Roman Abramovich has ended his international search for an architect, settling on the New York-based
Work AC‘s warehouse and landscape-heavy design for the New Holland Island in St. Petersburg.
Underneath you see the project.
The St. Petersburg Art island is now open to the public for the first time in 300 years, since June it has already seen over 75,000 visitors, according to the Moscow Times.
New Holland is an 8-hectare island bordered by two canals and a river in the heart of St Petersburg, within 20-minutes walk of the Hermitage and the city’s other major cultural sites. The island was conceived by Peter the Great in 1719, and became Russia’s first military port in 1721. It belonged to the military since its foundation and had thus been closed to the general public for 300 years. We have imagined New Holland Island as a microcosm of wider St. Petersburg: a cultural “city within the city” that sponsors a vast range of public spaces and programs, from the visual and performing arts, to new technologies, to education, to markets and a hotel. Rather than adding new architectural statements, however, we have worked primarily through subtraction to carve from the historic warehouses their amazing potential for public and cultural activity, retaining as much public outdoor space as possible.
The firm’s winning proposal includes a hotel, education and exhibition centers, and plenty of outdoor space. The island’s old warehouses will be renovated and a few new spaces will be built, including a triangular tent to house exhibitions in the winter and a sculpture garden in the summer.
Abramovich has also brought in Zhukova’s Iris Foundation as a contractor for the project, according to the MT. A branch of the foundation established for the island, Iris New Holland, will be closely linked to Zhukova’s Moscow exhibition space, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture.
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