Park of Sentiments

The winning project of the competition for the best concept of turning the east part of Saint Petersburg’s Vatny Island, commonly known as “Tuchkov Buyan”, into a park, was developed by Nikita Yavein’s Studio 44 in collaboration with the Dutch architectural company WEST 8, headed by Adriaan Geuze, the former responsible for architecture, the latter for landscape design. This consortium consisted of two companies with a solid reputation: Studio 44, the best-known architectural company of Saint Petersburg, which authored a lot of high-profile public buildings, museums, railway stations, schools, and universities, with an extensive project geography, and WEST 8, a company that has been working in Russia for a long time already, its two best-known projects being the New Holland Park in Saint Petersburg, and the project of developing the fragment of Moscow’s Tverskaya Street lying between the Kremlin and the Garden Ring.

However, the competition task was also far from simple: the park is located in the very center of Saint Petersburg, across from the Winter Palace, where, starting from 2009, they first designed “Naberezhnaya Evropy” (“European Waterfront”), then “Sudebny Kvartal” (“The Law Quarter”), planning to transfer all of Moscow’s main courts to this location. The construction of the latter did begin; what is left of it now are the substructures of an underground parking garage for 540 cars, occupying about 2/3 of the land site. In the north corner of the territory, the construction of Boris Eifman Dance Academy is almost complete.

A dialogue with the emperor

Emotions

Nikita Yavein, Company:

The existing parks of Saint Petersburg and even of its suburbs are “parks of official behavior”. Even in parks of irregular layout, such as the Mikhailovsky Garden, you cannot really go ahead and sit down on the lawn.

To set this off, we made a park of different states and unofficial behavior: you can find here melancholy, delight, contemplation, love, solitude, and communication – private, or in a crowd, as the case might be.

On the one hand, we emphasized the Saint Petersburg traditions, one of them being watching the sunsets, which is something that our park is focused upon. On the other hand, we tried to repair some omissions, to give the city what it lacks, in particular, interaction with water: not everyone will reach the beach near the Peter and Paul Fortress, and in other places you will not really get down to the water. This is why our waterfront always strives to interact with the Neva, at different levels, from meditative to tactile, so that one could wash their hands in the river or watch the ice cake climb up the amphitheater stairs – the hydrologists said that this idea might well work out.

What is also important is the fact that the park, although i fenced off from the city by virtue of its location, is involved with the city as much as possible, being included in it and connected with it – both by a variety of viewpoints and by new pedestrian paths. And finally, it reinterprets and multiplies the characteristic features of the city – it reveals new angles and adds new bridges; it is known that the more bridges in Saint Petersburg, the better. And we end up with two embankments instead of one, a kind of “embankment square”.

Water

Romanticism as a solution

Adriaan Geuze, West 8

Saint Petersburg is very familiar to West 8, as we have been involved in the New Holland Island renovation for years. The city has a special character, its own colour palette, its own rules. Petersburgians are romantic people. They take their children for a picnic in the park, they bring their sleigh to enjoy the snow and ice, and they meet up to enjoy music and food together. A park should provide all of these things to its inhabitants. It should be a magnet for everyone to gather and enjoy, a place to feel strong and proud of the city.

As Landscape architects, we are experienced in creating designs for world-class urban parks. The hyper romantic touch, and dramatizing topography underline our warm-hearted approach in the design of Tuchkov Buyan park.

The amazing project is the outcome of an international collaboration.

I believe this park will become famous for its colorful tree canopy and the best views on the Saint Petersburg skyline. The contemporary urban park also needs an attractive calendar of events for all user groups. The three urban meeting spaces (Theatre plaza, Open Air Orangery plaza and Great lawn) are perfect for organizing events throughout the seasons. The park design also introduces new iconic emblems – call them ‘Instagram moments’ – like the grottos and the orangery gardens, panorama platforms and bridges.

Doubtless, the park we designed can also be realised – it is not just a dream on paper. We believe that this romantic park will welcome its visitors very soon.