The territory of the Sofia car repair plant on the outskirts of the city of Pushkin, like any pre-revolutionary industry subject to redevelopment, contains numerous cultural layers described by the word “palimpsest”. For designers, this literal "shining through" of historical strata through time often concerns not only artifacts, which have a suitable role in the new development, but also the urban planning structure, scale and principles of shaping. To varying degrees, all the participants in the competition for the concept of building up the factory territory emphasized the preservation of traces of history. The PANACOM proposal was no exception, but the architects went even further, realizing the basic principles of working in a historical context by means of a modern architectural language.
According to the terms of reference of the competition, this area in the form of a boot, where the most valuable artifacts are located in the southern part, is subject to mixed development of residential areas, apartments, business and cultural centers, social infrastructure and a public center zone with a shopping and entertainment function and a sports complex. The proximity of the city of Pushkin with its famous parks - Aleksandrovsky and Ekaterininsky - undoubtedly projects their imagery onto the design area. However, the architects of PANACOM did not transfer the classical quarter grid here in the literal sense, but took advantage of the semiotic and structural features of the classical language, thus preserving the connection with tradition and did not turn it into an imitation.
“The image of St. Petersburg, the image of Pushkin, this whole area, of course, dominates the territory,” says Arseny Leonovich. - Therefore, there is a place for historicism and some classical things to which it is worth getting attached - but figuratively, not head-on, with cast-iron benches and lanterns …. We saw our task in conveying the spirit of time and place, a powerful rejuvenating urban planning impulse, which is associated with the development of the entire agglomeration around St. Petersburg, as a prototype for a new round of urban planning history. This is a kind of glance at Holland, at the Germans, in a good sense. The leitmotif of our project is an excursion into history without imitations."
First of all, PANACOM turned to the genesis of the territory, which received its strange outline with such a "beak" in the southwestern part thanks to the arc of the railway line, which previously entered the site. This dynamic line prompted the geometry of the main planning axis of the new urban development - a chain of water spaces.
Water
Water in this concept, as well as for St. Petersburg itself, is a leitmotif and a planning ridge. Canals, ponds, a "loop" with an island, a zigzag stream draw here and string, like on a skewer, a gigantic crumbling territory, connecting residential areas with infrastructure and public space in front of the shopping center. Walking, sports and cycling routes are strung on the planning axis of the boulevard system.
"Solid facade"
The second classicistic principle of the formation of a city similar to St. Petersburg - "solid facade", the forerunner of quarter development - is implemented in the construction of residential buildings. They are organized in blocks of equal height: six floors each, but have a variety of plastic and individual modern design. The uniformity of elevation marks and the quarterly principle of development allowed the PANACOM architects to tie their project to the St. Petersburg context, and, on the other hand, to achieve the pragmatic benefits of rather high density indicators. A square of houses is subordinated to the outline of the territory and form private residential courtyards, separating private from public life.
The scale is set by large divisions with marked projections, as well as huge arches three to five stories high. The houses, as required by the terms of reference, remain independent, with two, three and four entrances, but they look like solid blocks. The alternation of the meridional and latitudinal sections allowed the authors to vary the apartmentography.
Apartments
The complex of apartments - in the form of washer houses and cylinder houses - becomes the plastic and color accent of the residential part. The squat towers within this cluster are differentiated in size, while maintaining the same height of five high stories. Spatially, this agglomeration is connected by a stream that bends around the buildings and creates spectacular reflections.
“According to the assignment, a large number of square meters are supposed to be built up with apartments, and in this segment, we believe, something special can be done,” says Arseniy Leonovich. - Apartments, according to their status, are second homes, there are different approaches to life, and to design, and to norms. Some of our houses are designed without clearly defined courtyards, although grouped in one territory, they certainly form their own special experience of architecture in the landscape space”.
Transport
Entrances to houses in most cases are organized only from the outside, practically excluding the transit of cars through the residential complex. The main two-lane artery is carried out to the periphery, to the western and southwestern border. Starting from the Kuzminskoye highway, passing along the border of the site, it leaves in the area of the projected garage in the western part and goes to the Petersburg highway along the current dirt road. This connection of the site to two highways at once qualitatively improves its transport scheme.
Public spaces
The territory of the new district is functionally subdivided into two unequal parts - a more spacious residential area and a smaller public one. The system of visual restrictions allows you to observe this division, dispensing with fences and barriers. In the part close to the Kuzminskoe highway, with the expectation of citywide use, there is a community center, where some buildings are pre-revolutionary. This is a place charged with history and traces of time; here are the buildings of the plant management and the workshop pavilion, next to which a new shopping and entertainment center is emerging, with the restored part of the pavilion included in it, as well as artifacts of the existing factory: an overhead crane and fragments of railroad tracks. The Memorial Park is located nearby - it is created on the basis of the existing square near the plant management building; from here the family of the last Russian emperor went into exile. It is proposed to build a chapel at the intersection of two planning axes of the park. The second public center, formed for the comfort of residents of the new quarters, appears on the bank of an artificial oval pond in the middle part of the district: there are compact and modern buildings of the trade, social and sports buildings.
Parks
The presence in the immediate vicinity of the famous garden and park ensembles pushed the authors of the concept not to follow the path of imitations, but to interpret the improvement in a modern way, while maintaining the classic principle of alternating dense residential buildings with open green public areas. Improvement becomes a chain of microenvironments that alternate in scenarios along the entire "green" planning axis. Various types of paving, wooden flooring, herbs, gabions, illumination of benches, sculptures and landscaping, as well as built-in paving paths and alleys, ground and vertical architectural lighting, walkways over canals, rocky, boardwalk or turf covering of the banks - this is far from the full range modern tools for creating a comfortable and conceptual landscape. Here, the tradition of building a manor ensemble with alternating dense and sparse spaces, with the division of the park into representative, regular and more private, picturesque parts, has also found application.
“It was important for us to treat the territory in large pieces, and we proposed to conditionally divide it into three theme parks: memorial,“English”landscape and“French”regular,” says Arseny Leonovich. “We made sure that a person, living in a new city, felt the feeling of a city with history.”
