The Palimpsest of Peatlands | Masters Design Thesis on Regenerative Landscape Design

Site Context

The site is located on the north-west edge of St.Petersburg. It is made up of abandoned forest and peatlands, as well as a part of a nature reserve and recreational area. The site is bounded on four sides: the east is the highway leading to Finland; the west is the Baltic Sea coast; the south is the St. Petersburg city limits; and the north is the Sestroretsky Nature Reserve.

Due to the harsh boundaries, the existing nature is cut-off from the city, while the sea and infrastructure create a funnel for the expansion of St. Petersburg. The city has expanded significantly over the past century and intends to occupy nearly half of the project site’s landscape in the next 50 years. This is primarily for new urban neighbourhoods and infrastructure, as the city aims to drain the peatland and cover it with sand.

Design Process

The complexity and multi-faceted nature of the site required an in-depth analysis of the existing systems in the landscape. Compilation of the first layers of the palimpsest was the outcome of the site visit, herbarium collection, and expert meetings with ecologists and geobotanists. Following the analysis, it became evident that not only were the site’s abandoned areas the most biodiverse, but they were also home to several Red List species of both national and international significance. This brought a renaturation strategy to light. To maintain harmony with the swamps’ dynamic character, the design will track the changes in nature over a period of 80 years. 

An important part of awareness and education is to show the beauty and richness of the landscape to the inhabitants of the city. This site and design complexity is expressed through the concept of speculative mapping, which takes the shape of a circular map. If the swamp and its beauty were presented to the visitors of the new nature reserve, people might learn to understand and appreciate it—quite the reverse of how this terrain has been perceived historically: sinister and dangerous.

Final Outcome

The Palimpsest of Peatlands is a novel approach to human and non-human species coexistence. It is also a new form of nature reserve that acts as a buffer between the urban and rural environments. A number of renaturation strategies are used to make parts of the site inaccessible for humans while nature heals itself. However, small rivers emerge as a result of the water table rising, allowing for a new type of infrastructure through the site.

Unlike a conventional nature reserve, the Palimpsest of Peatlands welcomes and allows human habitation within its boundaries, which increases the appreciation of the swamps by its occupants. Consequently, this will help people in maintaining and taking care of the landscape, passing this knowledge across generations to come.

The site offers a variety of routes for visitors to choose from, including an hour-long stroll, a weekend getaway in the wellness centre, and even a summer season spent in the forest allotment gardens with the “dachniki.” The pioneers, wellness enthusiasts, and artists, who live in summer gardens (dachniki), will be the first people to live in the nature reserve. They will enable a range of target groups to get used to the new nature reserve and serve as a barrier between the coexistence of non-human and human species.

Conclusion: The project serves as an example for the regeneration of abandoned landscapes by converting a cultivated swamp into a coexisting nature reserve. Through a renaturation strategy, the thesis promotes landscape preservation by restoring peatlands, which over an 80-year period create a variety of swamp types with unique biospheres.

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]