EXPLANATIONS

Buildings live and die differently than humans. Both are born seemingly alike. At the stage of conception, concepts interact with each other, akin to DNA, encompassing various structures-functional typologies, construction techniques, spirits of place and time, all combined with the burden of political and artistic history, the personal preferences of the client, and, of course, the creative will and individual style of the architect. The concept exists solely in the realm of the ideal; its materialization is a series of experiments, conflicts, and compromises with the physical world. The birth of a building is a dialectical synthesis of matter and idea.

Throughout the centuries, architects have repeated the process of conception and birth of buildings, seldom delving into the ontological questions of their profession. With the advent of the late New Age, the situation undergoes a sharp change. Professional reflection becomes an integral part of architectural work. The astonishing discoveries of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, made at the level of intuition, find their theoretical basis in Hegel's absolute idealism as the XVIII century transitions into the XIX. What transpires in the realm of spirit becomes immeasurably more important than the entire empirical sphere, shaped and transformed by this spirit.

Carl Ivanovich Rossi and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel are almost contemporaries. They likely knew nothing of each other, yet the ubiquitous Spirit firmly linked the philosopher and the architect. Russian Empire architecture is practically an exposition in stone of Hegel's concept of the State, and the gigantism and transformational pathos characteristic of Rossi also align with the philosopher's views on the essence of history. 

The building on the Fontanka embankment in St. Petersburg, as well as the entire ensemble of Lomonosov Square and Zodchego Rossi Street, is a splendid illustration of the connection between theory and creative will. The ideal manifests here in the alignment of urban and planning scales, noted by architect Sergey Mishin. Such universal structures allow us to perceive streets and urban squares in the enfilades and halls, considering the urban environment as a unified building. Individual houses and their complexes become seeds from which new cities sprout, vigorously demolishing outdated structures.

However, as mentioned earlier, buildings live, die, and are reborn quite differently than humans. Ideas that formed the basis of a concept are forgotten, old functions become irrelevant, owners and users change, and history, lacking significant linearity, spares neither constructions nor their inhabitants. The Leningrad Publishing House, which occupied the building on Fontanka in 1925, completely reshaped it, adapting it to a new function, barbarically distorting Rossi's constructive-rhetorical system. 

However, even here, one can discern the presence of the spirit of history. State propaganda materialized in print in the printing house workshops is an expression of some ideal will to transform the world.

The current state of the building is a ruined palimpsest of several historical epochs. Its latest layer-construction work taking place now. Understanding that most subsequent layers of this palimpsest will be erased during the process of rebirth, we are convinced that such diversity must be preserved in the form of artistic documentation. The dust from dismantling work spreads through the enfilades, illuminated by sunlight, creating an enhanced aerial perspective and emphasizing their truly urban scale. Thus, the creeping arches of the Gothic staircase gain an unexpected context of loss and damage, becoming historically older than the rest of the structure.

The perforated wall, whose openings are not related to any architectural idea but merely follow the layout of no longer existing engineering communications, transforms the space under the roof on the fourth floor into a semblance of a chapel in Le Corbusier's Ronchamp.

Architectural photography, with its rigidly designed technical and aesthetic principles and limitations, appears to us as an effective tool for finding that inner Rossi, which exists in the building independently of all its historical alterations and losses. This is an invariant, the preservation of which in the reconstruction project is of paramount importance.