Petersburg restaurant "Hermitage" Andrei Shmonkin, Andrei Negodyaev, Arkady Teplitsky

Passing the gallery

Text: Olga Gvozdeva

A photo: Peter Lebedev

Project author: Andrei Negodyaev, Andrei Shmonkin, Arkady Teplitsky

Design: Sergey Televna

Magazine: (75)

In St. Petersburg, there has never been a restaurant with such a convincing address - Palace Square and with such a respected shareholder - the State Hermitage Museum. One of the entrances to the Hermitage restaurant is located right in the arch of the General Staff building. Transparent glass separates the vaulted hall from the endless stream of tourists from the Nevsky ... Once there was a coach route, now it is the main hall of the Hermitage Museum. The floor here is lined with a worn plasterboard - a large tile of Putilov layered stone, polished to a mirror shine for two and a half centuries. Three luminous "spiritistic" beams, penetrating from under the floor slabs, indicate the direction of motion. The walls are decorated with replicas of a classic Hermitage sculpture made of frosted glass. On the central axis of the restaurant there is a long corridor turned into an art gallery. To the left and right of him are suites of dining rooms. All of them bear the “Hermitage” names, but the authors of the project refused from direct quotation. Allusions to the Hermitage collection can be found in different areas of the restaurant. One of the halls is decorated with a huge poster in a metal frame in which the plots of the famous "shops" of Frans Snyders are combined. They wanted to design another one in the spirit of the famous “Dance” by Henri Matisse. From here - red tables and a red grand piano. However, the plot was substantially reworked. Instead of blue and green colors, which could be expected here, a milky glass of a luminous wall appeared, behind which a service corridor passes. And the shadows of the waiters, rapidly running through the glass, create an unexpected visual effect. The result was a vivid picture, something on the verge of a shadow theater and surrealistic graphics, while the Matisse image was preserved. A vivid example of the delicate handling of old architectural material is the solution of sanitary facilities. Inside the white vaulted room a black cube appeared, in which the toilet rooms were placed, a kind of three-dimensional image of Malevich’s Black Square. However, the authors of the project insist: no matter how great the temptation is to engage in the “search for the Hermitage” in the interior of the Hermitage restaurant, this is not worth doing. This is still not a museum, but a modern catering enterprise based on the highest technologies. “We absolutely didn’t want to copy the museum, which is opposite,” says Arkady Teplitsky. “We just wanted to remind you that it is there ...”