On February 8, the exhibition hall of the Faculty of Architecture of the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering opened the exhibition “The Lost Churches of St. Petersburg. Experience in architectural reconstruction". The exhibition was organized by the SPbGASU Department of Architectural and Urban Planning Heritage. The exhibition presents works of this department students.

Most of the works made up a book of the same name, published with the support of the Union of Architects of Russia and the Council for Church Architecture of the St. Petersburg Union of Architects. The publication was sponsored by the Foundation for Assistance to the Restoration of Historical and Cultural Objects in St. Petersburg. The author and compiler of the book is Sergey Sementsov, Doctor of Architecture, Professor, Head of the SPbGASU Department of Architectural and Urban-Planning Heritage.

“We are proud that our teachers introduced the project and that our students' works formed the basis of the book. Thanks to everyone who supported the initiative and did this great and important work. It was a real team effort, and we hope to continue it,” said Irina Lugovskaia, Vice-Rector for International Relations and Youth Policy of SPbGASU, at the opening of the exhibition.

The book introduction took place at the St. Petersburg House of Architects at the end of January. It was a great success. The book and the student projects that formed it turned to be expectedly highly demanded, and the geography of feedbacks from interested people was quite broad. Working on the graphic reconstruction of the lost churches is important due to the fact that students, by reconstructing the appearance of the historical city, can contribute to the partial reconstruction of the lost dominants in order to preserve the heritage of the City-on-Neva.

According to Sergey Makarov, Chairman of the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP) of St. Petersburg, the issues of restoring the lost city dominants are very topical in the Northern capital. The fact that SPbGASU students pay attention to this problem, and the university management guides them, will help to find competent solutions in preserving and restoring the historical image of our beautiful city.

Mikhail Mamoshin, Vice-President of the St. Petersburg Union of Architects, Chairman of its Council for Church Architecture, considers the work of students a great contribution to modern analytics of historical church construction. According to the well-known architect, the value of the works is their originality - for the first time such a large amount of high-quality information on the lost churches is presented.

The opening of the exhibition was also attended by Archimandrite Aleksandr (Fedorov), the Chairman of the St. Petersburg Diocesan Commission for Architectural and Artistic Issues, and Aleksei Belonozhkin, academic secretary of the Commission, Andrei Mezilev, Deputy Director of the Foundation for Assistance to the Restoration of Historical and Cultural Objects in St. Petersburg, and Aleksei Mikhailov, Deputy Chairman of KGIOP, Ekaterina Kozyreva, Head of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Sites of the KGIOP, Nina Petukhova, expert, member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) of UNESCO, Associate Professor of the Department of Architectural and Urban-Planning Heritage, Kirill Yakovlev and Anton Korolev, architects . On the eve of the opening, the publisher Aleksandr Petelin handed over several copies of the book "The lost churches of St. Petersburg" to teachers and students - the authors of the projects.

Together with the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture Ekaterina Voznyak and Associate Professor of the Department of Architectural and Urban-Planning Heritage Nadezhda Akulova, the guests examined the original works of Vasily Kosyakov, director of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1905–1921, the author of the Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt and other churches, kept in the funds of the Scientific and Technical Library of St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.{gallery name="1002ХРАМЫ"}

Text: Tatiana Petrova
Photo: Anton Korolev, teaching assistant  at Department of architectural and urban-planning heritage