Concorso per la nuova sede di Gazprom | Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Resonances… Correspondences… Harmonies… Permeating the horizon… Inscribing the sky…

The exceptional object that will be Gazprom's imposing head office in Saint Petersburg must be perceived, viewed and experienced as an enhancement of the city, as a deepening of its characteristics.

In architecture, the future is always built in reference to a past that remains present, and which also has a future, especially when the past has the prestige and splendour of Saint Petersburg's monuments, and the future has the strength and ambition of Gazprom.

It is impossible, in this context, to arrive with some generic globalized architecture, or some academic replication of historic forms.

The answer is in the diversity of Saint Petersburg’s skies, in the reflections on the Neva, the vertical streaks that punctuate the city, the shadows cast by the sun as it sinks behind a flat horizon, where rows of trees create depth.

The building's bulk is erased by transparency and reflections. The vertical structure celebrates thinness, stretching into a horizontal band that runs alongside the river, creating interior walkways, long belvederes that look out across the city, giving those who will work there a perpetual view of their city of Saint Petersburg under a changing sky.

Gazprom marks the city with a new type of high rise architecture, which rejects the discontinuity of towers that sprout like sticks in new business districts, and offers instead linear forms penetrated by light.

Jean Nouvel