two-level apartment with a total area of ​​340 m2 (St. Petersburg) Varvara Klimova

Passing the gallery

A photo: Peter Lebedev

Text: Nikolay Fedyanin

Architect: Varvara Klimova

Performance Manager: Yuri Tizyaev

Magazine: N10 (77) 2003

In this apartment, the urban landscape has become a full-fledged part of the interior. From the windows you can see the Summer Garden, nine colorful heads of the Savior on Blood, a flying angel on the gilded spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, and the sun shines brightly through the glass transparent roof There was a time when the architect defended the interior from the invasion of reality, curtain windows with heavy curtains. The ideologue of classicism, architect Francois Blondel, who headed the Paris Academy of Architecture, called on contemporaries to completely abandon "the foolish manner of drilling windows." Modern interiors, on the contrary, are “open to all winds”. Today, the landscape outside the window has an independent value, it is a kind of "added value". Apartment "with a view" and an apartment without it - these are two big differences. Of course, the main changes occurred precisely in the part of the apartment that looks at the city. The owners wanted the living room to be spacious, so that the room could become a kind of viewing platform, from where you can see the whole city. "I wanted the wide window that appeared in the end wall to become a frame for the cityscape," the author of the project admits. Another giant frame (already for "works of abstract painting") was an opening in the roof, through which the sky can be seen. Removing unnecessary walls, the architect combined three medium-sized rooms into one large one and “pushed” the kitchen beyond the bearing walls (now it is located at the corridor site). The standard version of “living room + kitchen” for an apartment did not fit (after all, there are two equivalent elements in this formula, but it was necessary for the kitchen not to violate the general concept of “viewing platform”), so the kitchen had to make room, go into the background, become functional, no more than that, the living room segment, only symbolically fenced off by a small bar counter. The Chinese sage claimed that "the house is built from walls with windows and doors, but it is emptiness in it that makes up the essence of the house." In this living room, the emptiness is absolutely justified, as if it accumulates in itself the urban landscape outside the window, gives a feeling of openness and freedom. This living room is extremely open, extremely transparent, using the favorite word of another great fan of emptiness, “ethereal”. The feeling of ethereality, transparency, ghostlyness is enhanced by the numerous glass surfaces. When you climb the stairs to the second floor, suddenly there is a feeling that you are inside the camera. Above - a glazed roof, right in front of you - a transparent door leading to the balcony. On the right are the glass panels separating the gym from the spacious atrium, and the mirror wall, behind which there is a children's room. And on the left - another mirror wall, which reflects all of the above. Glass panels, like the mirrors of a camera, catch reflections of each other, changing the landscape outside the window, sliding and pushing apart the walls of the apartment. It is necessary to stand a little to the left or to the right, and you will see everything around you in a new, completely unexpected perspective. On the other side of the mirror walls, under the sloping ceiling of the attic there is a "private zone": for children, the master bedroom, a wardrobe. Here, on the second floor, you can retire, take a break from the "lights of the big city", sit in silence looking at the blue sky and think about something of your own, without being distracted by the scenery outside the window.Varvara Klimova: “I didn’t make an apartment in the style of constructivism or minimalism, for me the main word was“ functionality. ”The result was an open space where you can breathe easily, where you feel like a free person. "