Centrally located steps from St. Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square and the Kremlin, Zaryadye Park is the first large scale park to be built in Moscow in the last fifty years. Landscape and hardscape intertwine to create a ‘Wild Urbanism,” introducing a new offering to compliment Moscow’s historically formal, symmetrical park spaces. A custom stone paving system knits hardscape and landscape together— generating a blend rather than a border—encouraging visitors to meander freely.
Traversing between each corner of the 35-acre park, visitors encounter terraces that recreate and celebrate four diverse, regional landscapes found in Russia: tundra, steppe, forest and wetland. These zones are organized in terraces that descend from northeast to southwest, with each layering over the next to create a total of 14,000 square meters of enclosed, programmed spaces integrated into the landscape: nature and architecture act as one. Visitors can enjoy a river overlook cantilevering 70 meters over Moscow River, a media center, nature center, restaurant, market, two amphitheaters and a philharmonic concert hall. The sectional overlay also facilitates augmented microclimates that seek to extend the typically short park season. These passive climate-control strategies include calibrating the typography of one of the park’s landscaped hills and the amphitheater's glass crust to leverage the natural buoyancy of warm air. As a result, wind is minimized, plants stay greener longer, and the temperature rises gradually as visitors ascend the slope. These natural zones provide places of gathering, repose and observation, in concert with performance spaces and enclosed cultural pavilions. A series of vista points provide a frame for the cityscape to rediscover it anew. Each visitor’s experience is tailor made for them, by them.