During the tour
On 7 October, students from the Department of Architectural Environment Design (majoring Design) at SPbGASU—accompanied by Acting Head of Department Sergey Lutchenko and Senior Lecturer Evgeny Bruchas—visited the Bridges Museum at the invitation of Vladimir Mitelenko, Director of the Central Museum of Railway Transport.
The tour was conducted for more than just educational purposes: the museum’s managers are interested in collaborating with the department to create a new exhibition space within the museum.
The Bridges Museum is a branch of Russia’s oldest railway museum—the Central Museum of Railway Transport—located on Sadovaya Street. Its exhibition features the world’s only authentic 18th-century bridge models, drawn from both its own collection and the holdings of the State Hermitage Museum. The collection’s oldest model dates back to the late 18th century and was crafted in 1762 based on a design by the Swiss engineer Aldon. Also on display are working scale models of 19th-century bridges that served as the basis for the subsequent construction of city, highway, and railway crossings. Creating such models sometimes took longer than the actual construction work that followed based on their designs.
In October 2019, the museum acquired its own building at 2 Muchnoy Pereulok, housing a unique exhibition that has no equal anywhere in the world. The museum’s collection is expanded annually with new exhibits from the 20th and 21st centuries, including models of the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait and the new Bolshoy Smolensky Bridge across the Neva in St Petersburg.
To accommodate the expansion of the exhibition in 2024, the Governor of St Petersburg decided to transfer an additional 1,180-square-meter space adjacent to the existing building to the museum. It will house an exhibition themed "From the Past to the Future," designed to showcase the achievements of modern Russian bridge engineering.
The first cohort of the "Design" program at the department will complete their studies in 2027, and the project to design the new exhibition has been proposed to the graduates as a thesis topic.
