Project Statement

Situated along the River Neva, a cluster of 6 buildings makes up the Hermitage museum which stands monumentally firm, asserting its presence on the city of St Petersburg. 

The sheer scale of the Hermitage alters the perception and experience creating a transition from perceiving it as a building to a more of an urban landscape. The Hermitage in its urban context is not only a museum, but a significant urban texture in perhaps one of the most significant urban ensembles in the world. So consideration of its urban scale evolution has become a very crucial task. 

The incredible intricacies, the demands of history, the different regimes, and the diversity of efforts to make sense out of its single block - one can imagine the intricacies and complexities of running, and conceiving how to run, this huge urban complex that is the Hermitage. To understand the size of this complex, the size of the Hermitage is equal to the Metropolitan Museum, the Pompidou Centre, the National Gallery, The Altes Museum and the Victoria and Albert all added together. 

The extensive building was never designed as a museum and awkwardly holds one of the largest art collections in the world. With over 3 million artefacts, viewing the collection in its entirety is an impossible task. If each artefact was observed for 15seconds it would take 1.3 years to view.  What becomes very evident is that it is not just the scale that presents such complexity, nor its breakdown into different components, but also the richness and nuance within the collections.

The Centre Pompidou for example has only two divisions in its collections, the National Gallery maybe four, the Louvre seven, the Metropolitan enough to stop counting, and the Hermitage simply too many to begin. These layers of complexity create a very interesting dimension in our work of trying to compose clarity, in spite of knowing it is an impossible task. 

There is over 2000 rooms in the hermitage which many exist along enfilades of a doughnut configuration. The museum is defined by its semi-rigid circulation route and by the collection it contains. If a visitor was interested in viewing a specific collection, their route would be curated until the arrival at their destination. They may also have to work long distances and pass through many 'uninteresting' exhibits before arriving at their destination. Different kinds of groups - Russian groups, for example, and foreign tourists - need different ways of moving through the Hermitage that do justice to the treasures, but at the same time do not interfere too radically with each other.

The main narrative of the building has to be coincidental with these tours and trajectories, but as a result, this intriguing mixture of history and art history is experienced only as a continuous narrative without any possibility for pauses, interruptions or informed deviations.

Rem Koolhaas Argues that museums are no longer focusing, and could no longer focus - partly because of the extensions and partly because of the enlargement of the audience, on the pure experience of a visitor in front of a single artefact. Rather, they had to adjust to the changing conditions, primarily through extending their repertoire of facilities - initially comprised of a cafeteria, then of stores, info centres, more cafes, more stores, etc. 

So whether desired or not, museums are these days a blur of their original ambition overlaid with a vast number of new experiences - new experiences that ostensibly serve to accommodate or enable the pure museum experience to exist. Rather than blurring these two types of experience. 

In St Petersburg, most buildings are between 3-5 storeys high. The museum will be inserted into the third floor throughout the city which will give it presence and make it visible from every floor. This sliver of museum will act as an oasis in the city where visitors can explore, take shortcuts, isolate themselves, escape the cold and learn.

Access to the THE 3RD FLOOR will exist on every block or every 50 meters and will be in constant dialogue with the street level.  In certain instances when the building is only 2 storeys, the 3RD floor will be a public space on the roof, allowing for large scale American sized projects. 

Art will be visible both from inside the 3RD FLOOR and from the exterior.  Different display conditions will exist providing a variety of experiences when observing art. 

Within the Third Floor, the spaces do more than just consist of large open plans spaces to exhibit the art but will sometimes:

1. Preserve the existing conditions with minor insertions (such as openings for circulation)

2. Completely remove the entire interior

3. Insert a new type of pre-fabricated circulation and display system.