Alexander Kokorinov

Alexander Filippovich Kokorinov (Russian: Александр Филиппович Кокоринов) (July 10, 1726 – March 21, 1772) was a Russian architect and educator, one of the founders, the first builder, director (1761) and rector (1769) of the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Peterburg. Kokorinov has been house architect of the Razumovsky family and Ivan Shuvalov, the first President of the Academy. Kokorinov's surviving architectural legacy, once believed to be substantial, has been reduced by recent research to only two buildings, the Imperial Academy of Arts and Kirill Razumovsky palace in Saint Petersburg. The Academy was designed by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe based on an earlier proposal by Jacques-François Blondel, while Kokorinov managed the construction in its early phases (1764–1772).

Alexander Kokorinov was born in Tobolsk in the family of a government clerk. At the age of 14 he began training with Johann Blank (father of Karl Blank), a self-proclaimed architect exiled from Saint Petersburg for his involvement in the alleged conspiracy of Artemy Volynsky (1740). With the ascension of Elisabeth in 1741 survivors of the Volynsky affair were amnestied and the Blanks returned to Moscow, taking Kokorinov with them.

Kokorinov and Karl Blank studied arts and architecture in Moscow under Ivan Korobov, and in 1749 Kokorinov was hired by prince Dmitry Ukhtomsky, then the leading Moscow architect of Elisabethan Baroque and dean of an architectural school based in Moscow Kremlin. He received the degree of Master of Mathematics from Moscow University and in 1754 Kokorinov passed professional examination as a junior architect, joined the staff of Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli and relocated to Saint Petersburg where he made contact with count Ivan Shuvalov, founder of Moscow State University (1755) and the Imperial Academy of Arts (1757). Kokorinov joined the staff of the Academy since its first days.

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