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The Union of Art and Technology

His interest for architecture of the 1930’s is pretty much the guiding star for Stepan Liphart. In his project of the “Amo” house on St. Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island, the architect based himself on Moscow Art Deco - aesthetically intricate and decorated in scratch-work technique. As a bonus, he developed the city block typology as an organic structure.

02 July 2020
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This is already the second house that Stepan Liphart designed on the Vasilyevsky Island and the third that he designed in St. Petersburg (the “Renaissance” residential complex is already complete), all them designed for the AAG development company. “Little France”, the house that is currently being built on the 20th line, is an attempt to revive the beauty of the Kamennostrovsky Avenue, and revisit the tenement of the Silver Age as the ideal of modern housing. The hotel-and-housing complex “Amo” on the 12th line continues and develops this idea. 

It will be constructed in the center of the Vasilyevsky Island, between the Maly and Sredny Avenues, surrounded by houses built during the historicism period: with bay windows in the dress circles, abundance of fine plastique, and with characteristic colors of St. Petersburg, alternating with inclusions of Soviet and post-Soviet times. 

The Bremme house as symbolic capital

The “Amo” residential complex fills in the lacuna left after the demolition of several buildings that belonged to the factory of essential oils and paints, built by the Bremme brothers in 1897–1898. During the entire XX century, the factory produced vitamins and all sorts of medications; the factory was torn down only in 2006. The wooden mansion is older - it was built in the early XIX century, and reconstructed twice - in 1851 and 1906 - then its facades got ceramic panels, which are now kept in the museum belonging to the ceramics studio “Keramax”. During the siege of Leningrad, there was a city-famous vitamin store working in this mansion. 

A few years ago, there was a lot of public concern about the prospects of demolishing the wooden house and making up for it by recreating its facade as a part of the residential complex. Then the project got a new investor and a new architect, while the mansion, which by the beginning of the XXI century fell into decay, got a status of a monument of architecture of federal importance. Currently, there are plans for restoring it and making it a part of the local identity. The future function of the building is still to be defined - expectedly, it will house a private school or will be rented out for an office. The new house embraces the mansion with its wings, not really coming close to it. Just like “Little France”, the new house will get a courtyard, yet here it is interpreted differently - the central place on the redline is occupied by the restored mansion.

The birds-eye view from the south. “Amo” residential complex
Copyright: © Liphart Architects


The master plan of the plot. “Amo” residential complex
Copyright: © Liphart Architects


Infrastructure of happiness 

The second difference from the project on the 20th line is the fact that the southern unit of “Amo” is a hotel. The land owner already has a “Nash Otel” (“Our Hotel”) property nearby, on the 11th line, and this same operator will run the new hotel. The hotel is also allotted a portion of the yard; it will have a restaurant on the first floor and a fitness club on the top floor, which will also be accessible to the permanent residents. This way, in addition to the unique mansion, the residents will get the “infrastructure of happiness” - sports, food, and a place for rendezvous (not mentioning the French windows reaching to the floors and such “New York” housing formats as two-floor city-houses with individual entrances; patios and mansards - in a word, this is a great place to live in).

The hotel adjoins the existing building of the hospital with its southern wall, its windows facing the western and northern sides. On the other side of the complex, there is a green yard with a separately standing two-story Stalin building that once used to be a kindergarten.

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    The perspective view on the 12th line form the south. The hotel is in the foreground. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The overview of the yard facade of the hotel. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The first floor of the hotel. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The standard floor of the hotel. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The section view of the hotel. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects


The style of the new building can be defined as Art Deco, the street-side five-story facades being closer to the scale of the historical surroundings - they are meticulously drawn, decorated with cornices above the hotel entrance and above the pilastered frontons above the restaurant entrance, the line of the cornices continuing the cornices of the existing hospital building.

