Genesis of Regularity

What will happen if composition and ideas that constitute the basis of the structure of the formal park of the XVIII century are used for designing a low-rise suburban area? The Tsarskoye Selo interpretation of the suburbia theme – respectful, yet at the same time slightly ironic – can be examined at the example of the plan of a new city block in the town of Pushkin.

Written by:
Elena Petukhova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

07 November 2017

Object

Keeping the identity

The cities keep on growing and encroaching on their suburbs. In those of them, where the real estate enjoys steady demand, active expansion is on the rise. Dozens of small, yet by no means trivial, towns with a history and a character of their own are absorbed by a wave of standard prefabricated commercial housing construction. These towns keep disappearing and turning into new residential areas, their once-resonant names becoming part of the brand names of new housing complexes – elite and standard ones alike.

For Studio 44, a company that is known for its formidable experience in working with historical heritage sites, as well as for approaching the tasks of introducing new buildings and reconstructing old ones with particular care and responsibility, the commission to develop a planning project of a large residential area at the entrance to the town of Pushkin gave the company an opportunity for demonstrating alternative approaches to commercial and residential construction on the territory of a city with a prominent architectural and town-planning character. The architects at once defined for themselves the main vector of their creative search – applying the characteristic features of the city for creating new construction that would harmoniously complement the existing buildings.

zooming — Residential area in Pushkin. Housing complex 4 © Studio 44

Nikita Yavein phrased the original task in the following way: “To research the planning, housing and park structure that defines Tsarskoye Selo and its genesis. And then to use the results of this research to create modern architecture based on the architectural tradition of the city, in which it will appear. Not the artificial kind, but the kind of architecture that continues the city’s tradition, at the same time developing and transforming it with regard to the requirements of the modern world”.

Pushkin – Tsarskoye Selo

The town of Pushkin is a veritable treasure. It is one of those towns that, very much like a beautiful necklace, appeared around Saint Petersburg springing from the Czar’s palaces and park ensembles. So, it comes as no surprise that UNESCO put this town on its list of “Historic Center of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.” The city was founded in 1710, and until 1918 it bore the name of “Tsarskoye Selo” (“Czar’s Village”). Currently, the people of Saint Petersburg use both names, the former when they speak about its monuments and historical legacy, the latter when it is about today’s issues. The town’s main cultural heritage site is the “Tsarskoye Selo” museum, a monument of town-planning art, and a palace-and-park ensemble of the XVIII – XIX centuries. The museum complex includes the Ekaterininsky Park with the Bolshoi Ekaterininsky Palace (founded in 1717), the Aleksandrovsky Palace (1792–1796), a park bearing the same name, and other buildings as well.

Bosket and pavilion system

One of the features of the planning structure of Tsarskoye Selo is the fact that its residential part utilizes the same planning module as its park part: the center of the town is dissected into orthogonal blocks whose measurements (130–180 meters) repeat the large parterres, curtain walls, and boskets of the Ekaterininsky and Aleksandrovsky parks.

Studio 44 is quite familiar with the principles of regular planning and the opportunities that it presents in terms of being adapted to the tasks of today. Using the regular composition, the company designed and built, back in the 2000’s, the hotel complex “Novy Petergof”. In 2007, while they were doing the contest project of reconstructing the complex of “Apraksin Dvor” in Saint Petersburg (built back in its days on the former territory of a regular park), the architects carefully preserved and accentuated its linear structure. In addition, since 2010, Studio 44 has been doing the project of reconstructing and turning into a museum the Aleksandrovsky Palace in Pushkin.

Thus, it came as no surprise that with such formidable knowledge of the subject and a clear idea of the continuity of Tsarskoye Selo’s historical legacy and Pushkin’s new housing construction, Studio 44 chose, as the prototype and the source of inspiration for the planning project of the new residential area, the structure and the format of a formal park, with all its peculiarities and even architectural vagaries.

