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Empire of Enlightenment, Not a Military Parade

The book about the reconstruction of the Joint Staff reveals various aspects of the project that proposed a unique for the contemporary architecture approach to museum transformation - and quite an unconventional outlook of the very meaning of the imperial glory.

26 January 2015
Review
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Thames & Hudson Publishers (Great Britain) that specializes in arts and architecture and released, among other things, monographs on Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Steven Holl, published a book fully dedicated to one of the most famous museum reconstruction projects of recent years – “New Major Enfilade” of the Hermitage, organized inside the eastern wing of Karl Rossi’s Joint Staff - upon the project by the brothers Oleg and Nikita Yavein. The book summarizes a grand and a very successful initiative that, according to some estimates, extended over twelve, and, according to other estimates, over twenty-five years (the building was handed over to the Hermitage in 1989, the design work starting in 2002). In 2014, the second stage of the reconstruction of the eastern wing of the Joint Staff was completed – the building became a living and operating continuation of the nation's main art museum. 

Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


This book is a living proof of the fact that a great project can be written about in five or possibly even more totally different ways. The nucleus of the book consists of a richly illustrated detailed description of the concept written by the leader of the author team of the project, scientific adviser of "Studio 44", Professor Oleg Yavein. The description is prefaced by a few articles: a preface by the director of the museum Mikhail Piotrovsky and a short essay by Aaron Betsky. These two are followed by a detailed, emotional, and philosophical text by Dmitry Shvidkovsky and Julia Revzina – dedicated both to the history of the building and the project of its reconstruction, it treats Karl Rossi’s Joint Staff as the "triumphant finale" of the town-planning history of Saint Petersburg, uniting the plastic embodiment of the idea of Russia as the Third Rome together with the triumphant memory about its victory over Napoleon.

The poetic essay is offset by the rational analytical article by the Dutch critic Hans Ibelings: for him, the Russian soft spot for empire style after the Napoleon war is a paradox because "...the classic style of the Joint Staff is a sort of dedication to the very empire, in the victory over which the Russians take so much pride"

Meanwhile, one of the most exciting parts of the book is comparing the implemented project by Oleg and Nikita Yavein to the proposal by Rem Koolhaas who, in spite of the fact that ОМА yielded to "Studio 44" in the tender of 2002, nevertheless continued working over this project for some time in the capacity of academic advisor of "Hermitage-Guggenheim" foundation - the book has in it Rem Koolhaas' speech of 2004 with a brief description of the project and his proposals to his Russian colleagues. Mikhail Piotrovsky calls the "dialogue with the alternative proposals by Rem Koolhaas particularly interesting - with which he really leaves us intrigued. 

Rem Koolhaas' speach and the semiotic illustration of his proposal // Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


On the other hand, Dmitry Shvidkovsky and Julia Revzina view the OMA proposal as the typical for the modern mainstream of museum reconstructions where the new is deliberately set against the old by contrast. And as for the work done by "Studio 44", the authors of the essay view it as totally different and even claim to having invented "the third path" that is equally alien to the ostentatiously "modern" style and to the retro-stylization, at the same capable of leaning "...on the wisdom of the ancient so as to push the limits of the modern, and go beyond the pale of its stereotypes" - seriously, one could hardly think of a better praise for a work of architecture. 

Hans Ibelings supports the same idea saying that the architects "demonstrated their ability to go straight to the essence of the building <…> tried to understand what the eastern wing of the Joint Staff was all about and express what it wanted to become if it possessed <…> free will. Hans Ibelings names a few similar, in his opinion, projects of museum transformation (this list includes, among other things, reconstruction of the Tate by Caruso St.John architects) - but states at the same time that “in comparison with the indicated works "Studio 44" occupies a less humble position" - the critic attributes this to the spirit of constructivism inherited by Oleg and Nikita from their father Igor Yavein. Still, Shvidkovsky/Revzina also refer to their family history subtly observing an analogy of a different kind - the deep soul connection of Leningrad avant-garde with the "times long gone". 

Back to the comparison with Rem Koolhaas proposal, though! Both projects proceed from the properties of the historical buildings but the OMA proposal treats the museum as a "stunning mosaic" of spaces, some kind of "anti-hierarchical" labyrinths built around the general entrance. "Studio 44", on the other hand, found in the Joint Staff the solemn axis, subjected the museum space to it, offsetting the absolute power of the centerpiece with a multitude of entrances on the level of the first floor. Both projects are quite "well-read" in the architecture of Russia but they find opposite things in it, one - the chaotic labyrinth, the other - the hierarchy and regularity (although, probably, as a result of OMA consultations, both themes were ultimately superimposed on one another, the enfilade becoming the background layer, so the article by Oleg Yavein is entitled "Between a Labyrinth and an Enfilade", and its last chapter - "Space Mosaic" - pays homage to the idea proposed by Koolhaas). 

Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


It is necessary to remember at this point that, in the traditional history-of-arts sense, the architecture of the Joint Staff is indeed dual and can even be perceived as the reflection of the character of the Russian Empire of the XIX century: the grand facade on the outside and the dull red-tape bureaucratic substance inside (incidentally, the ministry campus included not only the offices but also the flats of the government employees; besides it was built by different contractors, hence the odd discrepancies here and there). One could think that Rem Koolhaas enhanced the second peculiarity inherent to the inside structure of the building carrying out to the public eye something that classicism preferred to stow away in the closet: marginal properties of the spaces - and endowed the lining of the empire image with a highly contemporary meaning. 

Oleg Yavein denies the above-mentioned treatment of the architecture of the building of the Joint Staff. He is positive that there is no controversy between its facades and the inside structure and that the circumference of the Palace Square is not the author's whim but a continuation of the context, and even the proverbial sharp angle is not a forced measure but a thought-out technique. Besides, "Rossi initially drew on the plan unbroken lines of the enfilades - writes Oleg Yavein - and on the course of work the architects realized that the existing premises fall into an enfilade of their own accord along the perimeter of the building. And, if we look at the plan done by Rem Koolhaas, we will see that he deliberately ruins this route breaking the line of the route in zigzags, and sometimes even stopping it with dead-end appendixes. 

Plan of moving around the halls in the proposal by Rem Koolhaas // Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Model of the Major Enfilade // Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


The main subject of the project done by "Studio 44", however, became the other (major) enfilade - this enfilade, as the nucleus of their "new regularity" the architects were also able to read from the architecture of the ministry building. It turned out that the five courtyards grow in size consequently smaller from south to north, in the direction of the Winter Palace - nobody had ever noticed this peculiarity before - forming a giant perspective structure whose axis is pointed exactly at the spire of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. The architects blocked the yards, raised their floors up to the level of the "representative" second floor on the platforms whose section views look like the Saint-Petersburg's drawing bridges. The links between the buildings and the yards were reconstructed and given the regal - almost of the temple kind, and maybe even Roman-style - doors. In the beginning and in the end of the structure, the architects placed the regal amphitheater stairways. The result looks like Forum Romanum. And generally - the project that has been executed in the imperial style is still on the side of Catherine the Great's enlightenment ideal rather than the "military parade" ideal of Nicolas the Emperor, and thus the building also kind of breaks in two, although still within the confines of the overall empire paradigm. The museum function is really better accommodated by the enlightenment style rather than by the military Napoleon Empire. 

Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Options of the doors design. The final one was not possible to implement and it was subsituted by a more laconic version // Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014


The multitude of meanings hidden inside the project give you the aftertaste of the late XVIII century - what is different here is the fact that the enlightenment people were more into natural science, and the authors of the museum are more into history, first of all, the history of this building and of this city. The main axis that the architects found, for example, came back as a glass trail that has been drawn on the floor and the enfilade's stairways - and looks like an hourglass in a baroque temple or maybe the strokes of the Foucault Pendulum on the floor of the St.Isaac's that get us wondering how this space was inscribed into the structure of the universe in general or into this city with its twisted logic in particular. Besides, the authors draw parallels between the modern automation of transformer museum halls (that controls the exposition of modern art and the giant doors that are difficult to open by hand) - and the mechanisms of Feltin's New Hermitage (that chanced to lie in the path of the enfilade's axis) and its recently-restored "hanging garden" on the roof: initially, it was planned to plant trees inside the covered yards, thus also making a hanging garden of sorts, but the idea so far is still on paper. The hanging bridges quite unexpectedly put one in the mind of Saint Petersburg's passages, adding to the theme of Catherine's enlightened monarchy (that actually started the Hermitage collection) a tad of historic romanticism that was already relevant during Rossi times, although it did not affect him personally that much. 

From the imagery standpoint, the project is closer of all to the almost perfect plastic embodiment of the abstract thought in the pre-war projects by Paris Academy's Boullée and Led - they were very much loved by the Russian (although more by Moscow) empire architecture - and by the architects of the 1980's...

