Riverlight
INFORM
PIK Green park
Salarievo phase one
Television Centre
LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECT’S JOURNAL PART 2
Last month, we explored the vast portfolio of Gillespies’ offices in the north of the UK. In the last of our two-part journal on the practice, we go international as we delve into the extraordinary projects its London and Oxford offices are focusing on
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orking with one of the largest property developers in Russia, PIK Group, Gillespies has an extensive number of projects in the country. Associate partner Eugenia Grilli, who is leading 12 residential projects for PIK Group, says: “One of our key projects was delivering a Landscape Design Manual for landscape and open space, associated with the developer’s portfolio of residential and mixed-use developments across Russia. The manual provides PIK with high-level guidance on facilitating a ‘best practice approach’ to landscape and open space design, implementing creative and cost-effective solutions.” The first project to be completed using these guidelines is Varshavskoe Shosse, a mixed-use development in southern Moscow that has 2,476 new homes, ground floor retail, and a shopping complex. The residential buildings centre around a landscaped courtyard offering public, private, and 28
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semi-private green spaces, connected by a network of high quality routes. Gillespies is also developing a masterplan for a brownfield site in Moscow called Green Park, which will transform the area into a new neighbourhood for 13,000 people. This is part of PIK Group’s focus on economy housing, and will provide the area with new public realm and private amenity spaces, including play areas and gardens catering for different age groups.
Varshavskoe Shosse
“It’s been incredibly successful,” says Eugenia. “PIK is looking to deliver these projects within a tight timeframe, but it gives the developer and us the opportunity to generate sustainable communities and regenerate different areas of Moscow.” This ties in with Gillespies’ design approach, which is holistic, strategic and collaborative – every design is a response to
local context, unlocking the potential of each site to create distinctive, sustainable and enduring places. For the planned community of Salarievo, a leading example of landscape-led residential design, the focus was on creating a new ‘family-oriented’ community only 21km from Moscow City Centre. Part of a larger masterplan developed by Gillespies, Salarievo is an economy housing scheme that is inspired by the district’s naturalistic woodland surroundings. It features both private and public realm and a green boulevard that defines and connects the site from north to south, together with a series of neighbourhoods defined by linear parks. The vast array of projects commissioned by PIK Group are being led by both Gillespies’ London office, where 73 members of staff are based, and its Oxford office, with 31 employees. Gillespies’ portfolio of international projects is split across both, and includes the Louvre Park, a waterfront park on the eastern side of Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. This will unite several key cultural destinations, including The Louvre and the Guggenheim, and will, in Eugenia’s words, “turn the capital of the United Arab Emirates into an exciting cultural hub”. Closer to home, Gillespies is known for delivering large, high-profile developments; it worked on the Riverlight residential-led www.prolandscapermagazine.com
18/01/2018 15:30