Over the last ten years, the territory behind the Bypass Channel between the Moskovsky Avenue and the Mitrofanyevskoe Highway has been transforming with such unbelievable intensity that it even looks as though it decided to “start all over from scratch”: it vigorously “turned the page of the industrial past”, and the construction of large residential areas started.

Developers paid attention to this part of the “gray belt” in the early 2010s: back then, they started to clear the territory belonging to the former Petmol plant, as well as the “fan” of the Varshavsky Railway Station – a complex of access roads and maintenance buildings. As for the railway station itself, it was shut down still in the beginning of the 21 century, then it served as a shopping center for a long time, and was recently rebranded to become a grand-scale food mall with a railway theme. Now you can see what the charm of this place was all about, and what exactly the city preservation activists struggled for: laconic basilica-like buildings of large heavy bricks with brands, rotary mechanisms overgrown with grass and moss, and wooden doors. Eventually, they did manage to defend some of these things, and now the blatantly dilapidated depots and water towers are standing waiting to be fitted into the context of new houses, new industrial parks, and nearly completed residential complexes.

But then again, the intensive construction will end one day, but the location will remain – a very convenient one, situated within a walking distance from the city center, the Bypass Channel, and the main city thoroughfares. This is the reason why even small lacunae that remained from the former industrial “fields” still arouse a lot of interest, which is quite in the spirit of St. Petersburg: you don’t leave any “unmotivated” empty spaces.

Two such sites, relatively small, elongated, and situated not exactly next to one another but still in some proximity, became the ones that Stepan Liphart worked with, designing houses that are different, yet echoing one another.

Intergalactic Spaces

The first house is situated next to the postal warehouse, which has an elongated shape, very much like a quay. The shape of the site, given all the historical circumstances, is quaint, and looks very much like a saw: a relatively wide “handle” is situated on the side of the Albuminnaya Street, while the “blade” goes past the warehouse. The name of the street, by the way – Albuminnaya – is a reminder of the albumin factory that used to be here along with the cattle yard and the slaughterhouse in the late 19 century.