SPbGASU Bachelor’s degree graduate designed a crossing place near the Lakhta Center and became recipient of the St. Petersburg Government Award
On June 28, Sophie Karapetyan, Bachelor’s degree graduate of the Department of Geotechnics, St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, won the St. Petersburg Government Prize - 2019. University graduate completed her diploma project on the topic commissioned by the St. Petersburg Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture.
We asked Sophie Karapetyan to share details about how this result was achieved, and asked her a few questions.
“My supervisor, associate professor of the Department of Geotechnics Sergey Lanko advised me to submit an application for participation. I chose the topic ‘Underground Pedestrian Crossing Project’, filled out the proposed form, and after some time received a notification of approval of my candidacy.
I needed to develop a design project of an underpass in the Primorsky District. This is a fairly long transition, with a total length of 240 meters, which will connect the territory of the Lakhta Center, Primorskoe Highway and streets, which are only being designed in that area.
Near the highway, there is a railway and exits to the platform. The area under the railway had to be designed as an underground segment, using special technologies - in order not to stop the train traffic. The rest part of the crossing area was designed as on-the-ground segments.
✔ The task turned out to be quite difficult for me, because in the classroom we had much more often designed the foundations of buildings than transitions of this sort. I had to dig through a lot, looking for information, make calculations and gettinh to understand the intricacies of some technologies on my own.
When the design that became my final qualifying work at the geotechnical department at SPbGASU, was ready, I was pretty well-versed in this topic. However, during the defense, I realized that I had taken into account far from everything, and the members of the commission made several quite useful suggestions.
Text: Angela Semicheva
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