The organic St. Petersburg: a combination of natural and man-made

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    The "Organic St. Petersburg" concept, proposed by Aleksey Levchuk and Stepan Liphart within the framework of their curator project for the "Ottepel« (»Thaw") workshop, organized by the “Project Baltia” magazine, supported by the Committee for Ci
    Copyright: © Stepan Liphart, Aleksey Levchuk
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    The "Organic St. Petersburg" concept, proposed by Aleksey Levchuk and Stepan Liphart within the framework of their curator project for the "Ottepel« (»Thaw") workshop, organized by the “Project Baltia” magazine, supported by the Committee for Ci
    Copyright: © Stepan Liphart, Aleksey Levchuk
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    The "Organic St. Petersburg" concept, proposed by Aleksey Levchuk and Stepan Liphart within the framework of their curator project for the "Ottepel« (»Thaw") workshop, organized by the “Project Baltia” magazine, supported by the Committee for Ci
    Copyright: © Stepan Liphart, Aleksey Levchuk


Houses on the medieval square 

The yards of St. Petersburg have rather wayward shapes. Although a part of the city’s mythology, the famous well courtyards are not particularly beautiful, for the rare exception of some of them, such as the Lidval Tauria House on the Rubinsheina Street. The “Amo” house is by no means of the “well courtyard” type - it is rather spacious, but the inside walls stand in a zigzag pattern. Which, among other things, makes it possible to better expose the southern wall to the sunlight, providing sufficient insolation. On the other hand, the jagged contour of the yard-side facades serves to diversify the rhythm and the composition: each fragment is subjected to the common concept, yet has a face of its own - as if what we are seeing is a group of small houses with narrow facades, structured by moldings and cornices, bay windows, and tiers with shifted axes. In addition, each of the volumes has its painting pattern, which makes navigation easier, making the perception of the housing anything but trivial: instead of the number of the hallway entrance, one will be able to speak about the facade with a floral or maritime pattern.

It’s hard for a person to perceive a monotonous facade with a length of one hundred meters, the ideal length being 20-30 m, as in a historical city. This, specifically, was mentioned by Allan Jacobs in his book “Great Streets”.  Back in his time, Mikhail Filippov used in his “Italian Quarter” the technique of designing the composition of a big house as consisting of several constructions of various epochs, with facades of three to five axes, thus recreating the humanistic principle of historical construction. In the case of “Amo”, however, a slightly different principle is proposed: placing a few several houses around a small square, yet the purpose is, by and large, the same.

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    The overview of the south yard facade of the residential section. “Amo” residential complex
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    The perspective of the west yard facade of the residentil section. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects


Unlike the grand courtyard of “Little France”, the in-block square of “Amo” has an irregular shape. Generally speaking, landscaping the yard is a virtue nowadays. Therefore, the type of the yard is important. The Moscow yards, in which the Russian village can still be discerned, no longer satisfy us because they tend to eventually turn into a wasteland. Neither do the well courtyards of St. Petersburg - dramatic, yet pretty somber. As for the yard as a medieval square, however, which makes it possible to single out private, semi-private, and public spaces - this is quite a different matter. In his book “City Planning According to Artistic Principles”, Camillo Sitte claims that the irregular character of medieval squares makes them look all the more picturesque, and full of harmony. However irregular, they still look very tidy because of the main “hero” - the cathedral. And in the complex on the Vasilyevsky Island, the role of the “cathedral” is played by the Bremme mansion.

The ornamental style: a union of art and technology

The ornamental facades - a few types of patterns for panels with paradise flowers and trees, drawn by the graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy or Fine Arts, Anastasia Direktorenko - are essentially a reference to the “Openwork” house designed by Andrey Burov on the Leningrad Avenue and another house of his, Tverskaya, 25, with scratch-work decor executed by Favorsky’s design. He had an ability to combine technology and art, and was actually going to mass-produce his “Openwork House”, which we are now considering to be unique.

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    The perspective view on the 12th line form the north. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    Fragment of the southwest part of the residential section, view from the yard. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The first floor of the residential section. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The third floor of the residential section. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects
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    The section view of the resdidential section. “Amo” residential complex
    Copyright: © Liphart Architects


As for the colors, Stepan Liphart proposed the reserved and modern kind, suitable for a house that is already rich in decor: emerald, ashen, chocolate, and milk-and-coffee.

