A Laconic Image of Time

The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.

Written by:
Angelina Utter
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

17 July 2025

Object

Time Square is located at the very edge of St. Petersburg – quite literally, beyond it lie fields and the village of Kamenka: technically, this area is still part of the city, since its boundary runs along the Ring Road, but in practice, not quite. This location has its advantages: nearby are a forest park, a river, irrigation ponds, and the Western High-Speed Diameter, which ensures convenient transport access. In fact, the distance “as the crow flies” to the resort town of Sestroretsk is nearly the same as to the Peter and Paul Fortress located in the very heart of St. Petersburg.

Still, it’s the city’s outskirts, which means that construction here tends to be pragmatic, dense, and large-scale. It’s somewhat comparable to Pushkino outside Moscow, where Sergey Nikeshkin and KPLN have completed multiple residential projects. Designing for such places is a task that calls for both skill and patience. Yet, whenever an actual architect – not just a planner or project engineer – gets involved, it tends to be noticeable, whether in the details and subtleties, or the overall laconism of the solution.

Thus, on the very edge of the city, emerges a living environment with all the hallmarks of urbanity – from the moderate yet still impressive height (each building has 13 floors) to the cozy, “home-like” glow of entrance galleries and loggias.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

This is one of the most appealing features of the complex, as it conveys a warm emotional message: you’re home – inside – where it’s warm and safe.

Here in the Primorsky District, the story comes with a nuance: this project is a continuation of a previous one, yet with significant changes.

Six years ago, we designed and received approval for two residential blocks in the Primorsky District. The first one – the New Time residential complex – had already been built when our client, the development company RSTI, asked us to revise the second phase in order to improve the planning efficiency ratio. The task was ambitious: to fit the maximum number of apartments around a single stair-and-elevator core. As a result, we reduced the number of cores, reworked the planning concept, and placed single-core towers along the perimeter of the site.

The name Time Square, proposed by the client’s marketing team, continues the theme of time, just like in New Time. Despite this continuity, the two projects are quite different and help create a diverse urban environment.

The articulation of the facades is one of the defining features of the complex. We achieved it by combining painted surfaces and clinker brick on the front facing Planernaya Street.

The beautiful façade relief was created by varying the thickness of the insulation layer, which we then covered with a thin plaster coat and painted. I like that it’s not a ventilated façade – it has no joints and looks monolithic.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

Time Square residential complex. Location plan

Copyright: © KPLN
Time Square residential complex. Diagram of the planned location of the building on the site

Copyright: © KPLN

The complex is indeed different from its earlier neighbor – that one consists of white volumes with slanted glass end walls facing the forest, positioned at an angle to the site boundary with a view to optimize its meridional orientation.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
New Time residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

Time Square is much more orthogonal: twelve buildings standing along the perimeter, one in the center, all volumes equal in height, 13 stories. “Thirteen buildings of thirteen-story height” – the architects explain, almost boasting a little with the indivisible number.

Nuance one: ten of the thirteen buildings – the ones lined along the long sides of the plot – are stepped pyramids in plan, made up of three tiers, with only a small, roughly 10% difference in width. They are rotated 180 degrees in a checkerboard fashion, as if to suggest a ticking motion. Though in the plan we see pyramids, “in real life” what we see is an alternating rhythm of façades – narrow-wide-narrow-wide – and a barely perceptible diagonal in the spaces between buildings.

zooming — Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

Let’s be clear: the resemblance to a clock is not literal. The optimal layout turned out to be single-entrance towers. Everything else is deliberately calm and restrained.

However, there are nuances here, too. For example, the “retail front” connects the buildings facing the forest – not, as one might expect, those bordering the neighboring residential development. That would seem logical enough: a new “urban life” beginning between two projects. But no. Why? Most likely because New Time, the first phase of the development, also has a commercial strip along the forest. And quite a striking one – large, with a thick yellow-wood-style canopy. A retail street has already taken shape here – Time Square continues its line, running parallel to Planernaya Street, which, like the forest strip, separates the neighborhood from the Western High-Speed Diameter and will, for now, mark the street’s end.

Time Square residential complex. Plan of the 1 floor

Copyright: © KPLN
Time Square residential complex. Plan of the 2 floor

Copyright: © KPLN

Nuance three: there is underground parking, but only a single level – and only under half of the yard.

