The Red Banner Textile Factory Power Station, St Petersburg
The Red Banner Textile Factory
First things first – this building has thankfully recently been renovated, even if it now looks like a generic office building. I preferred it in its abandoned state, but at least it now has a new lease of life. The internet hasn’t yet caught up with the renovation (even though it’s been a few years), so most photos when Googling the building are of its delapidated state (which was when I took the photos).
Of all the amazing buildings in St Petersburg (from the Hermitage to the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood), the textile factory was the main one I wanted to see, partly because it was designed by German expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn, also responsible for the wonderful De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea (alongside Serge Chermayeff), which I used to visit occasionally.
The iconic De La Warr Pavilion
Built in 1935, the De La Warr was also abandoned for many years and only in 2005 did it reopen as an arts venue. Previously it had been a restaurant, military base, council building and car boot sale venue before its present use.
The Red Banner Textile Factory in a suburb of St Peterburg is one of the earliest examples of modernist architecture in the city and the only example of Mendelsoln’s architecture in Russia to survive, though the architect essentially disowned authorship of the complex – apart from the power station – after disagreements with local architects (and the building barely has a mention in the monograph I have of Mendelsoln).
Nevertheless, it is an important piece of architecture, Mendelsoln being influenced by the Russian Constructivist of the time. It was created between 1925-1927. The power station was just part of a much larger structure, consisting of various industrial buildings, including three dying shops. The factory was one of the largest textile facilities in Russia.
Mendelsoln had previous experience of industrial factories with his Friedrich Steinberg Herrmann & Co. hat factory at Luckenwalde, near Berlin, Germany, several years earlier. He was the first foreign architect to be invited to the USSR, on the basis of his futuristic and expressionist style, though the appearance of the textile factory turned out to be more functional. Nevertheless, the power station is now seen as an influential part of the Leningrad avant-garde architectural style.