The subject of the competitive design was the section of Minskaya Street from Kutuzovsky Prospekt to Bolshaya Filevskaya, and the adjacent quarters. This is the Fili-Davydkovo area - one of the most prosperous in terms of infrastructure and ecology, and at the same time densely populated in the west of the capital. There are practically no industrial enterprises here, but there are a lot of small shady streets and quiet courtyards surrounded by five-story buildings. For several years now, Khrushchev buildings have been massively demolished and give way to high-rise apartment buildings. And the more actively this process goes, the more obvious it is to the city authorities that the district is sorely lacking a unified development concept that would streamline various modern buildings and form the center of Fili-Davydkovo.
Another large-scale urban planning task is associated with the development of Minskaya Street itself, which in the near future will become part of the city-wide highway - the Fourth Transport Ring. In order to prevent the interests of the city and residents of the district from entering into serious contradictions and a new architectural concept was needed, which, on the one hand, would make it possible to implement the elements of the city program for the development of transport infrastructure, and on the other hand, would make it possible to minimize the negative impact of the city-wide highway on the surrounding buildings as much as possible. … Unfortunately, we know many examples when large transport communications literally "tear" the fabric of urban development. The same Leningradka in Moscow, or Kifisia in Athens. Last year, the Moskomarkhitektury announced a closed competition for the architectural concept of the formation of the development of Minskaya Street on the section from the Smolensk direction of the Moscow Railways to Bolshaya Filevskaya Street, according to which the ABD architects project was recognized as one of the best.
As already mentioned, the essence of the urban planning concept developed by ABD architects is to take Minskaya Street underground and improve not the space that is adjacent to it, but what was just a roadway until recently. Minskaya street is by no means the widest in Moscow, however, 3-4 lanes in each direction will be typed, and their release from vehicles will give the region truly colossal territories.
The existing transport scheme of the region is extremely traditional. You can drive right through it along Minskaya Street, at a roundabout located approximately in the middle of the reconstructed section, go right or left, and go around the area along any of the perimeter streets and return back to the main axis. The advantages of this scheme are obvious: in Fili-Davydkovo there are almost no traffic jams (except for the streets adjacent to Gorbushka), and you can get to any point in the district by several routes. Therefore, although the architects are taking its main transport route underground, they retain the principle of organizing the movement of cars within the boundaries of the district. In particular, the ABD architects project provides for the creation of four additional tracks. These newly formed streets form a one-way traffic ring that will cover the main part of the projected area and will allow road transport to be removed from the central development area. Two perpendicular Minskaya streets - Malaya Filevskaya and Oleko Dundicha - will also dive underground in this place, but Kastanaevskaya, at the intersection with which there is now a noisy car circulation, will actually split into two segments isolated from each other.
In the area of the Filyovsky Park metro station on Minskaya Street, the architects propose to create multi-level intercepting parking lots. The organization of any large-scale pedestrian zone provides for the construction of a large number of shopping, residential and office complexes, and, of course, many people will come to each of them in cars. The architects' calculation is simple: to dive out of the tunnel into the "pocket" of the parking lot is faster and more convenient than looking for parking on the adjacent streets, which means that underground parking lots will not be empty, and the courtyards, in turn, will be free of cars.
Designers call the space freed from vehicles as a multifunctional public area, which will eventually turn into a local urban center. That part of it, which used to be the actual roadway, turns into a green boulevard, indented with pedestrian paths. At the same time, ABD architects are faithful to their favorite principle of creating a visually comfortable living environment, and not a single path, unlike the former highway, is laid directly. The zigzag boulevard offers interesting perspectives for pedestrians, while numerous recreational areas and playgrounds, as well as areas for social events, are designed to provide the "content" of the walks.
Along the boulevard there will also be shops and various household services - the project provides for a whole chain of such volumes with a height of 2-3 floors. Planned as narrow wedges, they connect the 30-story tenement towers to the main retail and office center next to the metro station. In addition to residential skyscrapers, of which there will be only 8 on the site, 11 residential quarters with perimeter buildings with a height of 8-12 floors are being created in the district. And if the towers form a system of visual accents, then the closed quarters not only provide a clear separation of public and private spaces, but also organically continue the urban planning tradition of the Fili-Davydkovo area.
And if Novy Arbat is quite difficult to imagine without a stream of cars, then the transformation of Minsk Street into a pedestrian boulevard seems almost natural. The authors of the concept for the development of the area very sensitively grasped the nature of its development and were able to recreate the charm of quiet Filev courtyards with modern means.