The latter are represented by the “style-ish” buildings that are characteristic of Pushkin – park pavilions and their clusters, stylized as exotic ones: Chinese, Egyptian, Turkish, neo-Gothic, a-la-Russ, and so on. The mistress of the Major Palace, Catherine the Great, would call this kind of architecture “educational” because it was meant not only to entertain the guests but also enlighten them in terms of culture and ethnography. In the Nikita Yavein project, this “educational” architecture was used as a source of form making for the new residential buildings. Of course, all of these sources were creatively revised in the recognizable manner of Studio 44.

Regular diversity

The territory allocated for the construction of the new residential area, more than 100 hectares, is situated at the entrance to the town of Pushkin. The trapeze-shaped land plot borders on the Peterburgskoe Highway in the east, the Kuzminskoe Highway in the south, and to the Kuzminka Creek in the north. Running alongside the riverbed, there is yet another land plot meant for the second stage of construction.

The plans of the first stage of construction have a clear-cut structure with a basic span of streets and driveways of 180x180 meters and a whole collection of variations based on this module, which carefully disguise their relationship with it.

The center of the first stage is occupied by four city blocks. With a charming sincerity, these blocks take on the role of the buildings that pay homage to the parterre of the Aleksandrovsky Park. The fixed dimensions of the city blocks allow for placing yet another building in the middle of the block. This adds some difficulty to the task of the designer but at the same time this gives the composition a certain likeness to a landscape, in which curtain walls are turned into houses, while lawns and flowerbeds – into yards and playgrounds. According to Nikita Yavein, “from the multilayered pattern of the bosket, a housing structure is made. The scale, the character, and the very pattern of the new housing construction are so much at one with their context that, when one looks at the plan of this residential area superimposed on the aerial photos, it looks practically the same as the historical part of the city and its parks”.

The principle of planning the central apartments is a single one – a perimeter with breaks plus a central block with a small inner yard. The easily read likeness to military fortifications is not accidental. This is a paraphrase of “poteshny” or “toy” fortresses or towns with round or square towers on the corners. For the sake of achieving a likeness to boskets, the architects indulged in the luxury of using the plans of the buildings with corners slashed at 45 degrees and diagonal sidefills of the yards – the beauty of the composition and the purity of the idea comes at a price.

These four “model” boskets are surrounded by their variations. In some instances, the module is reduced by half, forming a corner composition of four diagonally dissected houses, in some instances, it is the other way around – the module grows half again as big turning into a semblance of Kvarnegi’s ideal quarter, with a square in the middle, surrounded by a labyrinth of L and T-shaped buildings.

On the opposite side of the land site, along the slanted sure of the trapeze, there is a ledge-like row of English-style block-based cottages.

The square module is also applied to designing the public buildings; standing along the northern border of the area, there is a school, a few kindergartens, a medical center, a fitness center, and a cultural center; next to the south border, there is a marketplace.

Their volumetric solution can be traced back to yet another decorative motif which was popular in the XVIII century – the Egyptian theme, which, of course, came in the form of the most obvious image of a pyramid. As coverage, the architects use roofs with four sloping surfaces and volumetric structures with most diverse pyramidal elements.

Next to the boskets, the architects have placed yet another unusual “arch object” – a multi section residential building that forms a ring. In this specific instance, prototypes are hard to trace. It could be the legendary “bottle” from Saint Petersburg’s “New Holland” or some amusement park figures. In any case, this would hardly be the Moscow’s famous “ring” houses built for the 1980 Olympics. Against the overall background of the master plan, this prominently “non-square” thing looks pretty provocative – as if the designers initially announced the rules of the game, and then broke them deliberately and with great pleasure – but only once. The main construction rules have been defined and they stay the same.

Norms and rules

The territory planning project makes clear provisions for the structure and main functional zones of the new residential area, layout of the driveways, locations, the measurements of the blocks, and their specific configuration, referring us back to the “amusement” and “educational” prototypes, as well as other parameters, which in the future will define the quality of the environment, and will be observed by the designers who will develop individual blocks. Under the standard construction density, the height of the buildings is strictly limited. The main bulk of the housing construction, which occupies 32% of the territory, is formed by four-story houses with elevators (plus a mansard floor) with pitched roofs. The height of the buildings is 18 meters.

