The settlement of Roshchino, which until 1948 bore the Finnish name of Raivola, is not so well-known as Komarovo or Repino, and is situated further away from the gulf, but it can be accessed by a suburban train of the same direction, and is abundant in the same pine trees and glacier boulders that surround local dacha houses – some exquisite, some dilapidated, built before the 1917 Revolution, some modest-looking from the Soviet times, and some luxury and modern.

The land site, with which GAFA worked is the territory of the former “Leninets” pioneer camp, lying derelict, like many others of its kind. On both sides of it, there are hotels and villas, spending vacations and weekends in which you have to plan well in advance – the city people flock here for fresh air, peace, and long walks through the Lindulovskaya Coppice with 300-year-old ship-grade larches. On the territory of the camp, over the several years of human absence, nature has taken what righteously belonged to it: underwood has grown, moss has covered the roofs of the houses and the concrete flower beds, and the paths are all but indiscernible. Still before it was turned into a camp, the land site belonged to the dacha estate “Tanino”, founded in 1910 by State Councilor Mikhail Khrushchev.

The developer set the program as an “apartment complex”, the kind of “second housing”, to which city people can come for the weekends to recharge their batteries. Such a concept has already worked very well In Sestroretsk – in the complex named “Shiny World INSIDE”, where another developer also tried to create a resort-like environment, yet on a greater scale. However, while in Sestroretsk the architects proceeded from the gulf and the dunes, GAFA tried to preserve and explore a different resource – the pine forest.

Since the trees became the main value of the project, GAFA strived to preserve as many of them as possible. The master plan was based upon that of the pioneer camp – the new buildings appear on the blueprints of the former cottages, yet the architects are placing them in a more freehand fashion, rotating them at a small angle in respect to one another, and forming punctured lines.