extrovert micro-rayon and the new urban network

A post soviet neighborhood, a complex of micro-rayons, is in focus during the first part of the analysis. Located within the south part of the soviet housing belt, this neighborhood is characterized by a series of paradoxes. The most obvious is the contradiction between the green environment of the blocks with the building stock. The vast amount of open green spaces, the layout of which is embracing the housing blocks creating a network of very interesting public spaces. However the blocks themselves are characterized by their distinctively poor condition (deteriorated prefabricated panels,extremely small apartments, no insulation). The neighborhood, quiet and green, but also extremely neglected, seems its not actually positioned within the city.

However within this area many important icons of the city are located. For example the new city centre-as it was envisioned by the Soviets-is located on the axis of Moskovskiy Prospekt which connects the two centres cutting through the industrial belt. The wider area is surrounded by vast industrial areas, while barriers like the highway and the train lines cut the area isolate it from the port on the west.
The project tried to give answers in the macro and the micro scale. As far as the first is concerned, it was important to see the possibilities of this area to turn upon a new city center that will be well linked to activity and economy attractors, like the port area, without loosing the existing qualities.


On the micro scale, the micro-rayon was the basic population unit during the Soviet era which was constructed on a community of around 5000 people, the plan of which was set up based on the distances of the housing blocks, the service blocks the schools and the kinder gardens. However, a century after, the demand for a more sustainable neighborhood is even more obvious. Water, energy and social equilibrium is the target. Can a rayon incorporate enough vertical farms to feed all its population? Could it reuse the water it collects within its own area and reutilize it? Could the local society benefit from a more public core of the microrayon.Research by design will give the answer in these questions within the following period.


For the first presentation please click here:

The area we deal with is located in the south part of the city, between Moskowsky Prospect on the west side and the railway to Puskin on the east side, Obvodny Canal on the north.

Looking at it we immediately realized how the system of our area is constituted of a series of infrastructure which identify some areas by acting as strong barries between them.

Boundaries and patches.

These are the two levels on which we decided to work with the purpose of solving two big problems of the area: a lack of transitional spaces and a lack of permeability.

Inside the patches we identified a multitude of smaller open spaces, most of all are green spaces.

They are private spaces but acting on them we imagine the possibility of using them as a mean to improve the lack of permeability and create a second system that will interact with the main infrastructural system to interconnect all the different patches among each other and the all area with the city in general.

Mapping the area

Presentation 01

The Kransogvardeisky district is organized near to the border of the city. We consider the territory as being non-porous, non-permeable and unconnected. The other main problems of the area are the pollution, undefined space and the low-quality of the housing. During the first day of our fieldwork it became clear that it contains lots of industrial areas. Our project emphasizes the possibility of creating a global accessibility throughout the region thus creating an isotropic city. We use the main idea of Peter The Great: the water as the fundamental infrastructure as a connecting element.

3 extreme scenario’s for the future are: the creek disappear, naturalization of the creek and the creek as a connector. In the first case the amount of build space and industries rise, there is a loss of connection. The second case provides a green corridor for the area, connected with the green located towards the east. The last scenario uses the creek as a connector on the levels of ecology (water purification), function (public space, recreation) and mobility (pedestrians, bikes, creek, new railway station, new metro stops) as possible connections. The railway can serve as a connector of the housing through the industrial areas.

Our area contains 3 landscapes: the creek-industrial landscape, the Neva-landscape and the urban landscape. The creek applies a territorial linearity and gives the possibility of transformation of the area.

INTERVIEWS

VALENTINA, 22
Where do you usually go for a walk? Do you go to Okhta riverside?
We prefer to go to the Rzhevsky Forestpark. Okhta cannot be reached due to the
industry.

Where do you prefer to spend your free time in your neighbourhood?
We try to spend it outside, in natural landscape.

How do you relate with your neighbours?
Sure, we’re quite friendly to each other, i know a lot of persons.

How long have you lived here?
5 Years.

Where do you work and how do you arrange your day time?
I found a job nearby this neighbourhood. We go to the center only for cultural
events and so on.

What wishes do you have to upgrade your region?
Indeed, something for my child - playgrounds, entertainment, green zones. With
high level of safety. Our municipal department promised it to us, but nobody did it.


























VLADIMIR PETROVITCH, 63 + ANONYMOUS, 68
Where do you usually go for a walk? Do you go to Okhta riverside?
We are too old to go anywhere! Usually we sit there.

Where do you prefer to spend your free time in your neighbourhood?
Okhta? it’s too far for us.

How do you relate with your neighbours?
We know each other for years!

How long have you lived here?
I was born there, i worked there, i’ll die there! (Second man: i lived in the center, and now - here.)

Where do you work and how do you arrange your day time?
We are retired now,but previously i worked at the factory here.

What wishes do you have to upgrade your region?
Cinemas! There were 5 cinema-clubs,i remember from my youth, and now they’re replaced with commercial areas. And no public toilets as well! (Second man: I’m dissatisfied with this chaotic parking)


























ELENA, 35
Where do you usually go for a walk? Do you go to Okhta riverside?
We visit Forestpark and to this lakepark, because to approach the Okhta is impossible.

Where do you prefer to spend your free time in your neighbourhood?
We’d like to have everythig nearby, but unfortunately.. you see.

How do you relate with your neighbours?
Yes, we make a friendship with some of them.

How long have you lived here?
I was born there, my children either.

Where do you work and how do you arrange your day time?
Now i’m sitting with my child but earlier i work at Novocherkasskaya.

What wishes do you have to upgrade your region?
My son swims, so would be great to have a sport complex with swimming pool somewhere here. We have to go every
day to the SCA-Pool, it’s too far. And landscaping would be nice.

ISOTROPIC SYSTEM

MICRORAYON
Fifty million apartments were built between 1955 and 1985 in Soviet cities. The Soviet citizen became an urban dweller and the standard Soviet city was born. 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 constitute the Soviet city have a standard layout. They 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.



















Although the rigid rules based on calculation the structure leaves space for a certain freedom in distributing functions within a microrayon. Consequently there are configurations in which all educational and commercial facilities are concentrated tigether, while there are other examples in which they are distributed equally thrughout the whole area. (On left Krasnogvareisky district typology)














TRANSPORT AND PUBLIC SPACES
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 from collective to private. Since 1990 car ownership in Russia has increased five times. This means that public space in the microrayon has been invaded by cars and temporary garages.

SOCIALITY
The very neutrality and the scale of new residential areas and the anonimity of the people in their separate apartments put a natural ends to the neighborhood watch which reduced the sense of safety but allowed various subculture to flourish.

In recent years when building constructed in late 60s and the 70s have been renovated, the surrounding outdoor areas are left open and private initiatives fill the niches left empty by central planning. In this moment many microrayons became more confortables place to live.
The idea of the potentiality of the microrayon has been summarized by Dmitry Prigov that captures the attachment new residents feel for seemingly nondescript mass housing:
“I remember that after living about 15 years in mellow and non-violent Belyevo, built up with nine-story concrete monsters, I decided to acquaint my five year-old son with the real beauties of urban construction and architecture. That is, with the historical center of holy Moscow. Well, we came. Walked around. Looked around. Then the foolish child said to me: Let’s go back our Belyaevo. It is so cramped and scary here. And where we live there is plenty of light and space.
Here it is, architecture with all its pretensions and ambitions.”

Reference: Volume n.21, 2009, "The Block"