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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. The Gazprom Neft Digital Transformation Centre Zifergauz in Saint Petersburg, Russia by VOX ARCHITECTSMay 31st, 2021 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: VOX ARCHITECTS The interior scenario is based on the idea of continuity from the past to the future. Built in mid-19th century the building organically combines its historical architectural legacy and cutting-edge functionality of the futuristic technical centre. Zifergauz is designed to embrace digital reality and advanced ideas. It stands at the site where under Peter the Great history took a new turn and the great Russian fleet saw its early days. The building was designed to vertically store the timber delivered for the needs of the Admiralty shipyards.  Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS
 Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS The key idea of the project is to generate more free space, to make the interior visually lighter. This new concept is conceived as an attempt to go outside the brick margins of the building, which are just too tangible, frozen in time, and to fill the monotonous dark enfilades with fresh air and creative energy. Introducing new structures and elements to the existing architectural context spurs conflict of the materials two-layered glass portals visually push aside brick walls which stand too close and balance the dominating warm red-orange brick colour with cold shades of blue. The transparent blue glowing portals, interactive media screens, multilayered ceiling systems, hiding ventilations systems, biodynamic lighting all contribute to defying the brickwork supremacy, cramped and dark spaces initially aimed for timber storage and drying.  Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS  Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS Combining contrasting surfaces, textures and materials creates the feeling of a compressed spring which when coming to life gives the space an impulse to move and transform. Glass surfaces with their reflections, vibration of greenish-blue shadows turn into portals to new dimensions. Marine themed murals by Andrey Shelyutto also play the role of portals. They are placed in niches near staircases and lifts where there is a need to navigate the human flow within the Digital Transformation Centre. The murals stand for the 9 letters of the word «Цифергауз» (Zifergauz spelled in Russian Cyrillic) thus illustrating its concept. The name itself reflects its architectural and historical connections with the packhouse at the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, which previously housed the Naval Museum exhibiting ship models from Peter the Great’s collection, and with the arsenal a naval storehouse, which in the 19th century became a building of a what-to-become Zifergauz. The murals series illustrates the semaphore flag signaling system. Each mural is an allusion to Giorgio de Chirico, Alexander Deineka, Andre Derain or Caspar David Friedrich and has a hidden flag in it which stands for a particular letter. The semaphore flag signaling system and the image of the sea serve as an archetype of the new digital space communication. The archaic nature of the semaphore signs is reflected in the icons of the navigation system. It was also designed by Shelyutto: the graphic icons are ironic but also lapidary as petroglyphic drawings.  Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS  Image Courtesy © VOX ARCHITECTS Zifergauz is a huge contemporary art project and challenges a guest to interpret it, thus giving each time new visual and spatial experience. The space here is constantly moving, changing, upgrading and expanding as a sea scape. The interior is perceived as a never-ending journey or a quest into the history and architecture of the building. Zifergauz accumulates and elaborates the theme of space expanding in time the theme recurrent in many VOX Architects project. Interreflections of the glass surfaces and the green light beam piercing through the brickwork are a reference to the transparent partitions geometry and blue lighting — as if glowing over the imaginary horizon that we used in our Horizon project for priority pass lounge of Platov airport in Rostov-on-Don; the luminous staircase with aluminum chains stretching through the building floors is reminiscent of yet another portal the spiral staircase in a vertical light column that arranges the Saratov Gagarin airport VIP-lounge interior… Here in Zifergauz the idea of travel in space transforms into an image of a time machine that can bring you from the 18th century straight to the 21st and show you the historic building’s new life. The theme of historical continuity is represented with three pine-tree trunks installations scattered over the building floors. These ship masts stream up from the building’s past through it expressing its very essence and striving for the future. It’s not only the symbol of nature that adds fresh air to the historical building, on top of that — it is the symbol of the wood which is destined to become a ship ready to set sail into the sea of exploration and discoveries. In Zifergauz you can feel the future — it is not yet here, but it sure is to come.  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Tags: Russia, Saint-Petersburg Categories: Creation Centre, Exhibition, Exhibition Center, Experience Centre, Experiment Centre |
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