Studio 44. The Enfilade

Participating in the ceremony were: Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage; Nikita Igorevich Yavein, head of the Architectural Bureau and curator of the exhibition on behalf of Studio 44; Alexander Nikolayevich Dydykin, head of the General Staff Department and curator on behalf of the Hermitage; Yelena Feodorovna Kolovskaya, Director of the Pro Arte foundation; Sergei Valeryevich Padalko, head of the Vitruvius & Sons architectural studio; Pavel Pavlovich Muss, General Director of the landscaping company Princip Novo; and Nikolai Viktorovich Linchenko, Vice-Governor of Saint Petersburg.

“Today we are opening a wonderful exhibition. This is a historic event, a very important one for museum practice, for museology, for the protection of monuments. The restoration of the General Staff was an enormous job of work, and what is important here is not only the result that was achieved, but also how the work is proceeding now and how we are continuing to assimilate this building. I do not think there has been a single project in Saint Petersburg that has had so many books published about it as the restoration of the General Staff. We are constantly receiving delighted feedback from our colleagues about how this space functions and how the Hermitage functions within this space,” Mikhail Piotrovsky said on opening the exhibition.

Architectural exhibitions are one of the important lines in the State Hermitage’s exhibition activity. The last decade has been marked by retrospectives of some of the most distinguished architects of our time – Santiago Calatrava and Zaha Hadid, as well as exhibitions devoted to Dutch post-war architecture, the Bauhaus in Tel Aviv and Finnish modern architecture.

Studio 44 devised the plan for the restoration and adaption of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building for use as a Hermitage museum complex. Work on the project lasted 12 years – from 2002 to 2014. All the stages of research, preparation and implementation of the project have become the central theme of the display and provided an opportunity to grasp how an idea is born, how a project alters, what enormous research work lies behind each building and each architectural decision.

The exhibition, timed to mark the 25th anniversary of Studio 44, has been organized with the support of the Pro Arte foundation, the Vitruvius & Sons architectural studio and the landscaping company Princip Novo.

The exhibition curators are Alexander Nikolayevich Dydykin, head of the General Staff Department, on behalf of the Hermitage and Nikita Igorevich Yavein, head of the architectural bureau, on behalf of Studio 44.