Housing Tallinas Street 5/7

date: 2011
client: ProKapital Latvia
object:  Tallinas Street 5/7
location: Riga, Lettonia
size data:
17.081 mq intervention area; 20.997 mq. residential area;
1.017 mq commercial area;
494 mq area uffici
services: Servieces
Preliminary, definitive and executive project

local architect: Arplan, Rolands Bruzgulis

The “Tallinas street 5/7” project focuses on the transformation of an ex-industrial area in a residential area, partially recovering the existing buildings and integrating them with cutting edge architectural solutions, and in part with new realizations.

The choices to realize the landscape and environmental intervention inside the area with relation to urban planning restrictions and wind exposure factors optimal for the disposition of the buildings, have reduced various designing hypotheses to the proposed solution.

New modern buildings, planned as independent blocks, they will have a highly representative, expressive and attractive image, different from the architectures of that area, though integrating themselves perfectly into the area which has historically been employed as an industrial zone. A careful planivolumetric research has been carried out to better define the relationship between the area surface, its shape and finishing materials which with their chromatic variants create a great vibrating perceptive impact. The internal area, designated for pedestrians and being mainly a green zone, will be the place of attraction and will perform the function of a garden overlooked from the windows of various apartments; the apartments on the ground floor will enjoy their private spaces for an exclusive use.

The sun, the light, the ever-evasive sense of the perspective, the chimney and the water tank as a focus, the “private” and public field, the large green areas, the outlines of the buildings that generate ever open perspectives and face the sun render the intervention unique and recognizable.

 The height of the buildings is suggested on the one hand by a careful study of the sun and on the other hand, it is the best solution in the micro-urban context of the location. The buildings vary from 4-floor ones to 6 floor ones, with some 8-floor accents on tops of the open-yard buildings.

Thus an unusual landscape is created, made up of vertical perspectives and particular shapes which trace back with irony the historic memory of the place; pointed roof angles, loggias, terraces, materials, they all make part of the history of Riga, they mark the essence of the proposed architectural solutions on the borderline between modernity and tradition.

The materials used will be exclusively part of the historic, though reinterpreted, heritage. The proposed buildings belong to various typologies divided according to different dimensional parameters which have influenced the typology and the aesthetics of the building. All the proposed residential buildings have been designed employing modularity principles necessary both for the flexibility of the layout and for the employment of prefabricated building systems.
Sustainability principles have been pursued in order to ensure a better living standard and lower energy consumption, thus reaching positive results regarding the costs and the emissions in the atmosphere.