The site with which Evgeny Gerasimov began working in 2011, according to the architect, was a "lost world according to Conan Doyle": wild dogs roamed among the sloping buildings overgrown with weeds. And all this is a five-minute walk from Nevsky Prospekt, next to Moskovsky railway station, Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and the main shopping center of the city "Gallery".
Before the renovation, the territory was occupied by the cargo yard of the St. Petersburg-Commodity-Moskovsky station, which by 2009 Russian Railways had transferred to Shushary. A large - about 20 hectares - trapezoidal section stretches between Kremenchugskaya street and the branch of the Oktyabrskaya railway, along which it is planned to equip a city street soon. On Kremenchugskaya Street, the closest neighbors of the "Tsarskaya Stolitsa" are the historical buildings of the infectious diseases hospital named after S. P. Botkin: among them are the 19th century and constructivism. By the way, they have been trying to withdraw the hospital from the center for a long time. From the south, towards the Obvodny Canal, the undeveloped territory continues, and from the north, the new district opens the Feodorovsky Cathedral by the architect Stepan Krichinsky, a memorial temple built for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. According to Evgeny Gerasimov, it was the cathedral that became the starting point of the design, the "diamond" for which the frame was created.
One of the primary tasks that architects were solving is urban planning. It was important to organize pedestrian and car flows, not to close the cathedral and, possibly, set the tone for the future development of neighboring sites. As a result, the architects came up with a simple but effective layout: two transverse driveways cut through an orthogonal intra-block network, strung on the longitudinal axis of the pedestrian boulevard. In the cells of this grid, there are residential buildings-quarters, each with a courtyard. In the center there is a free site for the future school. Thus, a hierarchy of both streets and spaces was built: there are public, urban - the area in front of the cathedral and the boulevard, there are private - closed quarter courtyards, there are intermediate - streets of local importance.
Another task was to negate the possible disadvantages of the proximity to the railway and the infectious diseases hospital. From the side of the railway, residential buildings are separated by multi-storey car parks that act as a noise barrier. On the other hand, the blocks will be protected from the noise of Kremenchugskaya Street by buildings of another complex: a business center, a hotel, a shopping center and another residential building are being built according to a project developed by Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners with the participation of SPEECH.
In total, there are fifteen residential buildings in the "Tsarskaya Capital", built in four stages. The first is noticeably different from the others - since the three components of its closed trapezoidal quarters fan out from the cathedral, surrounding its western and southern facades with an arched square. These houses are deliberately austere, classic and respectable - they can resemble the buildings around the Mussolini Square of the Emperor Augustus in Rome - even the half-columns in the windows look like the balustrades of the local balconies. The basement floors and cornices of light Jurassic limestone built at the same height are combined with the "body" of buildings solved in a darker scale, with one house faced with dark brown bricks, the second with ceramics with a thin relief of horizontal stripes, the third with textured greenish tuff, whose overflows into sunny weather look like moire tape. The floor-to-ceiling windows are combined in two, the glass of the loggias is recessed to the level of window openings (as in all other houses of the complex). The strict vertical rhythm is collected in moderate horizontal registers.
The houses that make up the square are respectable and conservative - just to the extent necessary to create a transition to historical St. Petersburg, which begins here directly opposite, behind the cathedral, already on Mirgorodskaya and Poltavskaya streets. On the other hand, the beams of the two streets between the quarters are laid so that the cathedral is visible from the railway. And of course, the appearance of a semicircular square in St. Petersburg, at the southern end of Nevsky Prospekt, in itself, cannot, at least to some extent, not overlap with Palace Square and the General Staff of Russia, not seem to be its replica-reflection. However, the associations are unobtrusive, the square fits with the same success into a number of other arched squares of classicism, especially since the very presence of the main accent - the temple - in every possible way provoked just such a decision.
The cathedral received a worthy setting; Evgeny Gerasimov even got carried away by him: he became a member of the board of trustees for the revival of the temple. “The idea of the cathedral is very literary,” says the architect: European Petersburg welcomes guests from Moscow with a temple in the Old Russian style, so that no one would feel “abroad”, outside the home. The architectural image of the cathedral, which is not surprising for the church building of the 1910s, is collectively compiled: it contains Rostov, Vladimir, Pskov and Suzdal motives.
So, the first buildings of the "Tsar's capital" pay tribute to the cathedral and the historic city, they are important for creating a delicate transition from the old to the new.
The second, third and fourth stages are definitely a modern city. The further from the cathedral, the bolder the facades become. There are a lot of techniques used here: the play of colors and textures, a combination of verticals and horizontals, optical illusions, different scales of windows, asymmetry and a complex rhythm. The houses turned out to be lively, expressive, “instagram”, but not flashy - in the taste of millennials. For whom, perhaps, the microdistrict was conceived: from here you can get everywhere on foot, and even Moscow is just a stone's throw away, and the railway and Botkinskaya next door for them, perhaps, are not even disadvantages at all, but romance.
The buildings with the most daring solutions are given to offices: this is a juicy orange with windows of different scales and milky white, in which the windows seem to grow and deepen - due to a technique similar to grisaille. The last residential building, the only one without a courtyard, becomes a kind of point in the proposal.
The most striking in the entire complex are the buildings of the parking lots. They are decorated in two ways: colored perforated plates or grilles. There are seven of them in total, and, as we remember, they are lined up along the railway, protecting residential buildings from noise.
The railway is undoubtedly another genius of the place. The rows of cars that can be seen in the alignments of the streets are another horizontal line that somewhere supports the lines of the facades, and somewhere argues with them. Together with the cathedral, the railway fills the quarter with sounds: muffled beeps and the voice of the dispatcher, and suddenly real magic - the play of bells is reflected from the walls. The sensations from this are as fresh and unusual as forgotten.
And, perhaps, both Jane Jacobs and Ian Gale would be satisfied with the "Tsar's Capital". The sidewalks here are of striking width for St. Petersburg, moreover, they are protected from traffic by special posts. The traffic of cars and pedestrians is comfortably separated. The height of the houses is very human. Closed courtyards are safe, and the streets have “eyes”: windows and loggias overlook both courtyards and pedestrian boulevards and sidewalks. Where, most likely, life will be in full swing very soon: all the first floors are uninhabited, almost all are covered with signs of future cafes, studios and workshops. The same signs show that the area will be inhabited by people of different incomes: there is also "Pyaterochka", and elite dentistry, and donuts, and steaks. Apartments - from studios to five-room apartments - are really affordable for the center of St. Petersburg.
"Tsarskaya Stolitsa" is one of the largest projects for the development of former industrial territories in the center of St. Petersburg (a similar story happened on the Petrogradskaya side, where the Europe-City complex was built by the project of Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban. The past of this place is still read. Between the buildings tall weeds, somewhere houses are close to concrete fences, brand new facades are adjacent to hangars, a wooden warehouse and barbed wire. But it is obvious that soon the quarter will be "combed" by itself, and everything around it will be pulled up. "Tsarskaya Capital" promises to become a place attraction of various urban streams, and their connection, perhaps, is the meaning of any city.
