St Petersburg, Perrault designs the Mariinsky Theatre
The architect Dominique Perrault, born in 1953, will design the new Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. His project – a huge golden cocoon – was chosen a few days ago by the competition jury from those of the eleven finalists - five Russian teams (Andrey Bokov / Oleg Romanov, Alexander Skokan, Yuri Zemtsov/Mikhail Kondiayn, Mark Reinberg/Andrey Sharov, Sergey Kiselev) and six international ones (Perrault plus Mario Botta, Erick Van Egeraat, Arata Isozaki, Eric Owen Moss and Hans Hollein).
This is a major opportunity for the French designer, as Russia had not organised an international architectural competition since 1931, when Le Corbusier designed Moscow’s Palace of the Soviets. Called in January this year, the competition followed the violent controversy prompted by an initial design project, in 2001, by the American Eric Owen Moss – labelled in no half terms by critics and the local press as “garbage bags”.
The new theatre on the Novaya Gollandiya (New Holland) island, a stone’s throw from the city’s main sights, was strongly backed by the director of St Petersburg’s Kirov ballet and opera company, Valery Gergiyev, and should be the city’s new and spectacular pride and joy. It will also double the size of the present structure to create a total of 35 thousand square metres with a 2-thousand seat auditorium. It should be finished in 2007.
