Baltic pearl – a new city near St. Petersburg

Baltic Pearl is a proposal for a new city for 35,000 people near S.t Petersburg, Russia. The project is a new Chinese investor-financed real estate development with housing areas, public buildings and commercial centres.

Design work has been awarded as a parallel assignment to five international architectural firms, of which SWECO FFNS is participating as the only Nordic representative and has profiled itself through the firm's trademark "sustainable city" concept.

The Baltic Pearl complex, covering 2 square km of undeveloped land just west of St. Petersburg, is the largest foreign real estate investment of all time in Russia and is scheduled for completion over a period of six to eight years. The EUR 1.3 billion investment by state-owned Shanghai Industrial Investments is the largest overseas commercial venture ever by a Chinese company.

The proposal is based on a well tested modernistic layout that includes closed and open spaces, parks and green belts crisscrossing the city. The green areas are every bit as important as the built environment. The city structure, employing a wide variety of apartments and residential buildings, allows scope for change and renewal for many years to come.