For a new country estate in a wooded wildlife area on the Baltic Sea coast near Saint Petersburg, we have designed an artificial crater landscape to act as a micro-relief to the existing natural landscape.

This portion of the woods extends around and onto the underground garages, connecting the central building to an outhouse. The craters restore breaches in the landscape, fused with the architecture of the buildings.

A pathway runs from the reception area between and over the craters to the buildings. The new relief offers an immersive visual experience, especially when the entire garden is covered by snow.

For the outhouse, intended as an office or reception area, we have proposed the building of a conservatory with a winter garden to make it possible to enjoy plants and nature during the long winter months. The conservatory will also act as a beacon in the landscape.

The design of the conservatory is based on the same ‘building blocks’ as the crater landscape outside. The selection of plants counts an extensive collection of ferns combined with flowering and fragrant orangery plants.

For what regards the enclosures around the area, we did not employ the classic edge planting method to conceal the enclosure around the grounds, opting instead for successive groups of trees to blur the boundaries of the ground like a kind of ‘partition’.

Saint Petersburg, Russia
2009 – 2020
41,3 ha
In collaboration with:
Mood architecture
Axel Vervoordt