two-level apartment (220 m2) in St. Petersburg Kirill Gusev

Passing the gallery

A photo: Peter Lebedev

Stylist: Vladimir Nikiforov

Text: Evgeniya Tikhonova

Architect: Kirill Gusev

Magazine: (Pumping)

In this apartment the space is oriented vertically. There is a lot of light and air. The windows look like an almost immaterial barrier between the inner space of the house and the sky. On sunny days, it seems that the stairs are floating in a pillar of light and rising towards the clouds contrary to the laws of gravity. The prosaic function of the ladder - to combine two levels - is felt as secondary. The main thing is the artistic function. In this apartment, it seems, an important factor becomes not so much what has been done as how it is done. The owner’s willingness to sacrifice the usable area of ​​the second floor (where private rooms are located) in favor of a holistic architectural solution is proof of that. “The customer gave me complete freedom of action,” says project author Kirill Gusev, “perhaps because by that time he already had an apartment and a country house. They were decorated in a classic style. And he wanted something more avant-garde. I proposed to make the walls and roof almost intangible, to arrange a similarity to the atrium in the living room. So there were dormer windows, an oval opening and cuts in the concrete of the ceiling between the first and second levels. This space took place due to a happy circumstance: the customer had a direct bearing on the construction of the house. Therefore, the architect had the opportunity to intervene in the project at the construction stage, to make "holes" in the interfloor concrete floor, walls and roof to let in light. However, the original idea to fill the space with light and air entailed another: to give it a new direction. “The space is now evolving in the third dimension, rushing to a height,” the architect notes. “I reinforced the sensation of movement upwards, connecting the levels with a staircase, climbing a spectacular spiral. contrasting colors (white, black, burgundy), combined materials with contrasting textures like polished marble and wild stone. He set up a hanging winter garden right in the atrium. It was necessary to balance such nonmater cial items like air and light, more tangible things. "Kirill Gusev:“I was lucky: my customer was ready for any experiments with space and even agreed with my proposal to cut an oval in the concrete floor between the levels of the apartment. And he turned out to be right! nor in the air. "