Stefano Boeri Architetti to Turn Soviet Locomotive Factory into Tbilisi Neighbourhood

By Elena Vasquez

Stefano Boeri Architetti has won the competition to design Loco Park, a masterplan that will transform a former Soviet-era locomotive factory in Tbilisi, Georgia, into a residential neighbourhood with housing, green spaces and community facilities.

The Italian studio will renovate the existing factory on the industrial site, rebuilding some of its former architectural features with a contemporary interpretation. The scheme aims to celebrate the site's industrial heritage.

"The new Loco Park neighbourhood will combine the memory of the large Soviet-era locomotive factory with a vision of a contemporary, vibrant space that is green and open to everyone," said studio founder Stefano Boeri.

What form will the new neighbourhood take?

A series of new buildings will provide a mix of homes and community spaces, dispersed across open green space that includes sports facilities, parks and boulevards. Apartments will occupy the upper levels. Shops, cafes and workshops will line the ground floors.

Landscaping will connect the development with the surrounding city, providing public space for the wider Tbilisi community.

Boeri described the design concept in urban terms: "The buildings of Loco Park will be islands in an urban archipelago, distinct yet connected by a network of tree-lined pedestrian public spaces for the whole city to enjoy."

Renders show a colourful series of block buildings in varied rectangular forms. According to the studio, each block is designed to have its "own identity while remaining integrated into the context".

Why the colourful brick facades?

The colour palette rests on research. Stefano Boeri Architetti carried out colour mapping in Tbilisi to identify shades commonly found across the city's architecture, which informed the brick finishes chosen for the cladding:

• blue-grey
• terracotta
• green
• taupe
• white

"We set out to capture Loco Park's identity through a simple, balanced and contemporary design, inspired by Tbilisi's extraordinarily rich colour palette, local materials and traces of the area's industrial history," said studio partner Pietro Chiodi.

"Colour and brick thus give each building its own identity while bringing them together into a coherent whole," Chiodi added.

Rooflines will also vary, with vaulted, sawtooth and pitched profiles designed to recall traditional industrial building shapes. Planted terraces will top the roofs, and greenhouses and communal spaces elsewhere in the development will give residents places to socialise.

Where does this sit in Boeri's wider portfolio?

Loco Park extends a run of adaptive-reuse projects by the Milan-based practice. The studio recently unveiled plans to convert a historic transportation depot in Rome into a greenery-covered public space, and designs for an Ambrosian monastery in Milan crowned with a sail-like roof.

The Tbilisi project signals the firm's continued push beyond Italy, pairing post-Soviet industrial heritage with housing — a model cities across the region may watch closely as regeneration demand grows.