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Luxury apartments, St. Petersburg

City gives high-end residential project by Erick van Egeraat the green light.

ST. PETERSBURG (RU) - Although construction has been approved by the city's urban planning council, it remains to be seen whether this design for a new luxury address on the riverfront in St. Petersburg will in fact come to fruition. With a facade whose most prominent feature is its asymmetrical gridded pattern, the building is purported to pay homage to its contextual and historical setting among the more classic fronts that typify this stretch of the Moika River in the city centre. The encompassing structure wraps a mere twenty residences in its modish exterior, which at this time is about all that can be said concerning a project perhaps more about prestige than actual architecture. (Dutton R. Hauhart)

The urban planning council of St. Petersburg approved Erick van Egeraat's concept design for Moika Krukov, an elite six-storey residential building located along the historical Moika River embankment in the centre of St. Petersburg. It faces the New Holland Island, and has visual links to the St. Isaac's Cathedral and the famous Mariinsky Theatre. The client, a leading St. Petersburg developer, aspires a high-class building with high standards regarding architecture.

The project comprises twenty high-end apartments varying in size, including two large, luxurious penthouses with roof terraces overlooking the city centre. An underground parking garage provides for 42 parking places for the residents.

'The building blends in with the unique architectural qualities of the historic centre of St. Petersburg,' says Erick van Egeraat. 'The design of the facade is an interpretation of the classic facade principles found here along the Moika river embankment. It is a regular aperture pattern, an accentuated plinth and roofline and decorative framing of window openings and entries.'

The facade consists of two separate layers: a plastered inner layer with a regular pattern of openings, gradually changing size to open wider at the rounded corners, and an outer layer that consists of stone-clad horizontals, verticals and diagonals in an irregular pattern. The juxtaposition of these two layers creates a facade which is both contemporary and contextual.

The building is scheduled for completion in 2011.