The town of Kudrovo, in Russia’s Leningrad Region, is home to the country’s largest residential building, a giant oval-shaped monstrosity featuring 3708 apartments and 35 different entrances.
Completed in 2015 as part of the massive ‘Novyy Okkervil’ residential complex on the outskirts of Kudrovo, Russia’s largest residential building got its first international coverage in 2021 when aerial photos of it made it to the first page of Reddit, getting over 50,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. People were equally fascinated and freaked out by the enormous building, and many compared it to a human anthill. The comparison is not as farfetched as it might seem, because the concrete oval of Kudrovo is home to between 11,000 and 18,000 people (reports from Russian media vary) all technically living under the same roof.
The gloomy location of Russia’s largest residential building, its communist architectural style, and the clear lack of sunshine in the lower apartments facing the inner courtyard of the building suggest that living in a giant concrete oval must be pretty depressing, but one resident told Redditors that life there isn’t as bad as it seems.
Reddit user Everlastsun, who claimed to live inKudrovo’s massive apartment building, claimed that finding a free parking space is not as hard as it may seem, as the inner courtyard and the surrounding streets feature hundreds of them, there is a shopping ball close by, and the apartments themselves are quite spacious.
Other Redditors imagined what a nightmare it must be for couriers to deliver parcels to residents of this massive apartment building, comparing it to finding a needle in a haystack. Having to find that right entrance out of 35, and then navigating the 25 floors to reach that one apartment must be one hell of a challenge. Luckily, there are plenty of fast-traveling elevators, so at least one doesn’t have to take the stairs.
A fire breaking out in Russia’s human anthill and its total evacuation was another interesting scenario thought up by the Reddit community, one that we’ll hopefully never see play out.
Despite the negative publicity it got on social media the developer describes Novy Okkervil as “a wonderful alternative to noisy areas, because here the windows of the apartments overlook walking alleys for lovers and quiet courtyards.”
Russia’s concrete human anthill has drawn comparison to China’s largest residential building, the Regent International apartment building in Hangzhou, which reportedly houses around 20,000 people.
