Residential complex on the Black River
St. Petersburg, Black River embankment, building 1, letter A
Designer: INTERCOLUMNIUM
Customer: IP Shestakov A. N.
Discussed: architectural and town-planning appearance
The residential complex on the site at the confluence of the Chernaya Rechka and Bolshaya Nevka was considered by the city council for the third time. The previous project, developed by Stepan Lipgart, was rejected twice, but later it was nevertheless agreed upon, having previously vigorously discussed: the general plan was also in doubt - the site was complicated by the presence of the Imperial Orphanage, and the architecture - to many, it seemed overly expressive.
New project owner of the site
entrusted the Intercolumnium bureau, which is headed by Evgeny Podgornov - he reviewed the previous version at the City Council, and also designed the River Side and Riviere Noir residential complexes located in the neighborhood: the second is just being built, the first is implemented.
Evgeny Podgornov took into account many of the wishes expressed earlier, as a result, an image was obtained that is the opposite of that created by Stepan Lipgart. There is only one thing in common: the building of the Imperial Orphanage, which is not a monument, is being moved to make room for the sake of a successful composition. If the project is implemented, such a maneuver will be the first precedent for the city - and, it seems, desirable for many. It is assumed that the building will be installed on an underground parking slab; the customer plans to adapt it for a residence.
Evgeny Podgornov proposes to move the house on the same axis with Golovin's Dacha, thus continuing the existing line of relatively low-rise buildings on the embankment from Kantemirovsky Bridge to the Naval Academy. The new building will become the backstage for the historical one, located in the depths of the site and deploying the “embrace” of the courtier towards Bolshaya Nevka.
Thanks to the composition and consoles, the building rushes to the river, but this friendly "gesture" is canceled out due to massiveness, minimalism and a color chosen on purpose - a busy highway is located nearby, and the color is not easily soiled, and, in addition, it will help to stand out from the neighbors …
Despite the fact that the majority of experts called the project a step forward, there was a lot of cautious criticism. Felix Buyanov considered the purism of the solution to be excessive: “the plainly designed facades in this place are not appropriate enough. Here you want more elegance - the powerful embankment, the preserved nature and the dacha spirit of the former Petersburg dispose to this. The facade should be more intricate. Now the building hangs too close and looks grayish, the success of the residential complex "Mendelssohn" here has not yet been repeated."
Alexander Karpov went further. The way of setting up the new building seemed to him successful, but the associations that arose confused him: “with paws embracing a small building, with St. Petersburg sphinxes, it may be Shemyakin's, and since the facade is lined with a regular dark lattice - also with a prison. This whole complex builds up tension."
Mikhail Kondiain called the symmetry of the building indifferent to the Black River and expressed concern that in cloudy weather the house would look extremely gloomy. Nikita Yavein agreed with this: “a rigid symmetric scheme is dangerous, the house begins to pull over itself, becomes a key object on the embankment. Kurdoner is normal, but you need to make it softer in drawing. Relax with fundamental support. Having won, soften."
Svyatoslav Gaykovich confidently supported the author of the project: "The building may be in doubt with its lapidary nature, but it is an honest architecture." Mikhail Sarri also saw "a coherent and understandable architectural technique, which is not present in every work."
Evgeny Gerasimov noted that the composition became better, “there was an interaction with a small house, which used to be driven around the site like a trash can”. And he offered to agree on the project, without expressing doubts that it is possible to trust the team of Evgeny Podgornov, who will think about the necessary details.
Vladimir Grigoriev called the attempt "more confident than Stepan Lipgart's - the corner, the turn, and the historical building are linked." But at the same time he noted: "I would like our work to be crowned with the appearance of an obviously successful building." And he urged his colleagues not to be lazy and get together again.
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Towards the end of the discussion of the project, Evgeny Gerasimov sharpened the agenda, inquiring about the reasons why the customer changed the author of the project. Evgeny Podgornov immediately explained to the council that the decision was made by the owner of the site and it “did not in any way relate to the person of the previous architect”. In addition, we note that dp.ru in the morning of the same day, before the city council, explained that the change of author was connected with the exit of the investor, the AAG holding, the customer of the project, Stepan Lipgart, from the project, after which the owner of the site, Alexander Shestakov, turned to Evgeny Podgornov.
Evgeny Gerasimov also recalled the recent RBC conference, where the topic of the "cartel conspiracy" of the architects of St. Petersburg was raised. A sensitive topic, apparently, could not fail to evoke a response, and after the meeting, the discussion continued on facebook on Dmitry Ratnikov's page: the participants, directly or indirectly, discussed both their attitude to the advice and to the alleged collusion, as well as who said what or didn't say on advice.
