Andrey (Andreyevich) Ol'

(b St Petersburg, 8 July 1883; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], 27 Aug 1958). Russian architect, restorer, urban planner and painter. He studied at the Institute of Civil Engineering, St Petersburg, and during its closure, due to political reasons, worked in 1905-6 with the partnership of Gesellius, Lindgren & Saarinen in Helsinki. His early works reflect their northern Art Nouveau (Rus. modern) approach, notably in the country house (1907-8) of the writer Leonid Andreyev in Vammelsuu and the villa (1909) of D. Nikol'sky at Uusikirkko, both on the Karelian Isthmus. Ol' graduated in 1910, after which the free compositional approach and expressive use of building materials that had characterized his early work gave way to the influence of Russian neo-classicism, for example in a number of private residences in St Petersburg. After the October Revolution (1917) he began to work on a broader range of projects. In Petrograd (later Leningrad; now St Petersburg) he designed large-scale industrial plants, such as the Red October Power Station and adjacent workers' quarters (1922), and in other cities he built numerous public buildings that display the simplified, geometric forms characteristic of early Soviet architecture: for example the Government House (1928) of the Buryat ASSR in Ulan-Ude, a theatre (1930; with M. M. Lipkin) at Bobruysk and the Soyuzzoloto Club (1930) in Irkutsk. His most important project of this period was the monumental seven-storey GPU Building (1931-2; with Aleksandr Gegello and Noy Trotsky) on Liteynyy Prospect, Leningrad.

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