The project of a multifunctional complex will be built on the site of the existing market in one of the sleeping areas of St. Petersburg. It is large enough - 190,000 sq. meters, a little less than half of which will be given to housing, a quarter to offices. The rest is occupied by parking lots and shops; a kindergarten is planned in the middle of the complex. In short, the infrastructure, as befits in such cases, is sufficiently developed to be able to live inside, perhaps without even getting too far away. And maybe even get a job in the office part. Although we must admit - we talk a lot about the “work close to home” scheme, but this rarely happens, either with very poor or very rich people.
The microdistrict in which this predominantly residential complex will be built is typically panel-built and located on the northern outskirts of St. Petersburg, far enough from the historic center. From the Spit of Vasilievsky Island to Ho Chi Minh Street - a little more than 12 kilometers. Perhaps that is why the project did not have any problems with the formality of the height restrictions that it exceeds (the height of the main tower is 150 m). The City Council of St. Petersburg resolutely admitted that the complex of Sergei Kiselev is more likely to decorate a panel area than to disturb something there.
The outskirts of St. Petersburg are, in essence, a different city.
And to admit how good classical Petersburg is, just as unpleasant is its remote panel areas. In this case, the surrounding buildings are large sloppy "plates" that blend dull pink with grayish green. They stroll along the streets in large blocks, forming giant squares too large to recognize as Peter. It all looks pretty dreary; especially in its current tattered state.
You might think that the new SKiP complex has set itself the task of somehow organizing and leading the environment. The complex consists of three residential houses - "plates" and two towers (in a small apartment, in the one that is higher - offices). The plates contextually echo the development of the microdistrict and in some way even "grow" out of it, continuing the lines of the surrounding buildings and "collecting" it to the vanishing point - a sharp corner at the intersection of two highways, Ho Chi Minh Street and Prosvescheniya Avenue.
This point is the culmination of the entire composition and, apparently, the future main focus of this area. Two towers on a high stylobate close the prospect of the avenue. They are conceived in such a way that the small tower seems to be a "daughter" of the big one - a scion nestling on a giant striped-checkered palm. Between the towers formed
a high "gorge" and a barely noticeable dialogue ensues. The fact is that the inner (facing the neighbor) wall of a 150-meter office building is inclined and its volume expands downward, thus turning from a parallelepiped, which is usual in this genre, into a trapezoid. The inner wall of the second building (with the apartments) is also beveled, but not downward, but to the side - in this case, the house plan becomes a trapezoid, and its expansion echoes the triangular shape of the site.
The graphics of the black-and-white facades are contrasted with the dirty pink-green color of the neighborhood. Residential buildings look stuck together from two plates: on the south side they are black, as if they are trying to absorb all the rare St. Petersburg sun and use it to heat the premises (this is not the case, although the walls, of course, will heat up more). The northern walls of the houses are white as Finnish ice.
The apartment tower is entirely black, however, its blank northern facade faces the office neighbor and forms the aforementioned "gorge". The walls of which, by the way, demonstrate the same black-and-white duality, just the opposite. Perhaps this contrast will help accentuate the depth of the gap between the buildings.
The colors of the office tower are the most difficult. In order to avoid the striping typical of business architecture, the facades were covered with a large checkerboard. The cells are of the same width, but at the bottom they are shorter, above the stylobate they become almost vertical, and above the middle of the tower they stretch more than three floors, thus playing with the vertical of the building according to optical laws. They tell us that if you look at such a house from below, but not from afar, but coming closer, then the giant ornament has a chance to visually "eat" part of its height - because the upper cells will decrease in perspective and will look like the lower ones. Note that the contrast of black and white is the brightest and most effective combination for optical illusion, it was actively used by artists of the 1960s. According to the chief architect of the project, Andrei Nikiforov, these large cells are designed to make the volume of the tower more solid and sculptural.
So, in a desolate and windy panel area, in place of the "hole" of the market, a "mountain" of a residential complex appears. The architectural composition of which visibly reveals the theme of the transition from the "plate" to the tower - why the complex looks literally growing out of the environment, which is quite contextual. At the same time, it possesses all the features of modern buildings: it occupies the entire area with its parking lots, looks taller, "compacted", but individually thought out. Not chic (which would be an inappropriate luxury in this area), but austere and solid. And black and white facades allow it to stand out reliably from the environment.
