Creative space
ITMO University's art space, which combines a workshop and an exhibition space for artists, scientists, Art & Science students and all ITMO students.
AIR is a space for free experimentation, open dialogue and interaction between art and science. Participants and visitors are invited to erase the boundaries between theory and practice, discover new understanding, new meanings and aesthetic aspects of scientific and technological art.
The plot of houses No. 14-16 on the Birzhevaya line from the beginning of the 18th century was part of the estate of Prince Alexander Danilovich Menshikov. In the 1790s, the Cadet Corps, which occupied the estate, began selling plots along the street to private individuals.
On the corner section of the house No. 16/2 in the first half of the nineteenth century. were built two-storey stone warehouses with a classic facade. There, in 1824, the merchant P.E. Eliseev, the founder of the famous merchant dynasty, opened the wine trade, from which the history of the company began. In the early 1860s, this territory was completely bought out by the Eliseev brothers. Here their office and apartments were located.
In the 1920s, the building was transferred to the State Optical Institute. His employees lived here. In 1918-1940, one of the residents of house No. 14 was the organizer and the first director of GOI Academician D.S.Rozhdestvensky, in 1932-1951 (with a break) - physicist-optician, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences S.I. Vavilov.
In 2020, ITMO University created a space here for interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists and artists.