THE GREY BELT. A REDEVELOPMENT. VOLKOVSKAYA PILOT AREA
A transformation concept for the southern part of the historic industrial and residential belt of St. Petersburg
Russia, St. Petersburg. The site is bounded by the Yekateringofka River in the west, the Obvodny Canal in the north, the Big Neva River in the east, and late-twentieth-century neighbourhoods in the south
Design: 2016 (international masterplanning and architectural competition)
Client: Committee for City Planning and Architecture, St. Petersburg City Administration
Authors of the project:
Architects: N. I. Yawein, A. I. Amelkovich, D. A. Andreyeva, V. I. Burmistrova, I. E. Grigoryev, I. V. Kozhin, V. S. Stepanskaya, K. O. Schastlivtseva
Visualization: A. V. Vetkin
The concept strives for maximum preservation of the existing layout, traffic infrastructure, historic buildings, and the very unique atmosphere of the Grey Belt. A new motorway running alongside the railway tracks of the Southern Railway Semicircle serves as the area’s main transportation artery, which is accompanied by a finer extensive network of roads running alongside railway feeder lines.
In our concept, there are nine residential enclaves with a multifunctional technopark on one side of the main transportation artery and residential housing on the other. This dyadic structure provides for a balance of places of employment, residence, and public and cultural functions. Technoparks are located where the concentration of feeder lines is the densest, while residential areas occupy sites free of railway tracks. In residential neighbourhoods, we blend the smaller pre-Revolutionary urban scale of the city of St. Petersburg and the large-scale Soviet residential projects. A combination of the two, the new residential neighbourhoods form a buffer area between the old and the new city and mend the previously disrupted urban tissue.