Petersburg two-level apartment with a total area of ​​212 m2 Fedor Oparin

Passing the gallery

A photo: Alexey Vasilyev

Text: Julia Sakharova

Architect: Fyodor Oparin

Magazine: N5 (83) 2004

If the concept of "comfort" is generally applicable to the art of urban planning, then we can say that this apartment is located in a house built on one of the most cozy squares of St. Petersburg - Arts Square. Even more impressive - in contrast - the panoramic view from the windows from balconies, similar to galleries, seems to be View of the Mikhailovsky Palace, the Griboyedov Canal, the domes of the Savior on Blood, Kazan and St. Isaac’s Cathedrals, the perspective of Italian Street ... It’s hard to imagine that before the redevelopment of this two-level apartment located on the fifth and sixth floors, it was possible to admire the scenery windows, arranged at a height of 1.8 meters from the floor. And so the main task, which the architects were supposed to solve in the first place, was to beat the most beautiful urban landscape. The idea of ​​a three-dimensional solution and the concept of the interior (the authors were conventionally designated the first as “light and air,” and the second, “peace and simplicity”) are subordinated to the single idea of ​​creating a harmonious space. "We provided the apartment with air and light through a system of" internal "balconies, surrounded on all sides by glass walls, and a stained glass window was arranged in the plane of the roof between the balconies," says architect Fyodor Oparin. "Thus, we turned the windows into windows. To the same level of the balcony was raised by 80 centimeters relative to the entrance to the apartment, and they made the lift very gradual and functionally meaningful. " According to the authors, they tried to give the open space of the apartment a characteristic "smooth flow" in the spirit of the residential interiors of the classics of architecture by Charles McIntosh and Frank Lloyd Wright. In the process of reconstruction, unnecessary sections of the walls were removed, openings were made, levels changed. The effect was unusual. The main light in the apartment is penetrating outside. In the afternoon, in clear weather, the sun's rays illuminate even the “deepest” points of the apartment. In the evening, when the facades of houses in the square outside the windows are illuminated, soft reflected light pours into the apartment. Since behind the walls of the main premises, in the words of the architects, “there is a place to go out,” an unusual depth is felt in this apartment. The light here becomes the reception of architecture. This fact is gracefully confirmed by the light strip of the ceiling lights, indicating the boundary of the internal and external space. Constructive logic, clear geometry, clear to the rigidity of the form, openness - are these not ideal architectural metaphors of the conceptual "light, air, calm and simplicity" ...Fedor Oparin: "I tried to create an apartment according to the laws of an open, smoothly flowing space. It seems to me that comfortable housing has evolved in this very direction since the days of Wright and McIntosh."