FINAL PRESENTATION

Open publication - Free publishing - More water storages

2/3/4.
INTERVIEWS
WHAT IS THE EVERYDAY’S LIFE
We interviewed some of the citizens on the streets to begun to formulate a picture of the everyday’s life in the neighborhood. Children need more facilities like swimming pools, playgrounds in good conditions or small and local cinemas. On the other hand, older people need a place to meet instead of staying in the open space without any optional activity. The great mass of citizens who need to move to the city several times for business or other reasons need a better connection by public transports, and defined parking areas to leave their cars.

So further to transform the space, our goal is to help to transform the mentality of the citizens by the urban project, introducing in their minds the idea of a better everyday life.


5.
SITE ANALYSIS
Our area is one of the satellite towns that surround the center. It is crossed by one of the main roads that connect to the center axis representing one of the gates of St Petersburg. The area, however, is poorly connected to the public transport system, metro, tram and train. On its northwest side there is one of the branches of the River Neve and on the northeast border the area opens to the forest. However the permeability of the area with the river on the west, with the city center and with the big forest is very low, because it represents a piece of city almost isolated.

Road section
We worked on the road’s section linking the city. The big empty in between the road and the river can be projected defining quality public spaces where the river takes place as part of the activities proposed along the promenade: children playgrounds, fishing areas and many other flexible uses. At the same time we protect the pedestrian promenade projecting green barriers with vegetation. For the tram we design new stops where people can wait in safe conditions. We also introduce vegetation or light elements that protect pedestrians from the extreme weather conditions and propose a bike way until the area.

New intermodal point
In order to improve the connection of the area with public transport, we propose an intermodal point in the heart of the neighborhood to take tram, bus or metro, providing with new services and a big parking.


6.
THE MICRORAYON’S ISOTROPY
Fifty million apartments were built between 1955 and 1985 in Soviet cities.
In this situation the location was not significant, most Soviet citizens lived in more or less the same type of neighborhoods and housing blocks, shared more or less the same kind of hallways, and had more or less the same type of apartments.
The microrayons, that consist of a number of large urban blocks or kvartaly separated by main roads. The center of the kvartaly is formed by schools and kindergartens. Around the schools are the housing blocks with the entrance located inside of the court and are served by small secondary roads.
The starting idea was that no children have to cross a street to reach the school.
Capitalism has destroyed the internal logic of Soviet urbanism in which people were allocated in accordance with were they work and a basic set services would be located close by. Under capitalism the transport system has changed forcing people to move with the car and filling the courts with cars.


7.
SOCIAL RELATIONS
It is necessary to work in a small scale inside the units of the Microrayon to encourage the community sense of living but at same time to develop the relationships in between the units in a bigger scale. So the matter is to find a system that could be applied as a general tool for all the rest of microrayon satellite towns.

8.
AREAS WHICH COULD BE USABLE
We will work in the empty of one of these Microrayon in order to introduce solve all the deficiencies as car and bicycle parking systems, increase the local markets and cafes or introduce any sports facilities.


9.
PSYCHOLOGY ON THE ACTUAL EVERYDAY’S LIFE
Many aspects influence the daily lives of the citizens in a very bad way. The connection with rest of city develop in their minds the sense of isolation. In addition there is a lack of alternative transports and those citizens who choose to move by foot live normally exposed to extreme climate conditions. One of the result is losing the consciousness of their physical presence, the mind lives between worries of past and present instead of living the present moment.
We propose to implement the alternative public transports, also to improve the environment conditions in order to protect from extreme climate and to provide to the citizens with new activities that bring life in their daily routine. Looking forward to stimulate the social interactions.


10.
EXISTING LOCATION
Analyzing the oldest typologies displayed in one corner of the area we found an interesting and smaller city scale, the typologies of housing and public spaces offer their citizens a better life. The idea is to extend this typology in some of the empty interiors of the Microrayon units, so we can increase the variety of housing in the area.


11/12/13.
NEW UNIT. PUBLIC SPACE AND TRANSFORMATION OF BUILDINGS
We start by introducing few volumes which combine housing with semi-underground parking. As a condition to allow us juxtaposing the new volumes to the existing dwelling buildings is necessary to convert the ground and first floors, we propose to transform the ground into commercial shops that are opened to the streets and join the first and second floor as duplex apartments. At the same time the public space inside the unit is projected introducing the water system and amending the highlight of the soil. With the diversity of typologies in same unit the idea is to create social gradients where medium level is the key sector.
Of course we understand this process as a gradual transformation through the time, so the existing buildings can improve also their current conditions.


