Rethink Petersburg: how architecture and photography will help see the city in a new way

A short spring trip forced me for the first time to really look at what usually repels postmodernism. The same background, by which we transmit the way back. Without columns, without cornices. Just a house. Or not? It turned out that these same people, entrances and parking – it is not a drop is not easy. And if the engineer shows how concrete works, then the artist – why do we live there.

Our small professional but comfortable business began to know Pétersbourg of the center itself on the other. In literally two laps, the route turned to the thought of engineering – not before, but functional, and therefore even more impressive.

New Holland is not only an island. If you look at the card, his clear triangle is thrown in his eyes, as if he were cut by a compass. In reality, these are two islands separated by the new channel. The artificial origin of the space was the result of an almost random calculation. In 1719, when the entrepreneur Semyon Kryukov paved the sink canal at the Neva for the delivery of the forest to the naval sites of the Admiralty, this land was formed in the survey process. He reminded Peter I Holland, and the island received a name in honor of his beloved country. Thus began the history of the first military port in Russia.

Initially, there were warehouses, workshops and even a place of rest of the sovereign – with a pond, a fruit garden and a small wooden house. But ordinary petersbourgers could not even pass here for a long time – access was only by water. We have learned about this and much more in the context of the excursion, and it turned out to be much stronger to see everything with our own eyes than to read in the book or to see Trevl-Blogger in the band.

Now, the new Holland is working on the city, for people, for a while. The rotation department is important here, not the romance of the bridges. Every detail is thought, not a centimeter in vain. The old “bottle” of prison is now a ring of shops and restaurants, an old pond – a concert scene and a mirror for the sky. Even a network of paths, and it is thought of the smallest details. Everything seems to say “first – a function. Then – emotions ”.

And yet it is the emotions that become an anchor. For how the Greens broke out in old industrial landscapes. For how Petersbourgers – with a book, with a dog, with children – calmly “captures” the island. Beauty here is that space has come to life. The calculation of engineering, cold and sharp, gave the ground for simple joys. The place created for discipline has become the territory of freedom. And somewhere between the bridge, the lawn and the calm pond, the question was born: if the engineer is able to build emotions, he is an artist?

Architecture is also an art. Perhaps the most discreet, but the closest. We live there, we go through it, we grow up, fall in love, we are tired. And again – we barely see. And as it is nice when someone takes the courage to remember: you look, but do not notice it. And you feel that somewhere inside you are starting to attract attention.

The exhibition “Perfect forms and living reality” is almost such attention. It takes place in the port of the port – space with a powerful industrial history and no less powerful energy. My colleagues and I literally stolen from the street there, Dank, flooded with spring wind, and we immediately found ourselves in a different plan-where concrete suddenly becomes almost hot, and the usual background of new buildings turns into a visual declaration. In a good way – magic.

The project was organized by Yandex Real Estate with the Pennlab Gallery Gallery and the Curator Vladislav Efimov. The exhibition connects the photographers, artists and architects of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, who turn to the subject of the daily residential environment: the one we usually do not know. Their work is not illustrations, not fixation. It’s optics. Or even: prism. Through it, you suddenly see the playground as a portal in the past, the facade is like the surface of the memory, and the underground parking is like an entrance to the mythology of the city.

The muffled light reigns in the corridor, the pipes, the brick and the metal above its head. You move slowly, as inside the film. The work is pulsed in color and meanings. A photograph with a high perage building, in which the artist has set up multi -coloring bulbs, is transformed into allusion to a stained glass – as if a city burns from the interior. An installation with an anaglyphic effect and OK 3D as if you invite yourself to reconsider your own optics: everything you see is not the present, and all the present you see.

The work of Olya Pegova is the silence of the neighborhood and its fragile fusion with the landscape. Anastasia Litvinova has a glass in which you, either neighboring curtains. Alexander Verevkin sends us to childhood: his projects seem to remember how you fell from a hill and refused to go home. In the works of Igor Elukov and Polina Timofeva, the port and the ships are duplicated in layers, as if we remember the memory itself – suddenly, fragments, but with the feeling of the present.

The Soviet and modern facades taken in black and white geometry are incredible with the details of the heart. It is they, the photographs of Yuri Palmin, so sharp that they almost cut each other, but at the same time asleep their structure.

At some point, you understand that the exhibition is alive. It is not the frozen form. And you are part of this exhibition, because you will discover at home. Because you have lived or live in there. Because I saw this court. Because in these reflections – you.

The Yandex real estate team invited artists not only to document architecture, but to try to find their emotional trace. What’s left of the facade in memory? What lights are the windows? And is it possible to develop a feeling of space?

This is the reason why the exhibition should be seen live, and not only scrolling social networks or walking along the landing. Because the pixels will not pass the weight of the air. Because the sound of the bay is also an exhibition. Because space must not only be seen, but also to feel.

“Perfect forms and living reality” are not only the vision of architecture artists. It is also a way to remember that you can also look. Not only with the eyes, but more deeply. As for the first time.

I repeat: I like this city. For its balance between history and the future, so that courage is simultaneously classic and experimental. For everyone, Petersburg is revealed in their own way, that others work, someone dreams. For example, me and you, of course, too.

And, as it turned out, it is not at all necessary to be an architect or an artist to see everyday beauty. Each facade, each staircase, each underground parking lot can become a work – if not art, then at least the meaning. And for that, you don’t need to go to the center. Sometimes leave the house and look around.

I left Petersburg not with memories, but with a new look – in the houses, in the streets, for me. And if you feel that you also want to look at the usual in a new way, do not repel. Maybe for the first time, you will really see a city that you think you know along and through.