The Four Courts Business Center was built in the heart of St Petersburg, a stone’s throw from the Hermitage and the city’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt. It was the winning bid in a competition to redevelop and regenerate a series of derelict lots. The architectural practice behind the design was Piuarch, which kept some of the existing facades and sought to build in harmony with the city’s urban fabric. The resultant complex has 6 above-ground storeys, one semi-basement level and two proper basement floors. Much of the space is for offices, but it is flanked by a hotel and the top-floor restaurant has a commanding view. The name comes from the four central courtyards created to allow light into the inner sections and to be places for people to gather, and for art works to be displayed. In short, they act as a sort of filter between the building and the city. Each courtyard is characterised by the glazed elevations with coloured glass panels by Stahlbau Pichler. Echoing the huge variety of hues that comprise the city’s architectural history, each courtyard is defined by the colour - gold, emerald green, aquamarine blue, silver - of the panels. The gold courtyard, at the entrance to the complex, has a hanging sculpture, the blue courtyard, a water basin, the silver one, a giant well of light and the green one, a garden. The facades are 3,000 m2 in total, made with high-performing, low-emission reflective glass panels. The average size of a panel is 4.5 m high by 75 cm wide. The casings are made with an aluminium frame that has 45° angles entirely clad, internally and externally, in shiny stainless steel. The panels sit at different angles to the flat elevation, creating a charming pattern of fragmented reflected light in a kaleidoscope of colours that mutates with the changing light conditions. The collaboration and synergies generated by Italian and Russian firms working together ensured the Four Courts Business Center achieved its underlying idea of inserting, into a zone rich in architectural history, a building that can interact with the past using contemporary language.
Stahlbau Pichler Via Edison, 15
I - 39100 Bolzano
Tel. +39 0471 065000
Fax +39 0471 065001
E-mail:
[email protected] www.stahlbaupichler.com