Under the buildings and some of the yards, there is a single-level underground parking garage, which provides a sufficient number of car stalls that slightly exceeds the number of the apartments. The large ceiling height – about three meters – allows small trucks to drive in for unloading, thus freeing the yards from the unloading operations and the long presence of the truck transport.

The architecture is only roughcast, which leaves the future designers a lot of space for creative work, both in terms of stylizations, and in the choice of decoration materials. Nikita Yavein comments on this point in the following way: “The image of each block is defined individually. The decoration can be based on most diverse materials, the important thing being that they correspond to the chosen style. We would like to see here a stone-white town in the Russian style, a red-brick English city block, a reserved northern Scandinavian / Saint Petersburg Art Nouveau, multicolored Mediterranean houses, and gray-and-white constructivism. In our planning project we set the general guidelines, the parameters, and the character of the construction, as well as a range of options for their realization. The specific architectural solutions will be defined by the designers of individual buildings and complexes which will constitute this residential area”.

Parks and recreation zones

In the north of the territory, along the bank of the Kuzminka River, and in the east, along the Peterburgskoe Highway, the architects placed green recreation zones. And, although their design significantly differs from one zone to another, demonstrating different landscaping traditions, they form a single recreational system with bicycle and walking trails, recreation areas, and sports fields. The river part is designed in a landscape style, or, rather, in its modern interpretation, which implies preserving the picturesque clusters of trees and lawns gradually bleeding into the beach zone. Along the highway, runs a grand esplanade two hundred meters wide, at the beginning of which, i.e. at the entrance to the town of Pushkin from the side of Saint Petersburg, there will be built a church. For the time being, the planning of this zone is done by the architects of Studio 44 in full accordance with the rules of a formal parterre park, with boskets and geometric tracing of the trails, like a paraphrase of the historical prototypes situated nearby. In the future, after this territory is transferred to the property of the municipality, the question of planning and decorating the park running along the highway will be considered by the city council.

“Light-minded” manifesto

Analyzing the project of planning the residential area in the town of Pushkin, one cannot rid of a feeling that this is an academic research or perhaps an experimental concept in the spirit of an “ideal town”. The geometry laid as the basis of the construction looks too correct and thought-out too well, and the houses installed in it are too fancy. One cannot help but feel some sort of architectural irony in all of this, which is inevitable when a modern master who is quite at home with historical samples, and at the same time has a recognizable professional lexicon of his own, creates a paraphrase project, or, if you will, stylization to the architectural monuments of the days past.

One cannot help wondering just how relevant and sustainable this system created by the architects is. What was good and relevant in the plans of formal parks in the XVIII century – will these techniques help answer the demands of the modern housing market?

In any other case answering these questions would have been difficult – but not with Studio 44. This team has a tremendous experience of working with historical legacy, filling the forms of the past with new energy and functions, and breathing new life into them.

When asked about the irony and idealism of this project, Nikita Yavein said: “Tsarskoye Selo is basically a getaway place. And I think that this place requires such slightly ironic and literary approach. It presents a whole range of solutions which we deliberately endowed with some fairy tale quality, and some “light-mindedness” in the best meaning of this word. The very local environment dictates the project solutions that take into account the history and the legends of this place. The whole planning project is full of such allusions and direct associations. And in this sense, the project of this residential area in the town of Pushkin can be perceived as our manifesto showing the ideology and methodology of our design. It in a pure unalloyed form, it shows the connection between the prototype, the source of inspiration and the original project that we created”.

07 November 2017

Headlines now

Review

Living in the Architecture of One’s Own Making

Do architects design houses for themselves? You bet! In this article, we are examining a new book by TATLIN publishing house. This book – unprecedented for Russia – features 52 private homes designed and built by contemporary architects for themselves. It includes houses that are famous, even iconic, as well as lesser-known ones; large and small, stylish and eccentric. To some extent, the book reflects the history of Russian architecture over the past 30 years.

Object

A City Block Isoline

Another competition project for a residential complex on the banks of the Volga in Nizhny Novgorod has been prepared by Studio 44. A team of architects led by Ivan Kozhin concluded that using a regular block layout in such a location would be inappropriate and developed a “custom design” approach: a chain of parceled multi-section buildings stretching along the entire embankment. Let’s explore the features and advantages of this unconventional method.

