Rossi, Karl Ivanovich

views updated

Rossi, Karl Ivanovich (1775–1849). Russian architect, the most important working in St Petersburg from 1816, largely responsible for giving the city-centre its monumental Neo-Classical character. He designed the noble arch of the Winter Palace (1819–29—later the General Staff Arch) with the flanking hemicycle of administrative buildings, the gigantic range of the Senate and Synod (1829–34), the impressive Mikhailovsky Palace (1819–33—later the Russian Museum), and the Alexandrinsky (later Pushkin) Theatre (1827–32). He created formal spaces, an urban fabric of great grandeur, and a Sublime architectural effect by repetition of colonnades and huge scale. He was an urban planner of genius.

Bibliography

Egorov (1969);
G. Hamilton (1983);
Middleton & and Watkin (1987);
Jane Turner (1996);
Taranovskaia (1980)

More From encyclopedia.com