Video: What can surprise the CFT House in St. Petersburg - a kilometer-long museum of Soviet architecture
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
This unusual building on Novosmolenskaya embankment in St. Petersburg, which is popularly nicknamed "House of CFT" (Center for Firm Trade), is the brightest representative of late Soviet architecture and, in particular, Leningrad architecture. The building surprises not only with its appearance and incredible length, but also with its internal layout. After all, two-level apartments were designed in the CFT House back in the Soviet years!
The grandiose building was built in the mid-eighties of the last century, in other words, at the end of the USSR. It was designed by a whole group of Soviet architects. Moreover, first the central part of the house was erected, and then the edges.
The CFT House is almost three times longer than the St. Petersburg House of Sausages, it occupies almost the entire embankment of the Smolenka River and contains about forty front (entrances). However, the building does not look boring due to the interesting architecture. It is stepped, with towers (in different parts of it, the height varies from 11 to 16 floors). A gallery of shops of the Firm Trade Center was conceived along the lower floor. Now there are also shops there, and there are at least two dozen of them in the building.
A multi-storey residential building (and, in fact, a residential complex), standing on a high plinth near the water, has become part of the architectural ensemble and harmoniously blended into the surrounding landscape. The style of the building is called late modernism and brutalism, as evidenced by large vertical ledges, stepped towers and tall narrow arches that look like giant slits. Well, large concrete slabs are very typical for the architecture of atypical residential buildings of the 1980s.
The two-storey apartments of the CFT House are designed so that on the ground floor there are "guest" rooms (living room, kitchen and second bathroom), and on the upper floor - bedrooms, the first bathroom (for the owners) and a bathroom. The two levels are connected by a wooden staircase. In general, the interior of such an apartment is very similar to the layout of a small private cottage. The architects probably took this idea from Western (for example, British) colleagues who designed similar houses in the 1960s.
In many apartments of the house, the designers provided storage rooms and dressing rooms, which emphasized the elitism of the tenants. However, apartments in the house were given to different categories - both the military, and workers of the shipping company and the Baltic Shipyard, as well as representatives of other completely ordinary professions, were accommodated in it.
Continuing the topic: Revenge of the architect-saboteur or unfinished sickle: How the Sausage House appeared in St. Petersburg.
Recommended:
How they loved Egypt in St. Petersburg: Where in St. Petersburg you can find echoes of the fashion for Egyptology
Just as a young fashionista adorns himself with what is popular in his circle, so young Petersburg with pleasure once tried on Egyptian "new clothes" - what became popular in architecture with the beginning of Egyptomania. This is how sphinxes and pyramids, hieroglyphs and bas-reliefs appeared in the northern capital, inspiring all new generations of townspeople to further study the mysterious ancient culture
A symbol of audacity in Soviet architecture and a mute witness to repression: the Trefoil House in Moscow
In a young Soviet country, the 1930s for urban planning were marked by bold experiments. Houses of unusual configuration have become one of the forms of manifestation of extraordinary architectural ideas. A striking example of this is the trefoil house located in the Moscow Sivtsev Vrazhek lane. Interesting, unusual and, alas, notorious for the number of repressed and executed residents
What is Palkin's house in St. Petersburg known for with a unique front door, in which you feel like in a museum
St. Petersburg is famous for its magnificent old ceremonies. One of them is located on Rubinstein Street, in the former Palkin apartment building. You can come here like a museum. However, in addition to the amazing front door, this unique house itself and its former owners - the famous dynasty of restaurateurs, whose Palkin tavern was famous throughout St. Petersburg
Why Fyodor Shekhtel was called the "Mozart of Russian architecture", and which of his buildings can be seen in the capital today
One of his contemporaries said about Shekhtel: "He worked half in jest, life in him seethed like a bottle of uncorked champagne seethes …". Shekhtel built as much as any architect could manage, while he worked very easily, cheerfully and with inspiration, showing tremendous imagination. It is not for nothing that Shekhtel was called the “Mozart of Russian Architecture”. 66 buildings in the capital were made according to his designs, fortunately, many of them have survived to this day. And they are all a real decoration of the city
Performance Architecture - architecture and creativity by Alex Schweder La
Any architect is an artist whose works are not created in two dimensions, but in three dimensions. But the architect Alex Schweder La is an artist in the truest sense of the word. After all, his work was created precisely to be shown in art galleries and at art exhibitions. An example of this is a series of his installations called Performance Architecture