Report

Competition: The Price of Creativity?

Any day now, we’re expecting the results of a competition held by the “Samolet” development group for a plot in Kommunarka. In the meantime, we share the impressions of Editor-in-Chief Julia Tarabarina, who managed to conduct a public talk. Though technically focused on the interaction between developers and architects, the public talk turned into a discussion about the pros and cons of architectural competitions.

Object

Terraced Design

The “River Park” residential complex has confidently and securely shaped the Nagatinsky Backwater shoreline. Featuring a public embankment, elevated courtyards connected by pedestrian bridges, and brick façades, the development invites exploration of its nuanced response to the surrounding context, as well as hints of the architects’ megalithic design thinking.

A Kremlin’s Core and Meteorite Fragments

We continue our coverage of the competition projects for the residential district that the development company GloraX plans to build along the embankment of the Rowing Channel in Nizhny Novgorod. ASADOV Architects approached the concept through a deep dive into local identity, using storytelling to pinpoint a central idea for the design: the master plan and composition are imagined as if a meteorite had struck a “proto-Kremlin”. Sounds weird? Find more details below!

Contest Results

The Volga Regatta

GloraX plans to develop a residential complex spanning 14 hectares along the Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod. The winning design in a closed-door competition, created by GORA Architects, features housing typologies ranging from townhouses to terraced high-rise slabs, a balance of functions, diverse ways of engaging with the water, and even a dedicated island (no less!) for the city residents.

Object

A New Track

We took a thorough look at D_Station, a railcar repair depot dating back to 1906, recently reconstructed while preserving its century-old industrial structure, upon the project by Sergey Trukhanov and T+T Architects. Though work on the interiors – set to house restaurants and public spaces – is still underway, the building’s exterior already offers plenty to see. Visitors can explore the blend of old and new brickwork, appreciate the architect’s unique interpretation of ruin aesthetics, and enjoy the newly built pedestrian route that connects the Citydel Business Center’s arches to Kazakova Street.

Report

Four Different Surveys

The “Explore the City” competition, organized this year by the Genplan Institute of Moscow, stands out as a pretty unconventional one for the architectural field but aligns perfectly well with the character of urban planning work. The winning project analyzed contemporary residential complexes, combining urban planning insights with a realtor’s perspective to propose a hybrid approach. Other entries explored public centers, motivations for car ownership, and housing vacancy rates. A fifth participant withdrew. Here’s a closer look at the four completed works.

Report

Scheduled Evolution

ASADOV Architects unveiled the EvyCenter pavilion, a microcultural hub for fostering personal growth, organizing workshops, and doing gymnastics. Additionally, this pavilion serves as a prototype for a scalable country house, drawing inspiration from the “Loskutok” project, and constructed from CLT panels in a factory. This marks the beginning of a developer project initiated by the architectural firm (sic!), which is seeking partners to expand both small Evy settlements and even larger Evy cities, which are, according to Andrey Asadov, aimed at fostering the “evolutionary” development of the people who will inhabit them.

Object

The Golden Crown

The concept for a dental clinic in Yekaterinburg, developed by CNTR Studio, revolves around the idea of a “mouth full of gold”: pristine white porcelain stoneware walls are complemented by matte brass details. To avoid an overly literal interpretation, the architects focused on the building’s proportions, skillfully navigating between sunlight requirements and fire safety regulations.

News

Flexibility and Integration

Not long ago, we covered the project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential complex, designed by APEX. Now, we’ve been shown different fence concepts they developed to enclose the complex’s private courtyards, incorporating a variety of public functions. We believe that the sheer fact that the complex’s architects were involved in such a detail as fencing speaks volumes.

Object

A Step Forward

The HIDE residential complex represents a major milestone for ADM architects and their leaders Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova in their quest for a fresh high-rise aesthetic – one that is flexible and layered, capable of bringing vibrancy to mass and silhouette while shaping form. Over recent years, this approach has become ADM’s “signature style”, with the golden HIDE tower playing a pivotal role in its evolution. Here, we delve into the project’s story, explore the details of the complex’s design, and uncover its core essence.

