Designing multi-apartment complexes is a task, with all its seeming typicality, by no means a trivial one. The obvious limitations associated with the characteristics of the site and the size of the budget are imposed by the specific requirements of the customer. The latter, in turn, adjusting to the conditions of a competitive market, sets ever higher standards and rigid frameworks. A typical example is the LEGENDA company, which is developing several large projects in St. Petersburg. It gained fame thanks to the so-called "smart-approach", which implies a huge variety of layouts - up to 50 different options - so that each potential buyer could choose an option in accordance with their needs and capabilities. This requires a fair amount of ingenuity and resourcefulness from the architect - especially when it comes to the lower or middle price segment.
However, the first project from LEGENDA was just from the “elite” category: neoclassical facades, natural stone cladding, decor in the best traditions of the Stalinist Empire style - the Pobedy 5 complex, which won a number of awards in the real estate sector, simultaneously became the developer's first cooperation experience from the workshop "Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners". But, in the words of Gerasimov himself, LEGENDA is a looking developer who has set itself the common, but not many achieved goal of building comfortable housing at an affordable price. Working on two pilot complexes in the mass segment, the company's management formulated the very proprietary smart principles for themselves. And when it was the turn of a really large, for 1,470 apartments, project in the rapidly developing Primorsky district of St. Petersburg, it again turned to Gerasimov in order, along with thoughtful layouts, to offer clients an architectural solution of a decent level.
So the task for Yevgeny Gerasimov as an architect was largely ideological. In addition, it is additionally complicated by the non-standard configuration of the site bounded by Nizhne-Kamenskaya Street, the continuation of Glukharskaya Street and Komendantsky Avenue. The elongated triangular shape and the proximity to the vast green massif determined the fundamental zoning: the front-trade part of the complex faces the avenue, and the private courtyard borders on the natural massif, which, despite the barriers, becomes its visual continuation.
In the future, nine 21-storey towers with three addresses will appear here. This is a full-fledged residential area for almost 3,000 people: an already operating sports center is within walking distance, a school is planned to be built nearby, and a kindergarten in the complex itself. First of all, referring to the address "Komendantskiy, 58", there are only five buildings and 1,008 apartments. But already they can easily read the entire "design code" of the future quarter.
Its basic principles, indeed, overlap with modern “quarterly norms”. One of them is the open ground floors: all the towers are interconnected by a two-level stylobate, the premises of which along the perimeter are intended for commercial and public organizations. There will be doctors 'and beauticians' offices, shops and cafes, and inside the complex for its residents there will be a space with the fashionable name “coworking”. Here, those who work remotely will be able to use equipped workplaces, schoolchildren - to learn lessons in a more focused atmosphere, everyone else - to communicate in a neighborly manner and exchange news. The second floor of the stylobate is office. At the same time, access to the courtyard is closed for "outside users", and the necessary privacy is preserved.
Speaking about the organization of the yard, it's time to recall the unusual shape of the site in combination with the notorious “quarterly norms”, one of which was the complex landscaping. The two-storey underground parking takes up almost the entire area of the site, and the courtyard is "split" on its exploited roof and rises more than a meter above ground level. This allows you to emphasize the division into pedestrian and car parts.
The customer pays no less attention to the functional saturation of the courtyard than to the layouts of the apartments. Therefore, there are many different areas and zones in the courtyard. For example, some playgrounds are designed specifically for kids, others for teenagers, and still others for "adult" sports and picnics. In this courtyard it is possible to retire in a narrow circle - or, on the contrary, to arrange massive "neighborly" festivities. Numerous zones have different functions and different surfaces, but they are all united stylistically and physically - a winding promenade-path about five hundred meters long.
However, the most interesting is the vivid architectural image of the complex itself, found by the authors, which, like an exotic avocado fruit, is turned outward with a multicolored, plastically rich "skin", and inward - with a bright sunny yellow "pulp". All the front facades of the complex are united by a common colored stretch, which consists of many pixels. Moreover, each house has its own predominant color, albeit with many additional inclusions. As a result, with the obvious unity of the ensemble, each house received its own face.
Real sun rays "catch" balconies, loggias and bay windows. The design parameters, given by the orientation of the buildings to the cardinal points and by the laws of physics, have led to such an arrhythmic arrangement on the facades that it seems extremely decorative. The towers, rectangular in plan, seem to have been made up of sections shifted relative to each other - the colored pixels received volume, "came to life", moved, lost their resemblance to a boring mosaic panel.
Quartography continues this idea. The buyer has the opportunity to choose an apartment from a variety of options: for example, one where the kitchen is combined with the living room or separated from it, with the required number of bedrooms and bathrooms, with a dressing room and an office. Among the more than fifty options for the layouts of apartments in the complex on Komendantsky Prospect, there is almost certainly the desired option.
The final touch is the level of readiness of the housing: the apartments are offered with a "white" finish, where all that remains is to deal with the paint-tiles-wallpaper-floors. It is not at all long and not difficult, unlike apartments that are rented out without finishing, but it allows the owner of the apartment to realize his preferences in design, to independently choose colors and textures.
The first stage of five towers is promised to be populated in the IV quarter of 2018. Meanwhile, LEGENDA and Evgeny Gerasimov & Partners have launched another joint project - on Dalnevostochny Prospekt, again with smart layouts and in the mass segment. And this is the best proof that the ideological architectural experiment has been crowned with success - and to be continued.