The general plan for the development of Lipetsk provided for the development of the southwestern outskirts of the city twenty years ago. It was then that this territory was divided into almost equal segments, each future quarter was assigned its own number (from 26 to 34). Lipetskgrazhdanproekt just started to develop development projects when the 1990s burst out and design stopped. It is possible that this is for the better: nothing bad has happened to the plots of land for two decades, but housing projects are now being developed much more interesting and of high quality than in the late Soviet years. In addition, if in the early 1990s the problem of micro-districts-"clones" was of little concern to Lipetsk, now it is obvious to Lipetsk: it is hardly possible to create a truly diverse habitat with the help of one design institute. Therefore, in the industrial center of the Chernozem region, designers first appeared from neighboring Voronezh, and then from Moscow.
Bureau ABD architects was invited to design two neighboring neighborhoods, numbers 32 and 33. They will be combined into one area and built up in a complex; This is the first attempt in the region to build two large plots at once, and the developer rightly expects that this approach will significantly revive the new buildings in Lipetsk as a whole. The seriousness (and, perhaps, humanity) of NLMK's plans is also evidenced by the program of the future district: 385 thousand square meters. m of housing, a clinic, two schools and as many as four kindergartens, as well as numerous outdoor sports grounds, three sports and leisure centers, consumer services and shops.
The building site is bounded by Sviridova, Krivenkova and Minskaya streets, the latter being one of the largest in this part of the city and is a multi-lane highway with a green pedestrian boulevard in the middle. Minskaya plays an important urban planning role: in fact, the border between the new microdistricts of the southwestern residential area of Lipetsk and private residential buildings, a huge canvas of assorted cottages, during which the city imperceptibly turns into a country, runs along it. Thus, the architects were faced with the task of reflecting in the appearance of the new district its location on the conditional border and visually softening the existing abrupt transition from low-rise buildings to multi-storey residential towers. And the greening of Minskaya Street set the second important theme of the project - the general plan of the new district is replete with green patches of various shapes.
ABD architects decided to add “warm colors” to the harsh portrait of the industrial city: humanity, comfort and diversity. Because brutality and technicalism, all this "how the steel was tempered", metallurgists have enough for the eyes at work. They, perhaps, like no other, deserve a cozy and intimate environment.
The master plan of the new district is based on a pronounced hierarchy of spaces: private (courtyards), with limited access (external adjoining territories) and public. In the center of the district, the architects propose to create a pedestrian boulevard. It is conditionally parallel to the boulevard of Minskaya Street, but in fact it has a complex plan and consists of many intertwining paths, which makes it possible to create a whole network of pedestrian routes and gives their perspectives an interesting spatial intrigue. The broken line of the boulevard echoes the silhouettes of the schools located on it, which are L-shaped volumes drawn at an acute angle.
Studying the general plan of the area, it is very difficult not to suspect its authors of a special love for trapezoids. It seems that the architects set themselves the task of exploring all the planning possibilities of this geometric figure on an area of 43 hectares. In particular, the courtyards and external adjoining territories owe their appearance in the district to precisely this configuration of residential quarters. The trapezoids of the residential complexes, turned towards each other at different angles, form a kind of green "wedges" directed towards the boulevard. To organize a drive into the courtyard, in each of the trapezoids one of the sides is somewhat shortened.
It is important that all residential complexes are designed individually and consist of blocks of different heights - this allows creating a diverse and complexly organized environment within each quarter, and in the context of the entire district, highlight several dominants that will later become landmarks for its residents. Open two-level parking lots have been designed in all inner-quarter driveways - each house has its own, which, according to the architects, will help to avoid spontaneous congestion of cars in the courtyards. Only special vehicles will be allowed to go there, and so the courtyards are completely given over to playgrounds and benches-fountains for the older inhabitants of the houses.
ABD architects managed to find in this project the necessary measure of balance between typification and diversity, offering a worthy alternative to the Soviet microdistricts, which, for the most part, are built up in our cities, including Lipetsk. It turned out to be a large (43 hectares) residential area, saturated not only with infrastructure (which is necessary), but also with angles and impressions. It remains to wait for the implementation and assignment of a proper name to the new district, because high-quality architecture and boring serial numbers are not very compatible.