Object

Gold in the Sands

A new office for a transcontinental company specializing in resource extraction and processing has opened in Dubai. Designed by T+T Architects, masters of creating spaces that are contemporary, diverse, flexible, and original, this project exemplifies their expertise. On the executive floor, a massive brass-clad partition dominates, while layered textures of compressed earth create a contextually resonant backdrop.

Object

Layers and Levels of Flight

This project goes way back – Reserve Union won this architectural competition at the end of 2011, and the building was completed in 2018, so it’s practically “archival”. However, despite being relatively unknown, the building can hardly be considered “dated” and remains a prime example of architectural expression, particularly in the headquarters genre. And it’s especially fitting for an aviation company office. In some ways, it resembles the Aeroflot headquarters at Sheremetyevo but with its own unique identity, following the signature style of Vladimir Plotkin. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) headquarters in the Moscow agglomeration town of Zhukovsky, supplemented by recent photographs from Alexey Naroditsky – a shoot that became only recently possible due to the fact that improvements were finally made in the surrounding area.

Object

Light and Shadow

In this article, we delve into the architectural design of the “Chaika” house by DNK ag architects, which was recently completed in 2023 as part of the collection of signature designs at ZILArt. As is well-known, all the buildings in this complex follow a design code, yet each one is distinct. This particular building stands out not only for its whiteness and minimalism but also for the refined use of a limited number of techniques that, together, create what can confidently be called synergy.

View

Casus Novae

A master plan was developed for a large residential area with a name of “DNS City”, but now that its implementation began, the plan has been arbitrarily reformatted and replaced with something that, while similar on the surface, is actually quite different. This is not the first time such a thing happens, but it’s always frustrating. With permission from the author, we are sharing Maria Elkina’s post.

Report

Treasure Hunting

The GAFA bureau, in collaboration with Tegola and Arkhitail, organized an expedition to the island of Kilpola in Karelia as part of Moskomarkhitektura’s “Open City” festival. There, amidst moss and rocks, the students sought answers to questions like: what is the sacred, where does it dwell, and what sustains it? Assisting the participants in this quest were landscape engineer Evgeny Levin, artist Nicholas Roerich, a moose, and the lack of cellular connection. Here’s how the story unfolded.

Object

Depths of the Earth, Streams of Water

In the Malaya Okhta district, the Akzent building, designed by Stepan Liphart, was constructed. It follows a classic tripartite structure, yet it’s what you might call “hand-drawn”: each façade is unique in its form and details, some of which aren’t immediately noticeable. In this article, we explore the context and, together with the architect, delve into how the form was developed.

Object

Fir Tree Dynamics

The “Airports of Region” holding is planning to build an airport in Karachay-Cherkessia, aiming to make the Arkhyz and Dombay resorts more accessible to travelers. The project that won in an invitation-only competition, submitted by Sergey Nikeshkin’s KPLN, blends natural imagery inspired by the shape of a conifer seed, open-air waiting spaces, majestic large trees, and a green roof elevated on needle-like columns. The result is both nature-inspired and WOW.

Object

A Brick Shell

In the process of designing a clubhouse situated among pine trees in a prestigious suburban area near Moscow, the architectural firm “A.Len” did the façade design part. The combination of different types of brick and masonry correlates with the volumetric and plastique solutions, further enhanced by the inclusion of wood-painted fragments and metal “glazing”.

Report

Word Forms

ATRIUM architects love ambitious challenges, and for the firm’s thirtieth anniversary, they boldly play a game of words with an exhibition that dives deep into a self-created vocabulary. They immerse their projects – especially art installations – into this glossary, as if plunging into a current of their own. You feel as if you’re flowing through the veins of pure art, immersed in a universe of vertical cities, educational spaces – of which the architects are true masters – and the cultural codes of various locations. But what truly captivates is the bold statement that Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy make, both through their work and this exhibition: architecture, above all, is art – the art of working with form and space.