Yet another task was implementing the scratch-work technique, so loved by the architects of Renaissance and their devotees of the mid-XX century and the present day. From the XV to XX century, scratch-work was done on several layers of stucco. In “Amo”, the architects decided to simulate the renaissance technique by using volumetric threaded ceramic panels, where the first layer of paint conceals another one, more contrastive, which is more durable and more dependable than stucco, and, therefore, better meets the requirements for the modern facade. The cornices will be fully made of fibrous concrete. Chances are, this technology has a brilliant future. Dissected into rectangles, the walls refer us not only to the Art Deco and Art Nouveau painted panels, but also to quattrocento marble intarsia. The degree of flatness and relief of the facades is observed due to the cornices designed by the architects. What is also important is the small scale of the yard facades - small and private, literally two panels wide - often coinciding with the size of the apartments. Another this that is aligned with the scale of the apartments is the street facades, which means that the building has human-friendly proportions - the main prerequisite for a long and happy life in a historical city.

02 July 2020

Headlines now
A Step Forward
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Gold in the Sands
A new office for a transcontinental company specializing in resource extraction and processing has opened in Dubai. Designed by T+T Architects, masters of creating spaces that are contemporary, diverse, flexible, and original, this project exemplifies their expertise. On the executive floor, a massive brass-clad partition dominates, while layered textures of compressed earth create a contextually resonant backdrop.
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
In the Malaya Okhta district, the Akzent building, designed by Stepan Liphart, was constructed. It follows a classic tripartite structure, yet it’s what you might call “hand-drawn”: each façade is unique in its form and details, some of which aren’t immediately noticeable. In this article, we explore the context and, together with the architect, delve into how the form was developed.
Fir Tree Dynamics
The “Airports of Region” holding is planning to build an airport in Karachay-Cherkessia, aiming to make the Arkhyz and Dombay resorts more accessible to travelers. The project that won in an invitation-only competition, submitted by Sergey Nikeshkin’s KPLN, blends natural imagery inspired by the shape of a conifer seed, open-air waiting spaces, majestic large trees, and a green roof elevated on needle-like columns. The result is both nature-inspired and WOW.
​A Brick Shell
In the process of designing a clubhouse situated among pine trees in a prestigious suburban area near Moscow, the architectural firm “A.Len” did the façade design part. The combination of different types of brick and masonry correlates with the volumetric and plastique solutions, further enhanced by the inclusion of wood-painted fragments and metal “glazing”.
Word Forms
ATRIUM architects love ambitious challenges, and for the firm’s thirtieth anniversary, they boldly play a game of words with an exhibition that dives deep into a self-created vocabulary. They immerse their projects – especially art installations – into this glossary, as if plunging into a current of their own. You feel as if you’re flowing through the veins of pure art, immersed in a universe of vertical cities, educational spaces – of which the architects are true masters – and the cultural codes of various locations. But what truly captivates is the bold statement that Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy make, both through their work and this exhibition: architecture, above all, is art – the art of working with form and space.
Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity
Luxurious, fluid, large “kokoshniks” and spiral barrel columns, as if made from colorful chewing gum: there seem to be no other mansion like this in Moscow, designed in the “Neo-Russian-Modern” style. And the “Teremok” on Malaya Kaluzhskaya, previously somewhat obscure, has “come alive with new colors” and gained visibility after its restoration for the office of the “architectural ecosystem” as the architects love to call themselves. It’s evident that Julius Borisov and the architects at UNK put their hearts into finding this new office and bringing it up to date. Let’s delve into the paradoxes of this mansion’s history and its plasticity. Spoiler: two versions of modernity meet here, both balancing on the razor’s edge of “what’s current”.
Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”
It belongs to space, or to the air... It turns out that 3D printing is more effective when combined with a modular approach: the house is built in a workshop and then adapted to the site, including on uneven terrain. Yuri Vissarionov shares his latest experience in designing tourist complexes, both in central Russia and in the south. These include houseboats, homes printed from lightweight concrete using a 3D printer, and, of course, frame houses.
​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
Yesterday, the winners of the Moscow Mayor’s Architecture Award were announced and honored. Let’s take a look at what was awarded and, in some cases, even critique this esteemed award. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?
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
How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.
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.