DACHA in the City: Vertical Gardens Meet Co-Living

Russia has two housing traditions that work and one that does not. The kommunalka (urban co-housing) produces community but no privacy. The dacha (countryside retreat) produces nature and solitude but no city. The Soviet apartment block produces neither. DACHA in the City, a project by Punit and Design Saransh, proposes a building that combines the first two: the shared life of the kommunalka and the gardens of the dacha, stacked vertically in a Moscow co-living tower.

The project won the People's Choice Award in the Hustle Hub '19 competition on uni.xyz. It is the most culturally specific entry in the series: rooted in Russian housing history, designed for a Moscow site, and built from a typological argument that only makes sense in this context.

Three Typologies: Kommunalka, Dacha, Hybrid

The project's conceptual board places three housing types side by side. On the left, a conventional apartment tower: dense, efficient, isolated. In the centre, a dacha village: scattered wooden houses among trees and gardens. On the right, the proposal: a vertical dacha, a tower that integrates trees, gardens, and communal life into a multi-storey urban structure.

This triptych is the project's argument in a single image. The kommunalka gives you neighbours but no garden. The dacha gives you a garden but no neighbours. DACHA in the City gives you both, by stacking dacha-scale gardens vertically and wrapping them with kommunalka-scale shared spaces. The hybrid is not a compromise. It is a synthesis.

The Building: Cutaway and Internal Street

The cutaway axonometric shows how the building works. Multiple levels are connected by open stairs and double-height communal floors. A rooftop terrace crowns the building. Residents are visible on every level: cooking, sitting, walking, gathering. The building reads as a vertical village, not a stack of flats.

The internal street perspective confirms this at ground level. Two terraced residential blocks face each other across a pedestrian lane lined with trees and benches. The massing steps back as it rises, creating terraces at every level. The space between the blocks is not a gap. It is a street: the social spine of the building.

The Unit: Duplex with a Private Garden

The section through a duplex unit shows the domestic quality the project achieves. A living room and kitchen occupy the lower level. A bedroom sits above. At the back, a private garden terrace with plants and open sky gives the unit its dacha moment: the feeling of being in a garden, even though you are several floors above the ground.

The three interior vignettes reinforce this. A planted balcony where a resident reads among hanging greenery. A kitchen with a warm yellow pendant light and potted plants. A private courtyard garden with climbing plants, stools, and daylight from above. These are not luxury apartments. They are compact units with exceptional outdoor access. The dacha logic is delivered through the section, not through the floor area.

Climate Response and Scalability

The solar massing studies show how the building form responds to its site. Three diagrams trace the sun path and river orientation, shaping the massing to maximise daylight on the terraces and minimise overshadowing of the internal street. This is the climate homework that makes the terraces work: they receive sun because the form was designed to deliver it.

The two pixelated tower axonometrics show the project at different scales. The modular units stack with setbacks and terraces, creating a varied profile. The warm brown tones signal timber or earth-toned materials. The labelled programme zones confirm the vertical logic: public at the base, shared in the middle, private at the top. The system can scale from S (individual module) to XL (full neighbourhood) without changing its principles.

Why This Project Won the People's Choice

The Hustle Hub competition produced co-living proposals from around the world. DACHA in the City won the People's Choice because it rooted its proposal in a specific cultural history. It did not invent co-living. It traced it back to the kommunalka. It did not invent garden living. It traced it back to the dacha. The project is a recovery, not an invention, and that makes it more convincing than proposals that start from zero.

For anyone studying culturally grounded co-living, terraced housing, or the vertical garden as a housing strategy, this project demonstrates that the strongest design arguments come from history. The dacha already works. The kommunalka already works. The architecture's job is to put them in the same building.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Punit, Design Saransh

Enter a Design Competition on uni.xyz

If culturally grounded housing, terraced co-living, or vertical garden design is the kind of work you want to pursue, uni.xyz runs competitions year-round that reward proposals rooted in real places and real traditions.

Project credits: DACHA in the City by Punit and Design Saransh. People's Choice Award, Hustle Hub '19 (uni.xyz).