SPbGASU students win the St. Petersburg flower design contest

On April 20, the results of the competition for the flower decoration of the city were announced at the Competency Centre for Creating a Comfortable Urban Environment in Saint Petersburg (supervised by the St. Petersburg Committee for Urban Improvement).

The competition was held in two categories: 18 participants competed in flower decoration of embankments and highways. The contestants offered their solutions for the transformation of Voskresenskaya, Smolnaya, Arsenalnaya, Pirogovskaya, Vyborgskaya, Sverdlovskaya embankments, as well as Bolsheokhtinsky prospekt. Besides, participants created flower compositions for the city highways: Moskovsky Prospekt, Pulkovskoye Highway near Victory Square and along the road to the airport.

SPbGASU students of Architecture are among the contest winners. They worked under the supervision of teachers from the Department of Architectural Environment and Landscape Design and the Department of Restoration and Reconstruction of Architectural Heritage.

The first place for the best floral decoration of embankments was shared by the collective proposal for the Bolsheokhtinsky Prospekt improvement along the Okhta River (by Maria Zubenko, Yulia Kim and Darina Demakhina) and ‘Vital Lines’ design concept for Vyborgskaya Embankment (developed by Ekaterina Kokshilova jointly with Viktor Proskuryakov, a student of St. Petersburg State Forestry University).

The winners in the floral design of highways category are ‘Counter-Rhythm’ design proposal by Darya Barkeeva and Anna Eremina (design for Moskovsky Prospekt), and the design for Pulkovskoye Highway by Anna Goldobina and Maria Ulyanova.

Design proposals developed by students Agata Kurik and Ekaterina Konovalova took second place in the categories "Floral decoration of highways" (design concept for the road to the airport) and "Flower decoration of embankments" (decoration of Smolnaya Embankment).
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The competition jury consisted of experts, government officials and practising architects.

According to Larisa Kanunnikova, Deputy Chairperson of the St. Petersburg Committee for Urban Improvement, the organizers involved young designers and architects to get a fresh creative look at the urban environment.

✔ For instance, the concept of flower decoration for Pulkovskoye Highway proposed by Anna Goldobina and Maria Ulyanova was developed taking into consideration the specifics of the area.

“Vehicles move along the highway at a certain speed, which affects the perception of objects,” says Anna Goldobina. This feature was taken into account in the design proposal due to the introduction of orthogonal lines and simple shapes in the geometry of flower beds into the composition.

The authors of the concept deliberately abandoned the traditional large-scale floral carpet in favour of laconic perennial plants that create a dynamic perception from a moving car.

Style identity is observed in all sections of the arrangement of flower beds, designed in a restrained range of warm shades with bright point accents.

✔ Ekaterina Kokshilova and Viktor Proskuryakov applied an integrated approach to the design of Vyborgskaya Embankment. In their opinion, the recreational potential of this place is underutilized, and a new project that combines functionality and aesthetics should help to reveal it, making the environment more comfortable for inhabitants.

For this purpose, the authors propose to preserve the existing green spaces, supplementing them with new blocks of flower beds. Different types of plants will be distributed here in such a way so as to protect the territory from excessive noise and dust (one of the main problems of city embankments) and at the same time create a visually attractive space, a kind of buffer zone between the roadway and pedestrian routes. The concept also includes small architectural forms, including benches with flowerpots and flower arches.

✔ The authors of the ‘Flower Runway’ concept believe that it will transform the road to Pulkovo Airport.

“The emphasis in the composition is made on container gardening 'paper airplanes' made of Cor-Ten steel and mounted on artificial hills. Thanks to them, as you approach the airport, the composition will open from several different angles,” told the concept co-author Ekaterina Konovalova.

✔ The Smolnaya Embankment design proposal includes single-level and multi-level flower gardens, a combination of tall herbaceous plants and shrubs. This layering gives the landscape a special expressiveness. The arched line of the flower arrangement evokes associations with the dome of the Smolny Cathedral.

The faculty staff at the SPbGASU Department of Architectural Environment and Landscape Design always encourage students’ participation in creative competitions under the guidance of experienced specialists. The teachers believe it allows students to acquire valuable practical experience and skills of interaction with the organizations in charge of city improvement, as well as introduces them into the professional community.

“What’s more, such practices allow young professionals to fulfil their ideas. This was the case, for example, with the ‘Garden of Memory’ in Vsevolozhsk, dedicated to the victims of Sinai plane crash. In this work, we made all the way from a competitive creative concept to a discovery. And perhaps it became possible because the supervisors were experienced professionals," told the project supervisor Svetlana Danilova, Associate Professor of the Department of Architectural Environment and Landscape Design.

Text: Alexandra Podolnikova
Photos provided by the Department of Architectural Environment and Landscape Design

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