Glass House or Corn House

“Glass House,” “Corn House,” and other popular nicknames have long been attached to the residential dormitory buildings constructed in several districts of Saint Petersburg. The reason for this is the unusual shape of the building combined with the plasticity of the facade: a cylindrical tower with triangular bay windows. This feature made the building look very much like an ear of corn and the well-known Soviet glass, which has many facets.

This project is one of the experiments of Soviet modernism in the second half of the last century. Several such high-rises were built in Saint Petersburg (then still Leningrad). The most famous is located in Kupchino at 103 Budapest Street. This cylindrical building is also commonly called the “corn house.” Its residents, like corn kernels, squeezed into cramped cell-like rooms. What could be done—it was originally designed on the principle of a communal house.

In total, between 1976 and 1980, eight similar but not identical buildings were constructed in Leningrad according to this project:

Sedova St., 58;

Kostyushko St., 1 and 3;

Avangardnaya St., 16;

Energetikov Ave., 24;

Almost half are located in the Frunzensky district (Kupchino):

Budapest St., 103;

Kupchinskaya St., 28, bldg. 2, and 30, bldg. 3.

Meanwhile, the choice of this shape was not accidental but dictated by necessity. The project authors primarily aimed to create a distinctive architectural accent that would sharply contrast with the flat system of mass housing, which had a monotonous character. Therefore, an experimental project for a 15-story dormitory was developed, intended to enrich the structure of residential microdistricts.

The designers placed these buildings both individually and in pairs—the overall spatial perception depended on this decision. The material also played a significant role in shaping the impression. The white brick chosen for the dormitory construction created a special sense of novelty due to the emphasized triangular sharpness of the bay windows combined with the round volume of the building. This compositional technique noticeably refreshed the usual view of the existing monotonous and rectangular environment and brought movement, the strength of which is felt when moving from one planning direction to another.

Although this was an experimental project whose main task was to enrich the aesthetic qualities of the development, it is believed that the “glass houses” were standard designs; however, this is not true. In fact, they are very similar because they share a common standard project but are not completely identical. They mainly differ in structural features. For example, the dormitory project provided two modifications—one with a dining room and one without. This round-in-plan building, nicknamed “the puck” by locals, is a low one-story volume that “cuts into” the main high-rise cylinder. There are only two such houses: one located in the Frunzensky district, the other in Krasnogvardeysky. For those dormitories without this annex to the residential part, the dining room was located in the basement.

Speaking about the location of social and household services inside the building, it should be noted that special rooms were provided for their placement, occupying the first and last floors. That is why the building is 15 stories tall, but only 13 floors are residential. These floors were entirely non-residential, quite spacious, and had panoramic windows. They were planned to accommodate everything necessary for the comfortable life of a Soviet person.

The attic part of the building was used in a completely unique way. The dormitory building has a successfully designed top, where ventilation blocks form the basis for the pylons of a glazed rotunda. In this light-filled space, smaller in diameter than the main tower, it was planned to arrange a reading room with a mobile library, while the remaining roof area was allocated for an observation deck with a panoramic view. All this contributed to the roof becoming another full-fledged functional zone in the system of social and household services.

Equally interesting is the principle of the building’s structure, where all structural solutions are dictated by its cylindrical shape. It very much resembles a Russian wooden toy—a matryoshka—where one object is placed inside another, which in turn is inside a third. Similarly, the basis of the “glass house” consists of three cylinders nested inside each other: in the center—two elevator shafts, a garbage chute, and utility rooms; around them—a corridor closed in a ring; and the outer circle is the ring of apartments. Due to this architectural feature, all communications run through the center, and the floor plan clearly resembles a daisy. Notably, because the building is a high cylindrical tower, each apartment has a unique view from the window, which is a significant advantage compared to linear development. However, due to such an unusual layout, the apartments turned out to be trapezoidal in shape: the room area widens from the hallway to the window. This condition also caused the absence of right angles in the house. On the one hand, the rooms receive significantly more light than in buildings with a linear apartment layout, which is very relevant for predominantly cloudy Saint Petersburg. This also applies to the panoramic view from such windows. But on the other hand, fitting standard furniture into such an apartment is quite problematic.

According to the project, all apartments in the building were identical. Each apartment consisted of two rooms of 12.12 square meters each and included one shower, washbasin, and toilet in its common area. Considering that this was a dormitory, having a separate bathroom—even divided into three parts—in the apartment greatly increased its appeal. This was a distinctive feature of the “glass houses.” Also, in each room, to the left and right of the entrance, there were two built-in cabinets with mezzanines.

The communal kitchen on the floor remained unchanged and was intended to serve eight apartments. Similarly, there was a laundry drying room accessible to everyone on the floor. Next to it, the project authors placed a fire escape staircase, accessible only through the through balcony of this room. To meet fire safety requirements, the staircase had to have an exit to the street so that in case of fire, smoke would not completely fill it, and residents could safely leave the building. Therefore, the project creators had to abandon the idea of a continuous row of triangular bay windows and make one vertical line of balconies unglazed and rectangular in shape. This is the only part of the building that breaks the overall pattern of pointed bay window facets.

But even this forced structural measure did not spoil the original idea. The “glass houses,” as representatives of Leningrad modernism of the late Soviet era, still look impressive today and give the impression of some alienness with their form. As if they only pretend to be residential buildings, but in reality, they are spaceships that can take off from their places at any moment and fly to explore the boundless expanses of space.

Source:

https://kulturologia.ru/blogs/201119/44715/

http://krasnakarta.ru/spot/id/80