Rooftop of Residential Complex ‘Tetris Hall’

The rooftop of the Tetris Hall residential complex turns the top of a building in central Kyiv into a shared social landscape for the people who live there. Designed by KOTSIUBA studio in 2018, the project sits in the heart of Ukraine’s capital, where major cultural and entertainment facilities are within walking distance. Before any drawing began, the team studied the main view-points of the roof to understand how residents and their guests would meet, relax and communicate across the open deck.

Rooftop design carries challenges that ground-level public space does not. A roof must balance the weight of new programs against the structure below, manage exposure to wind and sun, and stay usable across the seasons. The Tetris Hall concept answers this by keeping the original functions and adding new ones that extend how the area can be used through the year. Spaces that differ in scale and filling consider the needs of all groups of inhabitants, from large companies gathering at the pool to families watching their children play. A swimming pool, summer cinema, cafe and barbecue share the deck with a panorama of the city.

Zoning the shared deck

The initial zoning set aside recreation areas mainly for large companies coming to the pool, bar or barbecue. The proposed plan rearranges those functions and layers in new ones. An open plaza uses a flexible bench configuration so the same ground can host many scenarios. The barbecue area forms separate spaces for four companies around a common zone, a familiar move in shared residential settings where privacy and togetherness must coexist. Children’s areas, including a Lego-zone and a web for climbing, create play space where one side of the benches offers panoramic views of Kyiv and the other lets adults watch the children.

An indoor cafe keeps the roof in use regardless of weather or season, while a green park zone breaks from the orthogonal planning grid with curved shapes that soften the deck and diversify daily leisure. Bringing planted areas onto a building draws on the wider practice of the green roof, which adds usable amenity high above the street. As a model for communal life in the dense fabric of Kyiv, the Tetris Hall roof shows how an overlooked surface can become the most sociable address in the building.