The proposal by the architects for the territory planning of the former Tovarno-Vitebskaya railway yard in the south-eastern part of the grey belt of St. Petersburg is a continuation of the Glorax Development’s Ligovsky City neighborhood development project. The area under consideration, 30 hectares, is well connected to the city and in close proximity to the site planned a metro station “Borovaya”.
The goal of the project is to create a new residential district of St. Petersburg, designed for 8600 people, with its own commercial and social infrastructure that include restaurants, cafes, street retail, service companies, sports facilities, schools, and underground/surface parking lots.
The carefully planned intervention is an adaptive re-use that promotes new urban life, based on a mix of historical and modern structures. The industrial morphology of the area, with the rails and loading platforms, creates a beautiful and well-organized pattern that becomes the basis of the design idea. The architects want to re-use the spatial organisation of the site, placing buildings varying between 6 and 15 floors height on the pre-existing platforms. For the typical Ligovsky building, bigger and smaller volumes are stacked with contrasting industrial facades recalling the heritage of the site. The base volumes located along the main boulevards provide a special plinth with a height of one or two floors, which will create an interface between the buildings and the streets or parks. The rail tracks are interpreted as linear parks.
The architects made a precise inventory of what could be reused and integrated in the public space: small buildings, blue cranes, tracks, poles, to give historical depth and atmosphere to the new neighbourhood. The long green corridors in the building fabric of Ligovsky City, running along the North-South direction, offer many opportunities for spending quality time outdoors, from walkways to quiet corners, and from running tracks to yoga fields.
In the north of the site, the buildings are combined into an urban ensemble, which creates a strong and recognizable entrance, opposite the new metro station “Borovaya”. The area will be the new urban center for Ligovsky and the point of attraction for St. Petersburg. To the South, the section narrows, and the buildings grow upwards, where three towers create a strong building edge. Ligovsky City is a project where the proposed industrial character of the urban solution and the architecture preserves the memory of a place and emphasizes its unique character and at the same time creates a modern, dynamic, and high-quality green residential area.
Visuals: © KCAP / © Orange/ © A.Len