Stepan Lipgart's comment from the network discussion: “… I consider the city council to be the most important and useful tool in urban regulation. Peer discussion certainly contributes to improving the quality of projects. The result that we see is definitely not connected with any problems of the city council as an institution”.
We considered that the conversation required at least preliminary clarification and turned for a comment to Evgeny Gerasimov and Stepan Lipgart.
A collision arose from the comparison of the two facts. I watched the discussion at RBC, where Messrs. Lev Lurie, Maxim Atayants and Daniyar Yusupov said that a cartel had formed in the city, which impedes the work of foreign and Moscow bureaus on the market of architectural services. And if such statements can be forgivable to a historian, then colleagues should support them with examples. The discussion was also attended by Stepan Lipgart, who did not object, and a member of the City Council Sergei Oreshkin, who responded to these claims quite actively.
On the other hand, at the last city council, everyone saw that the owner of the site had changed the author of the project. Remembering the statements of colleagues at the conference, I asked a question to find out - is the change of the author connected with the wishes of the customer himself, or there is reason to believe that Lipgart is undesirable for the city council. To which we then received an answer from both the customer and the architect himself that such a decision was not connected with the city council. If you recall, in the end, Stepan Lipgart's project was approved, and neither he nor the customer had any complaints against the city council.
1. Unfortunately, I myself was not present and did not see the broadcast of the past City Council, so I can only rely on the impressions of its direct participants. First of all, to information from Dmitry Ratnikov, who, right during the discussion of the issue on the Black River, informed me as if Evgeny Gerasimov in his speech referred to me as a participant in the RBC roundtable, at which I allegedly defiantly called the Gradsovet a "cartel", keeping other architects out. Since this statement in this interpretation did not reflect reality at all (that is, I personally did not call the City Council or anyone else a "cartel"), I tried to clarify the situation from other witnesses as soon as possible, primarily from Evgeny Lvovich himself. …After that it turned out that in fact his performance was by no means so extreme, at least to my person.
2. The notorious RBC round table with my participation, which took place on July 15, is in the video on their channel, and who, what then said, is easy to learn from it. In addition to the scandalous passages about the "cartel", to which I have nothing to do with, there was a lot, it seems, a much more constructive agenda. Personally, it was more interesting for me to discuss the emerging positive trends of recent years in the architecture of our city, related, among other things, to the activities of the KGA: a number of competitions held by the Committee, constant improvement of town planning regulations, etc.
3. The site at the corner of Vyborgskaya Embankment and Chernaya Rechka is the most complicated one, both from the point of view of town planning and from the department for the protection of monuments. We presented two options to the City Council, both of them were more than vulnerable to professional criticism, which does not exclude our conscientiousness and striving to solve the problem in the best way. During the next discussion, Felix Buyanov perfectly formulated the problem of our project that has gone down in history - his ambition does not allow it to be realized. Nevertheless, as a result of our work and the work of senior colleagues - the Gradsovet, who gave a lot of valuable instructions, the architectural appearance of the house on the Black River was approved last year. The reasons why the project eventually changed its architect are by no means related to either architecture or architectural and urban planning regulation - alas.
Hotel at the Yacht Bridge
St. Petersburg, Primorsky prospect, section 83 (east of the intersection with Yakhtennaya street)
Designer: A. Len Architectural Bureau
Customer: LLC "PLG"
Discussed: architectural and town-planning appearance
Sergey Oreshkin presented a revised version of the hotel in P'yanaya Gavan - in December last year, the City Council recommended thinking about the dimensions and color of the massive building, and also expressed distrust of the typology - the layout of a mixed-type hotel was too inclined to sell rooms as apartments in the future.
In the new version, the maximum heights were reduced by one floor, and the building along Primorsky Prospekt was lowered by almost half. The general outline has been preserved, but the complex stepped structure has been reduced to one large terrace, accessible to all guests of the complex. Instead of terraces and consoles, plastic ends appeared, "cut" at different angles. The dark corten in the "core" of the complex was replaced by light slats, as a result the hotel became lighter and more airy, closer in mood to
office Jet Brains, which will be built next to the UNStudio project.
