Published on Archi.ru (https://archi.ru)

16.07.2009

Symbol of executive branch transparency

Anna Martovitskaya
Architect:
Sergei Tchoban
Studio:
Tchoban Voss Architekten
Evgeniy Gerasimov & partners

Ensemble of “Nevskaya city hall” was already well known on the international contest stage. This is a city-block with a palace of the executive branch in the centre. Transparency here is the symbol of democracy, and the stone is the sign of Piter context.

“Nevskaya city hall” is not just a new administrative complex gathering numerous committees and administrations under the same roof but a symbol of democratic character of St. Petersburg authorities. The city set an international architectural contest in order to make the process of making decisions simple and clear, and to turn the bureaucratic mechanism into a spectacular attraction. In short, the idea is very simple: the officials are working, heated debates emerging at the meetings and ordinary citizens are able to enter the new building and personally observe each of these processes. This idea led to the architectural solution of the administrative construction: officials’ offices are placed along the perimeter of trapezoidal volume, and in the center of the connecting light-filled atrium there is a cylinder of conference area hanging on the four bridges and crowned with a lens-shaped translucent dome. It includes museum of master plans of St. Petersburg and an observation platform - a so-called "Sky Bar". You can get there by one of the panoramic lifts going through the volume of the conference hall. From there, and on your way, you can watch meeting sessions. Business centers and hotels stay along the longer sides of the site and form rays stretching from the Administration. In contrast to the town hall they have neoclassical "stone" look and here Evgeny Gerasimov applied one of his favorite techniques: despite a single architectural style each building is unique due to the finish and color. Atriums are various in their forms as well, each building has one, square, rhombic or even half elliptical. The only way to get there is through the inner city-block pedestrian square, most part of which is protected from weather changes by translucent structures.

None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None