica of the old seaside town. In order to achieve the necessary measure of abstraction, they are helped not only by their own view of things, not devoid of megalithic generalization, but also by the theme of the avant-garde, originating from the assignment. It is planned (or planned? It is difficult to say) that one of the "anchor" operators of the museum complex will be the section of the 20th century of the Tretyakov Gallery, the same one from the Crimean Wall, which stores the "Black Square" and much more. Hence, among the prototypes - Malevich's architecton and composition, interpreting the plan of the complex in a distinctly Suprematist way.
The avant-garde becomes either a lens or a cauldron that allows it to "digest" all ancient, medieval, Renaissance and other allusions, to bring them to a common denominator and an extreme degree of generalization, without losing, surprisingly, all the themes. I would like to remember, expanding the circle, that Corbusier justified his flat roofs, including a Middle Eastern city, similar to a scattering of laconic cubes, antagonistic to the "slender" and verified Renaissance city. The avant-garde, like its immediate predecessors in general, is known to seek inspiration in shacks opposite to the glamorous palaces of the center and in the primitives of deep antiquity; This is partly why the theme of the city, molding on a hill, dating back to the 5th century, if not the 10th century BC, so organically "falls" on the examples of the avant-garde and, among other things, Malevich. But for all its love for the primitive and the people of the avant-garde, art is acutely personal and individualistic - therefore, its approaches allow not blindly following the mass, but managing it. Ideally, of course.
In this case, it is quite manageable. By adjusting their tools and prototypes, by the way, listed in the project album with enviable care, the architects outline the measure: asymmetry / and geometric predictability, vernacularity / regularity, antiquity / modernity. All this is combined in the "architecton", but allows for different interpretations and evokes, if you think about it, a lot of emotions.
So, the amphitheater dug into the lower part of the slope - here looks like a completely antique, neo-Greek solution (not even Roman, because it echoes the hill, and does not stand on substructures). And the adjacent volume of the “hall for 300 seats” compositionally salutes the Niki Apteros temple on the Acropolis, which the authors also neatly included in the analogies, but the large round window immediately resembles many constructivist buildings, that is, it brings us back to the avant-garde. Using the method of free analogies, it leads us to the project
reconstruction of the CHP in the center of Pskov, developed by Studio 44 in 2016; although the round window, a kind of conditional sum of the Renaissance and the avant-garde, is generally one of Nikita Yavein's favorite techniques, he also has such a window in his workshop.
In front of the hall with a round window, the amphitheater rounds out, but on the other hand, along the square of the 300th anniversary of the fleet, it is continued by another one, stretched out in a straight line. And if the first looks at the bay, then the second is more likely towards the city center and Mayakovsky Street, which goes out to this point, the axis of which is with a gap, but still is aimed at the Vladimir Cathedral in front of the square with the monument to Lenin. In a word, this entrance from the city is perhaps the main one, and the amphitheater here is like the main staircase of the museum, with the difference that one could sit on it to watch the sunset. The steps of both amphitheaters are interrupted by asymmetric inserts of volumes that violate (or revive) the predictability of the rise: as if they were overgrown with uncontrolled buildings, although some of the parallelepipeds have stained glass windows: they illuminate the library located behind the benches of the central amphitheater.
To the left and south, between closed dark volumes, a white, very light portico appears in front of the glass entrance and the main vestibule - in fact, this is the official main entrance, on its sides, like propylaea, a cafe and a museum store. The main staircase starts from the foyer: it is covered in succession by three glass, transparent-striped volumes that rise upwards towards the memorial, diagonally. The architects call this large covered staircase "inhabited", assign it the role of a large museum foyer and interpret it as the main public space connecting the entire complex. The central amphitheater with a library inside is next to it. Together they resemble the stairs of the Hermitage in the General Staff building, which also serves for recreation and events - only the theme has developed, having received more space on the slope.
On the other hand, the striped glass of the three volumes hiding the stairs accentuates the modernity of the complex and somewhat facilitates the brutality of the walls, often deaf, designed in the form of retaining walls and often growing out of them. The main staircase is wide, spacious, full of sun glare and shadow stripes, a hyper-pergola. Its "crystal" insert perfectly echoes the name of the Khrustalny cape.
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zooming 1/3 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 2/3 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 3/3 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
The second main staircase - on the contrary, sharp and decisive, like a needle or a sword - leads from the southern corner, from the side of the city's central market, straight up to the Hall of Glory of Sevastopol. In the future, the silhouette of the Stele Bayonet and Sail looms.
This is an alternative direction and another connection with the city: on the figurative "avant-garde" scheme, it is a long diagonal plate. A disciplinedly assembled diagonal staircase can be understood as a kind of "walk of fame", implying a concentrated movement of ascent or descent, in contrast to the wide movement of the main staircase spreading along the slope - a public space.
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zooming 1/4 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 2/4 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 3/4 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 4/4 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
The Hall of Fame itself is a laconic structure crowning the hill. Cyclopean-megalithic and at the same time light, bright and not striving upward, as Nikita Yavein emphasized above, but calmly, as a given, abiding in space. Four large pylons, surrounded by an imperceptible contour of glass walls, carry a "canopy" roof with a light opening in the middle - either an occulus or a compluvium; all together resembles a giant bowl and at the same time a table.
The hall becomes the logical conclusion of the educational and museum center - its symmetry effortlessly sums up and balances the conglomerate of structures on the slopes as a kind of main temple of the ancient city.
And at the same time, the complex is a kind of park. It will be possible to walk on the roofs of the volumes; rows of cypress trees alternate with spaces of gardens, which they planted entirely like the Egyptian hypostyle halls. Wednesday is designed for quiet contemplation.
“The park, stretching along the natural slope of the hill, is formed by the receptions of numerous amphitheaters and terraces, which are created for those who wish to enjoy in silence the views of Artbukhta and Primorsky Boulevard, to see beautiful sunsets and bright sunrises. Silence, enveloping the park with a heavy memory of the place, is tacitly present in every moment of being there, but it does not enter into a dispute with the ease of architecture and only enhances the impression of the already established dominants of Cape Khrustalny."
The park is an important component of the project, and the fact that it is not just attached somewhere on the edge, but permeates the complex, - on the one hand, gives it a resemblance to Renaissance palaces, where, wandering through the halls and passageways, you accidentally discover garden in the courtyard on the roof of the second or even the third floor: take, for example, the Mantuan Palace of Gonzaga, not forgetting, however, that the prototypes of the Renaissance palaces are ancient, and a later memory of them was the Crimean imperial palaces.
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zooming 1/11 Functional zoning © Studio 44
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zooming 2/11 Volume-spatial solution © Studio 44
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zooming 3/11 Axonometric plan at around 2.250. Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 4/11 Axonometric plan at 6.750. Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 5/11 Axonometric plan at 13.00. Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 6/11 Axonometric plan at 20.00. Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 7/11 Axonometric view of the museum and exhibition complex © Studio 44
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zooming 8/11 Section 1 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 9/11 Section 2 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 10/11 Section 3 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
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zooming 11/11 Section 4 Museum and Educational Complex and Museum of the Glory of Sevastopol © Studio 44
On the other hand, the park, as well as the public one, makes the project relevant: an avant-garde museum that has grown into a terraced park on a slope above the sea, intertwining many functions that respond to completely different visitors - which could be more modern. It is good that it is contour-immanent, but this version of modernity does not forget about its roots.