Reviewer Nikita Yavein noted that now "the embankment breathes and goes into the depths", there is a "real public street and embankment", where it is clear what to do - the first two floors will be occupied by restaurants, shops and an impressive sports complex with a swimming pool. He also called the complex a mixture of a hotel and a tenement house, but assured that, according to all formal signs, the future building is a hotel.
One by one the experts called the project a "leap forward", which, however, did not matter so much, since the site and typology raised a lot of questions. Most of the time they tried to find out - "what kind of incredible hotel this is", in which there are many apartments, but there are no kitchens where families are supposed to live for a long time, but for them there is no infrastructure - parking, public transport, playgrounds, landscaping.
Mikhail Kondiain urged "not to hide your head in the sand: life has developed a new type of semi-hotel, and this is a reason to make more precise norms so that you do not have to bypass the law." Evgeny Gerasimov, like many others, saw in the project a "veiled residential building" and suggested "the city should not provoke a new point of tension, but choose another site."Alexander Karpov felt offended for the work of the City Council and Sergei Oreshkin: before the meeting, he received documents from the FAS, which warn that the site has been allocated incorrectly.
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zooming 1/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 2/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 3/8 Project of a hotel on Primorsky prospect. Option 2. © A. Len Architectural Bureau
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zooming 4/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 5/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 6/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 7/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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zooming 8/8 Architectural and town-planning appearance of the hotel © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
Vladimir Grigoriev explained: the site was provided by the Plaza Lotus Group for the purpose of building a hotel as compensation for the work and provision of the Konyushenny Department to the city. Therefore, "the hotel should be drawn, and there should be no doubt that it is something else." And he summed up: “When you make a jump over an abyss, it does not matter how much larger it is than the previous one, if you didn’t jump. I would like the city council to have a civic position. We should not be a pack of wolves or a herd of butterflies that are very tolerant of each other, get into position and want to design more square meters, not less. Let there be an idea, there will be creativity, there will be something for which architecture is considered art, since it has a great social impact."
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House on Zastavskaya
St. Petersburg, Zastavskaya street, building 30, letter A, Designer: Yusupov Architectural Workshop
Customer: LLC "EUROSTROY"
Discussed: architectural and town-planning appearance
Ilya Yusupov presented an 11-storey building that will appear on Zastavskaya Street, built up with houses of six, four, or even two floors. By its nature, the building, although it strives to be the background, but the height of 40 meters allowed on the site does not leave it a chance for this.
Reviewer Andrei Sharov noted that the building will be visible on the panoramas of Moskovsky Prospekt, but at the same time admitted that the growth of the area upward is inevitable. And he advised to lower the western section by one floor, and to make the section in the depth higher - this will “soften the current spatial dissonance” and will give a calmer exit to Zastavskaya Street.
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zooming 1/6 Panoramic top view. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
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zooming 2/6 View from the courtyard of the house No. 28 along Zastavskaya street. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
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zooming 3/6 View from Zastavskaya street towards Moskovsky prospect. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
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zooming 4/6 View from Zastavskaya street towards st. If there is a tomchak. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
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zooming 5/6 Photo fixation. Facade solutions in relation to the surrounding architectural objects. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
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zooming 6/6 Photo fixation. Facade solutions in relation to the surrounding architectural objects. Residential building on Zastavskaya (city council 2020-17-07) © Yusupov Architectural Workshop
Felix Buyanov called "the house is too big for an ordinary, and too simple for an accent." And he continued: “If you restore the environment tissue, you cannot allow such a number of storeys. Or at least to put in an idea, like "Layers" on Voronezhskaya, and not to do development architecture, filling the space with square meters. " Nikita Yavein noted that “the rule of the firewall, which should be followed by ordinary buildings, has been violated, although there are no complaints about the facade and structure”.
Further, several opinions were voiced that 40 permitted meters is too much for this place, but it is impossible to force the developer to refuse them. Evgeny Gerasimov suggested "to create a working group and walk through the zones of the PZZ, especially in the border areas, the adjustment will remove most of these conflicts in the future."
Alexander Karpov recalled the new version of the 820th law, according to which the height limit for the formation of a street front on this section will be 28 meters. Vladimir Grigoriev made additional clarifications: the permitted height is given for the whole zone, this is the imperfection of the legislation, but at the same time the preservation of the environment and identity is in the hands of the architects: “we do not squeeze out of a tube - how much will fit into a mold, we will squeeze out as much”. And he supported the idea of creating a working group, calling for help from the Union of Architects and all those who were not indifferent. As a result, it was decided to devote a separate meeting to this issue and bring it to public hearings.
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