14.
ISOTROPIC PARKING AND WATER SYSTEMS
Some datas explains the enourmous amount of parking areas and water peak storage needed in comparison with the site size. Instead of solving the problems by creating enormous structures we propose a more sensitive and diffuse solution.

15.
The original hydrographic system has been erased by the microrayon carpet. The existing creeks have been buried and the water directly piped towards the Okhta River. The traces of the original configuration are still visible in the territory but the way it used to work has been interrupted.


16.
The necessity to solve drainage problems in the area, especially during the spring when a huge amount of ice is melting, suggested us to take advantage of the original topography (slopes and direction of the creeks) also taking into consideration its relation with the added street grid.
The analysis of the actual topography showed us that the streets level is not fixed in relation with the level of the neighborhoods. When is higher, the risk is the contamination of the clean water inside the courtyards with the more polluted one coming from the streets. Viceversa, when the streets are lower, there is a dispersion of clean water that gets mixed with the low quality one.
Therefore, the need to keep the two systems separate. On one hand the clean water is managed through a primary and a secondary structure, with a sort of tree-like configuration. On the other hand the polluted water is conveyed along the streets and treated before reaching the river.


17.
The capillary part of the system comprises little scale interventions in order to collect the rainwater from roofs and courtyards into visible, artificial creeks and ponds that change their level, and so their appearance, during the seasons. These water courses support the creation of bike lanes and an intensification of the green public space; by crossing the inner secondary roads in the courtyards they help in slowing down the traffic thus creating a more friendly environment for children, pedestrians and cyclists.


18.
The aim of the primary water infrastructure is to open again the connections between the creeks and the river Okhta, throughout the district and therefore by means of a design compatible with housing complex, facilities, public spaces and streets. Here is also collected the water from the seasonal secondary system, described above.
It is composed by water courses and ponds, whose large section and dimension is able to cope with the peak reached during extreme precipitations. The water stored in the spring and winter time is slowly released into the system during the summer, in order to let it flow also when the level is low. In this case, because of the big scale of the interventions, the water course is not always visible but is diverted with siphons or pipes, for instance when it crosses the main streets.


19.
Along the main streets a system of canals will catch the rain water and discharge it in wetlands and ponds in the industrial belt, in order to be purified before it will go to the river.


20.
THE PILOTE PROJECT
The existing situation is composed by a single system (streets, courtyards and streets) that discharge through the streets to the Okta river. The system can be easily implemented by creating, along the Okta river benches, a fito-depuration park and by creating the first example of water square in the neightborhood of the river. In this way the sistem is already able to work and this approach can serve as an example for the many comparable squares in this urban district, whereby the significance of the pilot transcends the physical impact.


21.
THE SLOW SYSTEM: THE WATER SQAURES
The water squares offer a solution for the local flooding that can be executed step by step in each neighbourhood.
The surrounding streets can drain directly into the square and the roofs can discharge the rain water by using the existing pipes.
The urban situation and the water management in the Krasnogvardeiski district have many points in common with each other. This approach can serve as an example for the many comparable squares in this urban district, whereby the significance of the pilot transcends the physical impact. The space so created will represent a multi-functional square and, as a water square, it will also appeal to a diverse group of people who will use it to sit, exercise, play games or simply spend leisure time there. The new water square will become a representative, central space in the neighbourhood.


22.
THE FAST SYSTEM: THE PERSPECTIVES
To keep the quality of the discharged rain water is necessary to make a separation between the system of rain water that follow in the roofs of the buildings and in the courtyards and that one that flow in the main streets.
The street system is designed to discharge fast big amount of water. In the same time the water has to improve the quality of the street environment, involve the building in the street scape system and allows easy connections between the blocks.

We designed a system to slow down the traffic speed, to allow physical connections between the blocks. By providing some deviation in the free spaces along the main streets we enlarged the green section providing some other natural stepping stones to create a continuity in the biological corridors.


23/24.
Some images of the crossing between water systems and infrastructures.


25.
HOW COULD WE BRING “LENINGRAD” INTO THE FUTURE GREAT ST PETERSBURG ?


26.
Each point of the constellation of red points is a court of microrayon.
Starting from the little pilot project, by a complete implementation of the system we will be able to connect in a microscale the water and the social system of microrayon to the Niva river and so to the city centre. A constellation of water squares that connect different landscapes, that become intermediate landscape.