The Winter Garden is a terrace design project developed in November 2025 for a private client in Saint Petersburg who had recently acquired an 8th-floor apartment with a nearly 80 square meter outdoor terrace.
The space was exceptional by any measure a large, elevated exterior platform with unobstructed views over the city but it was completely bare and its owner had no spatial concept for it. Our recommendation was a winter garden: a landscape installation that functions simultaneously as an introspective refuge and as a scenographic element visible from every room of the apartment.
The guiding concept was continuity: a single sinuous form connects the entire terrace, with a water channel as its structural spine. The form creates zones without partitions, depth without walls, and spatial sequence without interruption.
The vegetation follows a deliberate gradation across the length of the terrace: drought-tolerant, low-maintenance species near the apartment entrance give way progressively to large-leafed tropical plants at the far end, creating an effect of increasing immersion as the visitor moves through the space. This transition generates surprise and spatial depth within what is structurally a flat, rectangular surface.
The client is a passionate amateur astronomer with a telescope, which gave the project a specific programmatic anchor: the far end of the terrace is organized as an observation zone, with clear sightlines to the sky, minimal ambient light interference, and furniture scaled for prolonged stargazing.
The construction uses a reinforced waterproofing system across the full 80 m², recirculating water infrastructure, and transparent polycarbonate wind screens that protect without obstructing the panoramic city view.
