In Yekaterinburg, construction work is coming to an end on the Hermitage–Urals Cultural and Educational Centre, a large-scale project that includes a display-and-memorial block and another for restoration and storage.
The display-and-memorial block is located at 11, Vainer Street, a mansion built for the merchant Bardygin in 1912. The building is a cultural heritage object and was given to the Sverdlovsk (as Yekaterinburg was then known) Picture Gallery in 1936. This was the building that then became the main storage place for the Hermitage’s evacuated collections during the war, a fact which subsequently determined the concept for the recreation of the building: all three storeys are connected with the Hermitage one way or another, either through the display or through history.
The ground floor will contain a hall for temporary exhibitions from the State Hermitage. The middle floor will house a permanent display of works of Western European art, the majority of which were donated by the Hermitage to the Sverdlovsk Picture Gallery (from 1988, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts) in gratitude for the preservation of its collections during the Great Patriotic War. On the top floor, a memorial zone is being created that will be devoted to the evacuation period.
The architect of the mansion was Konstantin Trofimovich Babykin, one of the most significant figures in Yekaterinburg’s 20th-century architecture. The chief task in carrying out the project to restore the building was to preserve all the elements of the historical edifice untouched (although legislation passed in 2014 does permit alterations to the volume of a historical monument) and to locate all the infrastructure necessary for a modern museum outside its confines. The lift, escalator, toilets, cloakroom, rest area and so on are located in the inner courtyard formed by the main building and an adjoining extension.
The functional contrast between the existing building and the modern extension is stressed by the materials used: in the original structure brick, plastered walls, the historical ceilings and parquet floors; in the modern annexe concrete, metal and glass. Photographs of the ground and middle floors show how the brick walls of the historical building are set off. It should be noted that the new modern section does not interfere with people’s ability to appreciate the integrity of the original façade.
A new entrance to the building has been created in the modern section and it is now located parallel to pedestrian movement along Vainer Street. The gallery above the entrance contains a café with panoramic glazing, the roof of which will be available for special events. Access to the museum displays will be through window openings that have been extended down to floor level, the only alteration to the architecture of the building.
The meeting place of the roof of the extension and the original building on the level of the top storey has permitted the installation an “Art-Loft” lecture space directly among the roof trusses, whose original arrangement may have been what made the building an architectural monument.
The restoration and storage block of the Hermitage–Urals Centre will be located at 16, Vainer Street. It will contain the repository of the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, restoration workshops, rooms for unpacking and acclimatizing paintings, a photographic studio and a research library.
Construction of both blocks is planned to be completed in June 2020.