Time Square residential complex. Plan of the underground floor

Copyright: © KPLN
Time Square residential complex. Section view 5-5

Copyright: © KPLN

This results in two courtyards: one at ground level, where more trees can be planted (conifers are planned); the other, slightly raised, atop the parking structure. The landscaping is conceived within the theme of time. The northwest courtyard, adjacent to the kindergarten and with a third of its area taken up by the playground, is the “Moon Yard” The southeast one, situated on the podium, is the “Sun Yard”. It’s hard not to think of astrology, fairy tales, and folklore: “east of the sun, west of the moon”.

The most intriguing nuance, as noted by the author Sergey Nikeshkin, lies in the facades’ plastique. They are layered and stepped – from the tower floor plans to the setbacks beside the windows, which themselves are fairly large. In the central vertical sections, the rhythm is broken diagonally, while it remains calm at the edges. This is panelled, plate-like surface governed by a grid is a favorite technique of Art Deco’s. Yet under these laconic conditions, and with the deep, wide steps that “consume” a significant portion of the wall mass, the effect may also evoke, say, the works by Scarpa.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

The grid, in turn, emphasizes the uppermost attic tier – the only level where the windows are vertically connected. This is also the floor with higher ceilings: 3.04 meters at the top, compared to 2.74 meters on the other levels.

A fourth nuance is the restrained palette of just two façade colors. One, according to the architects, is a dark gray brick that appears brown in bright sunlight and can look almost black on an overcast day. The other is a light gray plaster that, by contrast, reads as white. The designers likely avoided using pure tones to prevent overly stark contrasts. Nevertheless, contrast remains the main expressive device here – and it registers clearly as a black-and-white opposition.

The brick, inherently “fortress-like” in character, was intended for the long perimeter facades that face the outside world – functioning like a kind of “skin”. The central “donjon” building was also to be clad in brick. Everything else was to be white. The interior and exterior are sharply and deliberately divided, almost in a “Mayakovsky” manner. If one were to mentally shift the towers like puzzle pieces, they would align into rectangular blocks – one side black, the other white – with a “core” between them: the black house.

Yet perhaps the most fascinating feature of the facades is that the same plate-like plastique is applied to both white and black surfaces. It’s a pleasure to see that while the material changes, the formal logic does not – it “crawls over” from brick to plaster and back again.

In the original design, all the dark (or rather, dark gray) areas were supposed to be brick – the two street-facing facades and the central block. In the final version, the “inner” facade, facing the neighboring development, and the middle tower are finished in plaster. In this case, the color reads more clearly as dark gray rather than black, especially compared to the brick. Still, as Sergey Nikeshkin rightly points out, plaster offers the advantage of a seamless, unified surface. We would add: the dark gray plaster provides a measured counterpart to the light-gray – almost white – plaster.

They were, however, able to use brick for the plinths – and that’s important, as bricks are a highly visible element. The entrance area walls are made of glass and preceded by pylon-style screens formed from transverse brick partitions, set in a Modernist manner.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

The lobby has a ceiling height of 5.5 meters – thanks in part to the raised technical underfloor space: it elevates the first-floor apartments by 1.8 meters above ground level, while the entrances remain barrier-free and flush with the street.

Brick also continues into the entrance interiors, reinforcing the contrast of black and white and the interpenetration of exterior and interior.

Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN
Time Square residential complex

Copyright: Photograph © Ivan Smelov / provided by KPLN

The interior design includes original lighting fixtures, ottomans, mailboxes, and vertical radiators, as well as moss-based greenery. Large, stylish floor and apartment numbers were made of aluminum tinted to resemble bronze.

Looking at the apartment layouts, you see that they’re quite balanced: two or four studios per floor, alongside all other formats, including three-room apartments – even some with four rooms. One could imagine a family with three children moving in, strolling through the park while they’re young, and later giving them their own studio apartments as they grow up.

Time Square residential complex. Plan of the standard floor

Copyright: © KPLN
Time Square residential complex. Plan of the 12 and 13 floor

Copyright: © KPLN

The key professional challenge of the Time Square project was to create varied and engaging architecture while working within uniform height limits, optimized apartment configurations, a clustered site plan, and a tight budget. The solution came from a simple but striking color contrast – brick on the perimeter buildings, and light-colored facades inside the courtyard – combined with a restrained urban composition and, at the same time, an endless array of subtle nuances.

17 July 2025

Written by:

Angelina Utter
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

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