(b St Petersburg, 26 April 1879; d Saratov, 6 May 1942). Architect and art historian, brother of (1) Yevgeny Lansere. From 1898 to 1904 he studied at the Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, under Leonty Benois. He was an associate of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group and was one of the first to undertake detailed studies of the history of Russian architecture, designing several historical exhibitions, including one, in 1912, entitled Mikhail Lomonosov and the Age of Empress Elizabeth (reg 1741–62) at the Academy of Arts, St Petersburg. In the 1910s he produced a number of designs and buildings that revived the traditions of St Petersburg classicism, as in the house at Pesochnaya Embankment 10, St Petersburg, and the interiors (1913) of the Kochubey Mansion in Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). His School of Folk Art (1913; converted to flats) near the Russian Museum, St Petersburg, is in the style of early 18th-century St Petersburg Baroque. In the 1920s he executed a number of Rationalist designs and competition designs, including the prize-winning romantic design (1929; unexecuted) for a lighthouse-monument to Christopher Columbus, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In the early 1930s, moving away from the Rationalist tendency, he attempted to create a synthesis of restrained innovation and picturesque interpretations of St Petersburg classicism. In this character he executed the residential block (1934–7), Kirov Prospect (now Kamenoostrovsky Prospect) 69–71, Leningrad (now St Petersburg), and the design (from 1933) of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, Moscow. After 1917 he played a leading role in the organization of the State Russian Museum in Leningrad. In 1938 he was unlawfully arrested and his professional activity came to an abrupt end.

Part of the Lansere family