WORKac’s competition-winning masterplan celebrates New Holland Island’s unique identity as a “city within the city.” Originally a naval installation, the 8-hectare island in the heart of St. Petersburg was inaccessible to the public for some 300 years. WORKac’s design preserves both the site’s incredible collection of 18^th century warehouses and its more intangible heritage ­– while turning the heart of the island into a public park and introducing new programs, including residences, galleries, retail, a hotel, high-tech office space, and a new museum.

Weaving through the high brick arches of the existing structures, a raised interior promenade introduces pedestrian life and modern infrastructure into the historic warehouses. Voids carved into the buildings’ upper levels make an architecture out of subtraction, bringing the park and sunlight into the buildings as winter gardens.

The new contemporary art museum continues the massing of the historic structures around the third side of the island, completing the ensemble’s urban form. Its wood cladding references the warehouses’ historic use as timber-drying facilities, and a tethered public hot-air balloon recalls the site’s one-time use as scientist Dmitri Mendeleev’s laboratory while providing a unique vertical view over the very horizontal city of St Petersburg.