What's the future of Microrayons？
This project critically reimagines a Soviet-era microrayon in Riga, with the aim of transforming it into a socially vibrant and functionally diverse contemporary urban district. Microrayons, widely adopted across the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century, were influenced by CIAM and Le Corbusier’s “city as a machine” vision. Characterized by oversized infrastructure, wide roadways, and standardized, repetitive housing blocks, they prioritized efficiency and uniformity. While once seen as progressive, this top-down model often weakened local identity and proved inflexible to social and spatial change.
Studios A and B focused on Purvciems, located about five kilometers from Riga’s historic center. Its hexagonal clusters of elongated residential blocks lack essential facilities, forcing residents into daily commutes to the city center and reducing the district to a typical “sleep-over community.” Inspired by Carlos Moreno’s “15-minute city” concept, the project identifies latent functional attributes within each block—such as workspace, education, commemoration, or community services—and strategically introduces new spatial typologies to strengthen self-sufficiency and revitalize daily life.
Studio C further concentrated on the site’s core, introducing a church as a symbolic and programmatic anchor. Much like the heritage landmarks of Riga’s Old Town, the church exerts a spiritual influence that can catalyze wider transformation, linking microrayons to more diverse and community-oriented lifestyles.
By deliberately challenging the microrayon’s mono-functional logic and layering new uses onto standardized structures, the design takes a calculated risk in departing from orthodox planning approaches. This risk is managed through respect for the site’s spatial order, phased intervention strategies, and carefully targeted transformations. The project demonstrates strong potential to enhance residents’ quality of life, reduce commuting pressures, foster social cohesion, and optimize spatial use, while offering methodological insights for place-sensitive urban regeneration in post-socialist contexts.
