London vs Moscow. Water

Oleg Torbosov, founder of Whitewill, tells us.

There are no cardinal differences between Moscow and London in real estate. Yes, in London in almost all new houses ceilings will be lower than in Moscow - 2.6-2.8 meters and even in penthouses can be 3.0-3.2 meters. In England, every single house is delivered with finishing, we have more than half of the projects go without finishing.

There are also questions about the quality of English finishing, but in general, houses all over the world are based on the proportions of the human body and its biological tasks: to sleep, eat, rest, wash, go to the toilet, need light and fresh air, so they are similar.

But the devil is in the details. And having been in almost all new projects in Moscow and in a dozen new London houses, I found several differences in the organization of the space of the house itself, as well as sales offices and in the arrangement of the internal territory.

I found three main differences between Moscow and London and here's the first of them: water. Developers in London love water. A view of the water increases the cost per meter. But not all houses are on the waterfront, so where possible and appropriate, they try to add water to the project.

But this is not that water, which is sometimes found in underground parking lots in some Moscow developers, and such a nobly inlaid. I'm attaching some photos I took at Riverlight, Chelsea Creek, Chelsea Barracks, Battersea power station.

At Riverlight, landscapers from Gillespie's English workshop have generally separated the ground-floor private patios from the landscaped garden with shallow artificial ponds planted with lilies and lily pads. First floor residents can access their apartments either through the main lobby or from the courtyard via small bridges from their terrace. The water creates a natural barrier and does a great job of separating public areas from private areas. I think this idea is worthy, even considering our winter when the pond just freezes.

In Chelsea Creek, the developer generally let artificial canals with picturesque bridges between the houses and made small parking lots on the first floors for kayaks and sap-surfers with a stairway to the apartment. I got out of bed in the morning, took a shower, went down to my parking lot on the water, got in a kayak or stood on a sap and walked a couple of kilometers along my block. Small man-made ponds separate even the entrances to entryways in one of the projects.

All the canals and ponds in the photos are artificial, not just houses near existing canals, as happens in Amsterdam or St. Petersburg. That is, the developer consciously let water into the project. Here I have seen water only in a cozy brook in the courtyard of Polyanka/44, but here the landscaping was done by the same Englishmen from Gillespie as Riverlight. Tribeca apartments have a small pond with the Statue of Liberty, and in several complexes there are small fountains in the yards. And, of course, we're waiting for the heated outdoor lap pool at Lucky.

Yes, the winters are milder in England, but I think Moscow projects could use more water in the courtyards. It looks cool both on renderings and when executed properly in real life.