As we can see, the book provokes diversity of thought, providing lots of things to ponder over: besides the sayings by various authors, the book demonstrates in detail the story of the authors' search for the solutions, honestly says what the architects were not able to achieve and, the other way around, lots of plans and photographs show just how much WAS achieved. The careful restoration of the grand interiors, arrays of lamps over the top-floor halls, and especially the attics under the vaults of the triumph arch - there are lots of details here that are really worthy of your attention. In conclusion, we will add that this seems to be the first work by the Russian architects published as a hardcover by a foreign publishing house in English and with the global reader in mind (the Russian version is considered to be the supplement to the English one).
The attics open for the visitors' inspection // Oleg Yavein. Hermitage XXI century. New Museum in the Joint Staff. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2014. Photo: Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


26 January 2015

Headlines now
Gold in the Sands
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Layers and Levels of Flight
This project goes way back – Reserve Union won this architectural competition at the end of 2011, and the building was completed in 2018, so it’s practically “archival”. However, despite being relatively unknown, the building can hardly be considered “dated” and remains a prime example of architectural expression, particularly in the headquarters genre. And it’s especially fitting for an aviation company office. In some ways, it resembles the Aeroflot headquarters at Sheremetyevo but with its own unique identity, following the signature style of Vladimir Plotkin. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) headquarters in the Moscow agglomeration town of Zhukovsky, supplemented by recent photographs from Alexey Naroditsky – a shoot that became only recently possible due to the fact that improvements were finally made in the surrounding area.
Light and Shadow
In this article, we delve into the architectural design of the “Chaika” house by DNK ag architects, which was recently completed in 2023 as part of the collection of signature designs at ZILArt. As is well-known, all the buildings in this complex follow a design code, yet each one is distinct. This particular building stands out not only for its whiteness and minimalism but also for the refined use of a limited number of techniques that, together, create what can confidently be called synergy.
Casus Novae
A master plan was developed for a large residential area with a name of “DNS City”, but now that its implementation began, the plan has been arbitrarily reformatted and replaced with something that, while similar on the surface, is actually quite different. This is not the first time such a thing happens, but it’s always frustrating. With permission from the author, we are sharing Maria Elkina’s post.
Treasure Hunting
The GAFA bureau, in collaboration with Tegola and Arkhitail, organized an expedition to the island of Kilpola in Karelia as part of Moskomarkhitektura’s “Open City” festival. There, amidst moss and rocks, the students sought answers to questions like: what is the sacred, where does it dwell, and what sustains it? Assisting the participants in this quest were landscape engineer Evgeny Levin, artist Nicholas Roerich, a moose, and the lack of cellular connection. Here’s how the story unfolded.
Depths of the Earth, Streams of Water
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Fir Tree Dynamics
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​A Brick Shell
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Word Forms
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Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity
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Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”
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​Moscow’s First
“The quality of education largely depends on the quality of the educational environment”. This principle of the last decade has been realized by Sergey Skuratov in the project for the First Moscow Gymnasium on Rostovskaya Embankment in the Khamovniki district. The building seamlessly integrates into the complex urban landscape, responding both to the pedestrian flow of the city and the quiet alleyways. It skillfully takes advantage of the height differences and aligns with modern trends in educational space design. Let’s take a closer look.
Looking at the Water
The site of Villa Sonata stretches from the road to the water’s edge, offering its own shoreline, pier, and a picturesque river panorama. To reveal these sweeping views, Roman Leonidov “cut” the façade diagonally parallel to the river, thus getting two main axes for the house and, consequently, “two heads”. The internal core – two double-height spaces, a living room and a conservatory, with a “bridge” above them – makes the house both “transparent” and filled with light.
The White Wing
Well, it’s not exactly white. It’s more of a beige, white-stone structure that plays with the color of limestone – smoother surfaces are lighter, while rougher ones are darker. This wing unites various elements: it absorbs and interprets the surrounding themes. It responds to everything, yet maintains a cohesive expression – a challenging task! – while also incorporating recognizable features of its own, such as the dynamic cuts at the bottom, top, and middle.
Urban Dunes
The XSA Ramps team designed and built a three-part sports hub for a park in Rostov-on-Don, welcoming people of all ages and fitness levels. The skate plaza, pump track, and playground are all meticulously crafted with details that attract a diverse range of visitors. The technical execution of the shapes and slopes transforms this space into a kind of sculptural composition.
Proportional Growth
