Augustine's garden
The building on the street - an Art Nouveau tenement house designed in the National Romantic style - was designed by Aleksandrs Vanags. As part of this project, the facades of the building were renovated and insulated. This is a particularly delicate task for a historic façade, which is why it was insulated from the inside on the street side. On the outside, the original decorations of the building have been restored: rough plaster areas alternate with smooth ones, preserving the monochrome solution, typical for the Latvian architecture of the time. The façade is complemented by carmine red accents - a tin roof and window sills, in which the façade lighting is seamlessly integrated. An olive-green gate with a laconic design completes the gatehouse: there the historic vaulting is restored and contemporary lighting elements are added on the wall.
Through the gatehouse, one enters the courtyard, where an unexpected scene appears—a green oasis in the heart of the city. The courtyard is surrounded by former industrial and workshop buildings that have been reconstructed several times over the years. The facades still bear witness to these reconstructions, with building materials from different eras, ranging from the ceramic bricks and metal beam lintels of the early 20th century to the white silicate bricks popular during the Soviet period. This collage is complemented by various rudimentary steel elements that once had a functional role.
The project’s concept is based on the idea of adaptive reuse, which aims for minimising the use of new buildings and materials and maximising the preservation of existing structures, regardless of their architectural value. Adaptive reus as an approach increases the architectural value of buildings, giving them not only a new function but also aesthetic qualities. The interior layout of the buildings has been adapted to the residential function. The complex comprises both small studio duplexes and larger apartments with terraces and French balconies.
The garden is conceived as a unifying, community-building element. The project refuses to continue the common practice of dedicating courtyards to parking, instead providing bicycle parking and landscaping. Also architectural tools are employed to foster a sense of community. Ground floor windows are large, with low and wide concrete windowsills on which to sit on hot summer days. When opening the windows, the indoor space flows organically into the outdoor space. Outside, there are small terraces, deliberately not surfaced with raised boards or other materials, but with a solid gravel base on which outdoor furniture can be placed. They are thus immersed in the surrounding greenery, without any indication of boundaries, but at the same time allowing a relative privacy, since the entire courtyard is in fact common property.
