Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor

As the capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg was the trade center of the entire country in the 18th and 19th centuries. Therefore, even today, there are numerous market rows to be found in different parts of its historical center, the largest in Europe. Pushed away from the city center by palaces and official buildings, they still occupy large swaths of land in the dense urban fabric. Unlike later-built shopping malls and passages of the “Viennese/Parisian” type, these characteristic St. Petersburg courtyards – and their history usually dates back to the earliest years of the city’s development, and sometimes even to the pre-Petrine tradition – are quite extensive from an architectural and compositional point of view: these are long lines of stalls with warehouses organized into giant squares, small in height, and, frankly, quite monotonous. Despite this fact, they were often designed by some of the most famous St. Petersburg architects, and the market rows themselves are a necessary pause and a recognizable part of the city’s identity. Without them, St. Petersburg would, of course, look very different – it would not be the city that we love today. The inevitable monotony of their structure, combined with low height, brings a note of diversity and a low-rise quality to the city, mostly filled with tenements designed and built in the 19th century.

I need to mention that Studio 44 lead by Nikita Yavein is not new to working on restoration and adaptation projects for St. Petersburg market rows: they have previously worked on both the main Gostiny Dvor and Apraksin Dvor.

What makes Mytny Dvor different is the fact that its initial purpose was not only trade per se but also the collection of customs duties (or “myt” as it was called back then). However, it was arranged in the same way as any Gostiny Dvor, consisting of stalls. At some point, Vasily Stasov participated in designing it, but this is only known from a message in which he complains that “they are building slowly and not according to the project”. That’s exactly what happened – they built the western half of the square in various ways, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, sometimes better, and sometimes worse. In other words, Mytny Dvor, by the standards of the nation’s second-largest city, is also relatively small, and only half of it was actually built.

Nikita Yavein, Company:

Adaptation and restoration of lost parts of the complex are integral parts of our project.

The low height of the reconstructed part allowed us to ensure good insolation and ventilation of the courtyards. The new buildings have a pronounced sectional character, which dates back to historical buildings – with a degree of conventionality they can be compared to the tenements of the 19 century, built up in the early 20 century; such a thing was common in St. Petersburg. All the sections and all the courtyards are slightly different – their structure changes, transforms in color, details, planning characteristics, but at the same time remains within the same color scheme, combining green ceramics, limestone and burgundy-red inclusions. The roofs are all sloping, with firewalls appearing in some places.

In short, we are not creating an “elephant in a china shop” – we are making totally sure that we are supporting the characteristics of the urban environment.

Yliya Sabantsev, Company:

Both buildings had seen much service, they were intensively used, and their bearing structures were not the strongest in the world. For example, only the outer walls of the sections here are made of brick, while inside the bearing walls were mostly made of wood. At the attic level, there are curvatures in the firewalls, which will have to be re-laid. Part of the basement vaults were lost and re-laid; there are significant gaps in the historical masonry.

A number of details had to be reconstructed by analogy. In particular, despite the fact that we made many paint samples, we could not find the original layers in the classicist building – only the later ones with synthetic binder. Neither the joinery frames nor the profiles of the white stone steps have been preserved. We reconstruct both by analogies, and here we are greatly helped by the experience of previous work with other monuments, in this case, especially with the Gostiny Dvor and Pavlov Barracks on the Field of Mars. Both are typologically close to the Mytny Dvor, and in the Gostiny Dvor we once found a very good shade of historical ochre.

On the other hand, the slope of the roof ridge of the early 19th century building, suitable for apartments, belongs to the original building and is connected with its storage function – we were lucky with that. The ridge of the eclectic building was lower, but we had permission to raise it to the elevation of the neighboring building. We raised it because without it the adaptation would have been almost impossible, but we did not raise it the full height because we wanted to emphasize the fact that the buildings are contemporaries; we usually try to pay attention to these kinds of details.

We also restored the dormer windows by analogy: the drawings show them very vaguely, but attic windows are a common practice for courtyard living rooms, and we summarized the probabilities. The windows on the avenue side were made larger, but they are smaller on the yard side.