QUATTRO CORTI

Maria Antonietta Santangelo

The Italian studio PIUARCH won first place in the competition by invitation for the Gazprom Headquarters and was brought in to design a new complex for the city of St. Petersburg.
Covering six floors and an area of 5,000 square meters, the architecture of the Quattro Corti center is a balanced union of modernity and tradition. Past to the traditional facades of the old city center, clearly preserved, a contemporary building shows itself with salient references to the Russian culture in the inner courtyards and the colors of the urban setting. 
The hollowed site plan layout first and foremost serves to bring proper lighting to the interiors, which would otherwise be constrained by the introverted realm of the historical buildings surrounded by other buildings on three sides; and then the material cladding of the courtyards give the architecture a modern expression — with fixed glass modules, 75 cm wide and 4 m high — set vertically, marking the space between floors with a slanted orientation.
A necessary condition for the project was renovating the two pre-existing buildings, which preserved their street fronts, carefully rebalanced in their height with a systematic design of roofs with varied eaves, echoing the kaleidoscopic appearance of the courtyard windows.

In addition to offices, the project also has a hotel and a restaurant — “Mansarda” — on the top floor. Its architectural form is determined by the plan of the four courts, each a different color: gold, blue, green, and white, seeming to evoke those of  St. Isaac’s Cathedral behind the complex and the colors of St. Petersburg at large.