In 1910 on the river bank of Bolshaya Nevka in the suburbs of St. Petersburg a fine house and an adjacent residence in northern modern style were built by an engineer Adolf Lemmerich.
The house was in a deplorable state, when its new owners turned to the architect with a request to reconstruct the façade of the building, which beheld its historical value, and to design the interiors of two separate apartments with a common entrance.
The brandmauer wall of the mansion was turned into a proper façade.
The front stairs of marble lead to a small hallway, which turns out to be the main entrance to both halves of the house.
The whole of the ascent of the staircase in vestibule is accompanied by the yellow Roman colour of stucco with a light moulding used.
The dining room, unified with the sitting room, was seen by the client as dense and warm space, enriched with wood, colourful fabrics and little items of decoration – just as the interior of a traditional house in Provence or Liguria or Lombardy would be. There was no objective of such to copy the ideal set in a manner of one locality or another, but to create a personal, according to his overtone, milieu. All of the wooden elements in the dining room – the kitchen itself, wooden beams, doors, the fireplace were designed by the architect and produced with the aid of Italian professionals. A very well-detailed kitchen with commensurate rhythm of beams creates a whole proportional composition.
A row of rooms of the ground floor ends with a chamber study with a view onto the river and with a neighboring miniature veranda with an exquisite cast-iron stairs, descending down to the wine cellar.
The other half of former Lemmerich’s residence, owned by other hosts at presend, was designed to be a studio. Therefore the characteristics and functional peculiarity of this place are completely different.
The studio, occupying the second half of the mansion, is filled with artistic nuances. In the spacious bedroom, amidst the columns just like in Pompeii, had found itself a grand bath.
A common classic way the Italian painters have used, is applied in the bathroom, when the store itself becomes its representation, picture and well-drawn folds of fabrics all of a sudden carries itself on as a plaster wave.