Medvedev’s New OfficePresident Dmitry Medvedev will get an office with a reading room and a residence in St. Petersburg. In the Yeltsin Presidential Library, which is being built in the Synod building in St. Petersburg, there will be a presidential office restored in its historic interiors, Vladimir Kozhin, head of the Presidential Property Management Department, told Vedomosti. One of the library’s halls will accommodate several hundred people and can be used for meetings, Kozhin said. The Russian federal budget allocated 5.2 billion rubles for the creation of the presidential library in 2007–2008, 2.2 billion rubles for 2009, and 516 million rubles for 2010. The project calls for the construction of a new 7,800 sq. m building in the Synod courtyard, as well as the reconstruction and restoration of the existing building with a total area of 17,000 sq. m. The new building will be open to visitors and will include four multimedia halls, the main conference hall “Atrium,” and an exhibition complex. The main VIP facilities will be located in the old Synod building on the second and third floors. According to the technical specifications, there will be four small multimedia conference halls with 30 seats each and one large hall with 300 seats, a house church, a Constitution Hall, an electronic library room for five VIP users, and five more VIP rooms with a total area of 392 sq. m. The total area of the presidential zone will be 1,865 sq. m. The Presidential Property Management Department held tenders for the library’s design, restoration, renovation, and construction. The competition for design surveys was won by Yevgeny Merkuryev’s Architectural Workshop, with a contract worth 71 million rubles. The same firm also became the general designer for the electronic library building in the Synod courtyard and the attic floor of the old building with the VIP “Belvedere” hall (contract value: 46 million rubles). Read more It bothers me that the word VIP is used so often when describing a library. Why the hell does a library need a room for five VIP users and another five VIP rooms?! Who are these VIPs? And what are they going to do there?