Urban Resort San Petersburgo / WMA

Architects: Willy Müller Architects (in collaboration with: BPG Arquitectes and THB Consulting)
Location: Saint Petersburg, Russia
Principal in Charge: Willy Müller
Associate Architect: Frédéric Guillaud
Project Team: Mario Perez Botero, Sabine Bruinink, Bruno Louzada, Christian Kreifelts, Fransisco Villeda, Augusto Alvarenga, Samuel Martin Guerra, Sergio Pruccoli
Collaborators: Elke Gall, Sergio Ramos, Gijs Verhoofstad
Structure Consultant: BOMA
Installation Consultant: Grupo JG
Competition year: 2007
Project Phase: 2008/2009
Constructed Area: 135,000 sqm
Model: Fabian Asuncion



The complex contains 300 hotel rooms a convention center with the capability for 500 people and 23 rooms for reunions. Beyond that the complex contains an enormous sports center, an office building, a parking zone and a landing zone for helicopters.
The “Resort” of Saint Petersburg is a perfect example to incorporate the structure of a building with its surrounding environment.

structure model

The building creates a recognizable  silhouette in the boundary of the city.
The shape of the construction equals an artificial landscape. With its different undulations the membrane equals mountains that accrete and accumulate the snow, which is omnipresent in the city.
The white roof cover of the building shows a contrast to the colours and materials of whole complex.

Showroom and Leisure Center / Manuelle Gautrand Architecture

French architects Manuelle Gautrand Architecture shared with us their new showroom and leisure center design for Cairo, Egypt. The concrete structure consists of connecting circles and spherical cavities that create a flexible interior allowing users to seamlessly flow through different showrooms. “Most of the time, the cars are exhibited like art-pieces on those turning platforms. The entire project is imagined around this monumental way of showing cars,” explained the architects.
More about the showroom and more images after the break.

The mixed-use program includes showrooms for several car brands, cafés, a food court, a media park and two cinemas. “The richness of this program is very interesting, with the potential of giving a vibrant place of attraction to the new district,” explained the architects.

The volume developed as “a vast sculpture of circles and spheres” that creates modules of approximately 80 sqm.  These modules can connect to expand the form to create larger showrooms.  Brand signatures lay in two horizontal lines of LED, “giving a coloured movement behind the glass façade.” The intersection between such modules holds the circulation spaces, atriums, and visual perspectives through the building.

Since the entire project was conceived as a concrete mass, the “movement of the concrete creates…small interior spaces, which are curved, to propose some privacy dedicated to VIP lounge, media lounge, small cafés, sales spaces.” These smaller rooms are to be lined with different materials of bright colors to emphasize their sharp contrast with the completely white structure.