Site Specific: Augustine Gardens

Sampling Architects - Riga, Latvia, 2025

This projects portrays the sometimes contradictory ways in which a neighbourhood can present itself as a civic entity, having both a singular and composite character. While the newly-renovated street facade presents a polished and unified public face to the street, this ‘united front’ belies the collage-like courtyard behind.

The interior of the block is composed of an aggregate consisting of both the historical layers which the site contains and also the new gestures the architects have made more recently. They have chosen to retain the materiality of different building eras and have enjoyed giving them an equality of status. In particular, new steel additions bring items of pre-existing metal work into play as fellow protagonists rather than as just inert historical artefacts.

The way existing building elements have been treated, and new ones deployed, sets up an expectation perhaps that disparate characters can not only co-exist but thrive together. That the architecture is more than the sum of its parts might suggest that residents too may create something more than just co-exisitence. This is a civic as well as an architectural sensibility, suitable for a newly created small-scale neighbourhood.

SA Augustine's Garden is a residential ensemble consisting of an Art Nouveau tenement house and former low-rise industrial buildings which together form a courtyard. The scope of our involvement included the renovation of the street-facing facades of the tenement house and the reconstruction of the courtyard buildings, adapting them to their new residential function. The courtyard of the quarter has been transformed into a contemporary urban garden, whose post-industrial aesthetic reflects the concept of adaptive reuse—to preserve and adapt to a new use any building, regardless of its original architectural value.

The building on the street - an Art Nouveau tenement house designed in the National Romantic style - was designed by Aleksandrs Vanags. As part of this project, the facades of the building were renovated and insulated. This is a particularly delicate task for a historic façade, which is why it was insulated from the inside on the street side. On the outside, the original decorations of the building have been restored: rough plaster areas alternate with smooth ones, preserving the monochrome solution, typical for the Latvian architecture of the time. The façade is complemented by carmine red accents - a tin roof and window sills, in which the façade lighting is seamlessly integrated. An olive-green gate with a laconic design completes the gatehouse: there the historic vaulting is restored and contemporary lighting elements are added on the wall.

Through the gatehouse, one enters the courtyard, where an unexpected scene appears—a green oasis in the heart of the city. The courtyard is surrounded by former industrial and workshop buildings that have been reconstructed several times over the years. The facades still bear witness to these reconstructions, with building materials from different eras, ranging from the ceramic bricks and metal beam lintels of the early 20th century to the white silicate bricks popular during the Soviet period. This collage is complemented by various rudimentary steel elements that once had a functional role.

The garden is conceived as a unifying, community-building element. The project refuses to continue the common practice of dedicating courtyards to parking, instead providing bicycle parking and landscaping. Also architectural tools are employed to foster a sense of community. Ground floor windows are large, with low and wide concrete windowsills on which to sit on hot summer days.

The interior layout of the buildings has been adapted to the residential function. The complex comprises both small studio duplexes and larger apartments with terraces and French balconies.

When opening the windows, the indoor space flows organically into the outdoor space. Outside, there are small terraces, deliberately not surfaced with raised boards or other materials, but with a solid gravel base on which outdoor furniture can be placed. They are thus immersed in the surrounding greenery, without any indication of boundaries, but at the same time allowing a relative privacy, since the entire courtyard is in fact common property.

NOTES

Thanks to Manten Devriendt and Sampling Architects for their help in compiling this post.

Photography © Madara Kuplā

Posted 27th March 2026.