Vision for Sokolniki park (Moscow)
Project year
2014
Team
Urbanica + Wowhaus + Groundlab (UK)
Project role
Urban mobility analytics and consulting
Client
Moscow Department for Culture, «MosGorPark»
Challenge
To create a vision for Sokolniki park — one of the biggest parks in Moscow with area of more than 500 hectares. A vision that will emphasize its unique features, structure the space, add various much needed functions and solve existing problems, but most of all — make it easy and convinient for people to interact with nature. The project was executed within the framework of an international competition.
Workflow
My main task as urban mobility consultant was to analyse surroundings of the park, underline problems and offer solutions. I started with the analysis of lost connections to the park from surrounding districts — pederstian links, closest metro stations and bus/tram stops, residential districts, parkings. As a result came up an idea to open the park from every side by making all entrances qually «official» and get rid of current monocentricity (one main entrance).

In collaboration with my consortium collegues from Wowhaus we polished this idea, creating two entrance typologies, which can be seen in the gallery above. First entrance typology consists of infopoint, cafe, souvenir store, rent of bikes/segways/kicksleighs and other options for different seasons. Second typology — for entrances with smaller flow of people — includes information board, vending machines with souveniers/food and rent of bikes/segways/kicksleighs/other.

We also came up with new pedestrian routes, calculated electic vehicle capacity for inner service and solved an issue with conflicting flows of people and cars by proposing a new tunnel to hide cars from pedestrian flows and make it a safer place for all users.
Outcome
Our collaborative project came first in the competition of visions, it was written about by many landscape design/architecture/urban design websites, including world-known ArchDaily. Since 2014, Sokolniki park gradually develops by our vision and will continue to do so.
Similar projects:
Made on
Tilda