Where the caucasian mountains meet the black sea

Sitting between the towering Caucasus Mountains and the majestic Black Sea, Imeretinka territory enjoys an exceptional geographical location. These unique conditions set the perfect background for a successful post-Olympic development that could take advantage of: adjacent coastlines, nearby ski resorts, ready-to-go transport facilities and airport, and Olympic sports facilities, all embedded into Sochi greater urban area in a benevolent subtropical weather. The design principles aim at capitalising on these paradisiacal opportunities and formulate a unique Imeretinka BRAND and IDENTITY as THE PLACE WHERE THE CAUCASIAN MOUNTAINS MEET THE BLACK SEA.

At the site’s scale, it also brings reconciliation strategies for some of the site constrains such as the fact that the current seafront access and views of most of the given lots are limited. These tactics include the ‘MULTIPLICATION OF THE SHORELINE,’ in a series of waterscape bands parallel to the coastline, to maximize the inhabitants’ contact with water. These bands weave a mesh of blue (water) and green (landscape) strands that hold together a unique urban development of “MOUNTAINS AND WATER.”

Added to this, the SUPERBLOCK urban fabric allows great pedestrian and bicycle permeability and environments to increase accessibility across the site from the mountains (train station and car access points), through the development and to the shoreline. Each superblock acquires a differentiated identity according to programmatic distribution that gives a quarter characters to each of them.

The adjacent 5 design principles form the key concepts at architectural scale: multiplying the shore line, access to the sea, unique architectural type (mountains & valleys), superblocks creating pedestrian + cycle friendly environments and unique Smart Phasing Strategy.