two-level apartment (150 m2) in St. Petersburg Max Pavlichuk

Passing the gallery

A photo: George Shablovsky

Text: Nikolay Fedyanin

Architect: Maxim Pavlychuk

Magazine: Free (Cat) 2004

Creating the interior of this two-level apartment, St. Petersburg architect Maxim Pavlichuk reinforced the circle theme easily readable in terms of the plan and added bright-red spots to the restrained minimalist interior. The circle symbolizes continuity, perfection, constant return to yourself. In the interior of this apartment, the circle became a docking module connecting two rectangular "orbital station blocks". After the demolition of the partitions on the ground floor, a hall appeared, in which four axes were outlined: opposite the living room - the dining room, opposite the sports hall - the dressing room, opposite the entrance - a spiral staircase. It was the spiral staircase that prevented the completion of the geometric composition: it "takes over" two doorways. However, turning your back to the troublemaker, you find yourself in a parallel reality: when the doors are closed, you will not immediately guess where to go. The architect put the chairs in the openings of the famous British designer Charles Renny Mackintosh. They can be considered as artillery objects, and as milestones, and as divisions on the dial of hours. In any case, the idea is the same - to stop the beautiful moment. In many ways, the idea of ​​a circle was dictated by "production necessity." Even at the construction stage it was planned that the two apartments would be a single space. The width of the hole intended for the stairs provided only one option - a spiral staircase, which means another circle in the interior. The effect of a stone thrown into the water worked: a round ceiling lamp appeared in the living room, a round mirror (ibid.), A round Turkish bath on the first floor and its European double - a round shower in the bathroom on the second floor. Unlike the circle, the red color in the interior appeared for no reason, solely at the behest of the architect. Here and there he scattered red spots: a red pouf and a red ceiling in the living room, red Ferrari models in the hall on the second floor (collected by the apartment owner’s children), two red dining room chairs and a piece of red lava, as if inserted into the graphite frame of the wall waterfall. Responding to the objections that red is a very aggressive color, Max Pavlichuk responds that the black-and-white gamma that is traditional for minimalism is already pretty bored. Max Pavlychuk: "In this project, I combined two apartments into one. Even before all the work was carried out, it was clear that it consists of two rectangles connected by something like a circle-shaped joint. I decided to strengthen the idea of ​​a circle originally laid out in the plan."