Object

Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity

Luxurious, fluid, large “kokoshniks” and spiral barrel columns, as if made from colorful chewing gum: there seem to be no other mansion like this in Moscow, designed in the “Neo-Russian-Modern” style. And the “Teremok” on Malaya Kaluzhskaya, previously somewhat obscure, has “come alive with new colors” and gained visibility after its restoration for the office of the “architectural ecosystem” as the architects love to call themselves. It’s evident that Julius Borisov and the architects at UNK put their hearts into finding this new office and bringing it up to date. Let’s delve into the paradoxes of this mansion’s history and its plasticity. Spoiler: two versions of modernity meet here, both balancing on the razor’s edge of “what’s current”.

Interview

Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”

It belongs to space, or to the air... It turns out that 3D printing is more effective when combined with a modular approach: the house is built in a workshop and then adapted to the site, including on uneven terrain. Yuri Vissarionov shares his latest experience in designing tourist complexes, both in central Russia and in the south. These include houseboats, homes printed from lightweight concrete using a 3D printer, and, of course, frame houses.

Object

Moscow’s First

“The quality of education largely depends on the quality of the educational environment”. This principle of the last decade has been realized by Sergey Skuratov in the project for the First Moscow Gymnasium on Rostovskaya Embankment in the Khamovniki district. The building seamlessly integrates into the complex urban landscape, responding both to the pedestrian flow of the city and the quiet alleyways. It skillfully takes advantage of the height differences and aligns with modern trends in educational space design. Let’s take a closer look.

Object

Looking at the Water

The site of Villa Sonata stretches from the road to the water’s edge, offering its own shoreline, pier, and a picturesque river panorama. To reveal these sweeping views, Roman Leonidov “cut” the façade diagonally parallel to the river, thus getting two main axes for the house and, consequently, “two heads”. The internal core – two double-height spaces, a living room and a conservatory, with a “bridge” above them – makes the house both “transparent” and filled with light.

Object

The White Wing

Well, it’s not exactly white. It’s more of a beige, white-stone structure that plays with the color of limestone – smoother surfaces are lighter, while rougher ones are darker. This wing unites various elements: it absorbs and interprets the surrounding themes. It responds to everything, yet maintains a cohesive expression – a challenging task! – while also incorporating recognizable features of its own, such as the dynamic cuts at the bottom, top, and middle.

Object

Urban Dunes

The XSA Ramps team designed and built a three-part sports hub for a park in Rostov-on-Don, welcoming people of all ages and fitness levels. The skate plaza, pump track, and playground are all meticulously crafted with details that attract a diverse range of visitors. The technical execution of the shapes and slopes transforms this space into a kind of sculptural composition.

Object

Proportional Growth

The project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential area has been announced. The buildings are situated on an elongated plot – almost a “ray” that shoots out from the center of the area towards the river. Their layout reflects both a response to Moscow’s architectural preferences over the past 15 years, shifting “from blocks to towers”, and an interpretation of the neighboring business park designed by SOM. Additionally, the best apartments here are not located at the very top but closer to the middle, forming a glowing “waistline”.

Object

The “Staircase” Building

In designing the “Details” residential complex in New Moscow, Rais Baishev spiced up the now-popular Moscow theme of a “courtyard” building with an idea drawn from the surrealist drawings by Maurits Escher. He envisioned the stepped silhouettes and descending slopes as a metaphysical mega-staircase, creating a key void within the courtyard that gave the project an internal “spine”. This concept is felt both in the building’s silhouette and on its façades.

Object

Projection of the Quarter

No one doubted that the building that Vladimir Plotkin designed as part of the “Garden Quarters” would be the most modernist of all. And it turned out just that way: while adhering to the common design code, the building successfully combines brick and white stone, rhythmically responding to the neighboring building designed by Ostozhenka, yet tactfully and persistently making a few statements of its own. This includes the projection of the ideal urban development composition “14–9–6”, which can be found right next door, mathematical calculations, including those for various types of terraces (and perhaps the only reminder of the Soviet past of the Kauchuk rubber factory!), and the white “cross-stitch” pattern of the façade grid.