The project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential area has been announced. The buildings are situated on an elongated plot – almost a “ray” that shoots out from the center of the area towards the river. Their layout reflects both a response to Moscow’s architectural preferences over the past 15 years, shifting “from blocks to towers”, and an interpretation of the neighboring business park designed by SOM. Additionally, the best apartments here are not located at the very top but closer to the middle, forming a glowing “waistline”.
The “Staircase” Building
In designing the “Details” residential complex in New Moscow, Rais Baishev spiced up the now-popular Moscow theme of a “courtyard” building with an idea drawn from the surrealist drawings by Maurits Escher. He envisioned the stepped silhouettes and descending slopes as a metaphysical mega-staircase, creating a key void within the courtyard that gave the project an internal “spine”. This concept is felt both in the building’s silhouette and on its façades.
Projection of the Quarter
No one doubted that the building that Vladimir Plotkin designed as part of the “Garden Quarters” would be the most modernist of all. And it turned out just that way: while adhering to the common design code, the building successfully combines brick and white stone, rhythmically responding to the neighboring building designed by Ostozhenka, yet tactfully and persistently making a few statements of its own. This includes the projection of the ideal urban development composition “14–9–6”, which can be found right next door, mathematical calculations, including those for various types of terraces (and perhaps the only reminder of the Soviet past of the Kauchuk rubber factory!), and the white “cross-stitch” pattern of the façade grid.
Domus Aurea
In this issue, we examine the “Tessinsky-1” house, designed by Sergey Skuratov and completed in 2023. Located in the middle of the Serebryanicheskaya Embankment district, at the intersection of its main streets, this house assumes a sort of “nodal” role: it not only responds to everything around it and preserves many memories of the former EMA factory within itself, but it weaves all this into a newly directed pattern, reconciling bright “gold” and dark-colored brick, largely with the help of the new, modern-yet-archaic Columba brick, which, come to think about it, is the most precious element here.
The Chimney of Nikola-Lenivets
In this issue, we are examining the “Obelisk House” designed by KATARSIS and built for the Arkhstoyanie 2023 festival. However, it was only finished later on, and this is why we are examining it now. It seems to us that after the “Obelisk House” appeared in Nikola-Lenivets, a dialogue and a few inner connections appeared between the temporary structures built here. These houses no longer look like “accidental neighbors”, more of which below.
​Periscope by the Bay
The jury awarded the second place in the competition for a public and cultural center in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the companies GORA (“Mountain”) and M4. In the consortium’s proposal, the building resembles a sperm whale with a calf swimming next to it or a periscope, whose lenses capture the most spectacular views from the surrounding landscape.
From Arcs to Dolmens
While working on the competition project for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, ASADOV Architects prioritized the value of the natural and urban environment, aiming to preserve the balance of the location while minimizing the resemblance of the volume that they designed to a “traditional building”. The task was challenging, and the architects created three versions, one of which having been developed after the competition, where their main proposal took third place. However, the point of interest here is not the competition result but the continuity of creative thinking.
Hide and Seek
The ID Moskovskiy house, designed by Stepan Liphart in St. Petersburg, in the courtyards near Moskovskiy Avenue beyond the Obvodny Canal and recently completed, is notable for several reasons. Firstly, it has been realized with considerable accuracy, which is particularly significant as this is the first building where the architect was responsible not only for the facades but also for the layouts, allowing for better integration between the two. On the other hand, this building is interesting as an example of the “germination” of new architecture in the city: it draws on the best examples from the neighborhood and becomes an improved and developed sum of ideas found by the architect in the surrounding context.
The Big Twelve
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Above the Golden Horn
The residential complex “Philosophy” designed by T+T architects in Vladivostok, is one of the new projects in the “Golubinaya Pad” area, changing its development philosophy (pun intended) from single houses to a comprehensive approach. The buildings are organized along public streets, varying in height and format, with one house even executed in gallery typology, featuring a cantilever leaning on an art object.
Nuanced Alternative
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Blinds for Ice
An ice arena has been constructed in Domodedovo based on a project by Yuri Vissarionov Architects. To prevent the long façade, a technical requirement for winter sports facilities, from appearing monotonous, the architects proposed the use of suspended structures with multidirectional slats. This design protects the ice from direct sunlight while giving the wall texture and detail.
Frozen Magma
A competition for the creation of a public and cultural center was held in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Three architectural companies made it to the final, and we consider it important to share about the work of each. Let’s start with the winner – the consortium led by Wowhaus.
Campus within a Day
In this article, we talk about what the participants of Genplan Institute of Moscow’s hackathon were doing at the MosComArchitecture booth at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition. We also discuss who won the prize and why, and what can be done with the territory of a small university on the outskirts of Moscow.
Vertical Civilization
Genpro considered the development of the vertical city concept and made it the theme of their pavilion at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition.