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Architects: SPEECH architectural office
- Area: 9265 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Dmitry Chebanenko
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Manufacturers: Atlas Schindler, OOO Russky dekor, Skaala
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Lead Architects: Sergei Tchoban, Anton Boldyrev
Text description provided by the architects. Veren Place Sovetskaya is on 10-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa, not far from the Nevskaya Ratusha administrative and business centre. In the centre of the street block bounded by 10-ya Sovetskaya, Moiseenko, and Mytninskaya streets stands a complex consisting of two blocks of different heights placed on a shared plinth. The taller of the two blocks completes the façade of 10-ya Sovetskaya ulitsa and plays an important architectural and urban-planning role in connecting the new building with its historical surroundings. The lower block faces the territory inside the street block. The roof of the plinth supports a green internal courtyard for the use of residents.
The ground floor of the complex contains a central vestibule giving access to all three staircases, residents’ personal storage spaces, and premises which are rented out (small shops, cafés, and services). To save space in the one-level underground car park, given the space limitations for development in this city, the car park has a lift instead of a ramp. The car park provides access to both buildings and to the internal landscaped courtyard on the complex’s plinth.
The complex’s architectural image harmoniously combines typical St Petersburg restraint in colours and plasticity with rich façade detailing. The fluid contours of the bay windows, the precise rhythm of the horizontal cornices and string cornices, decorative ornamental inserts, and expressive texture of the densely fluted façade are just a few of the artistic devices used by the architects to give this residential complex the look of a respectable and truly Petersburgian house which, on the one hand, is unmistakably a work of modern architecture and, on the other, can be expected to serve long and age gracefully.
The façade is made of large-format panels of fibro concrete. The building’s ground floor is faced in dark-grey fibro concrete which has been polished to give it the appearance of granite; all the top floors are of a light-grey material with elements which have been carved into three-dimensional shapes (the art critic Mariya Orlova helped devise these ornaments). The interior decoration of the public spaces employs patterns taken from the façades and architectural fantasies by Sergei Tchoban.
