At the end of January, as well as at its beginning, the most discussed topic was the seemingly private history of "Muromev's dacha". Numerous journalists covering this conflict, not without reason, compared it with the history of the eviction of "private traders" from Yuzhny Butovo, and towards the end of January - with the demolition of the village of "Rechnik". It should be noted that the authorities were not slow to respond to the increased flow of criticism: on the pages of the newspaper Vremya Novostey, adviser to the chairman of the Moscow Heritage Committee Nikolai Pereslegin angrily denounced the private ownership interests of the inhabitants of the crow settlement, and Mayor Yuri Luzhkov called this story "speculation.
It must be admitted that this story is not entirely architectural, at least not yet. Rather, it is public. And the comparison with Yuzhny Butovo and Rechnik is quite appropriate: judging by the multitude of press reports, the Moscow government has launched a campaign to fight squatters, people who live in an area to which, for whatever reason, do not have full rights. Looking at the persistence with which these people are being evicted, it can be assumed that someone, like a good business executive, decided to “squeeze out” the disputed plots, replenishing the common treasury of Moscow lands; it is possible that for construction, although so far the vacated land is either designated for parking for public transport, or is generally considered a nature conservation zone. If this is the case, and the land is cleared for future construction, then, frankly, the inhabitants of these places will not be helped by references to the subtleties of the law, or the noise in the press, or the cultural context, as is the case with the Muromtsev dacha.
The story of which, by the way, in the second half of January was supplemented by one more small incident. The house disappeared from the list of "declared" objects on the Moskonaslediya website, where it got due to the fact that earlier, even before the fire, residents applied for the status of a monument. It is easy for the committee to remove information from its own website; But that was not the case - the activists took screenshots and reported on the change of status on the Arkhnadzor website. So what is the memory of a place, and do the words genius loci have any meaning for modern officials? The Arkhnadzorites spoke about this at their next art action, which this time was held on the ashes.
Meanwhile, the New Year's fire fanned out on a much larger scale: one after another, the media started talking about the fact that the authentic historical environment was literally being burned out in the most active way throughout the country. The Vremya novostei newspaper drew a parallel between Moscow's methods of urban planning and the situation in Torzhok, Nizhny Novgorod and Kostroma, Novye Izvestia recalled similar cases in St. Petersburg and Ulyanovsk. An article by Konstantin Mikhailov in Ogonyok is devoted to an overview of the Moscow fires of recent years.
But another plot, developing since the New Year holidays - the clearing of Khitrovka - aroused sympathy from the Moscow Heritage Committee. The Committee sent an appeal to the Moscow Mayor about the need to suspend the investment contract with DS Development LLC. Of course, canceling it altogether would be a miracle of miracles, but Rustam Rakhmatullin never ceases to hope for such a miracle. In his opinion, the demolition of the technical school opened a magnificent historical square, and this space must be preserved for the city.
This January, it was also discovered that several billion rubles spent by Inteko on the restoration of the iconic Worker and Kolkhoz Woman monument (opened with pomp in December) will return to her a hundredfold: in the near future, right behind the monument, this developer will begin construction of a new multifunctional complex, as reported by "Gazeta". In January, the same company appeared in another megaproject - the development of the territory of the demolished Rossiya hotel. The project, as the same Gazeta writes, has entered an active phase: a decree of the Moscow Government has been issued, which includes ownership of 6 on Varvarka Street, a certain multifunctional complex and Inteko company. But the name of Norman Foster is no longer mentioned.
Another ambitious project promises to enter the active stage - the reconstruction of Pushkinskaya Square. Archaeologists here, apparently, will be replaced by builders in the very near future. In January it was supposed to be considered by experts from the Moscow Heritage Committee, the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction and the Moscow Natural Resources Committee, Gazeta reports. However, is this the project that was submitted to the public council three times? According to Gazeta, it has changed significantly: it looks like the previously expelled trade function will return to two underground levels of the complex. Komsomolskaya Pravda sums up the opinions of the square's defenders and investors. The statements of the latter, by the way, as always, are optimistic: archaeological excavations are not fiction, neighboring buildings will not collapse, traffic jams will disappear, and there will be more greenery.
The $ 400 million that the investor is going to invest in this project, not to mention the development of Zaryadye, suggests that the crisis for the Moscow construction complex is over. True, selectively: as the mayor said, the budget that was overdrawn would not be able to afford the restoration of three famous Moscow estates "Kuskovo", "Kuzminki" and "Vorontsovo" in 2010, as reported by Izvestia. And, finally, several editions have written about another "construction of the century" in Moscow - the reconstruction of the Bolshoi Theater - in the light of the next anniversary - the State Academic Bolshoi Theater is 185 years old. RIA Novosti recalls the history of the creation of this famous theater building.
The St. Petersburg project of adapting the famous General Staff building of Carl Rossi to the new exhibition halls of the Hermitage continues the theme of reconstructions and restorations. The project developed by Studio 44 is one of the few with a more or less prosperous fate, in any case, according to journalists, it is the least secret and, moreover, is being implemented ahead of schedule. The first stage will be completed in August, the Culture TV channel reports the words of Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage. At the end of January, a journalist from Rossiyskaya Gazeta also attended a tour of the construction site led by Mr. Piotrovsky.
However, in St. Petersburg, too, it was not without new urban planning scandals. One of them has been developing since the New Year - this is the so-called project. "Reconstruction" of the building on Universitetskaya embankment, 7-9-11 named so only because new construction in this protected zone is prohibited by law. Demolition of a 2-storey building in the 1940s and the construction of a 7-storey business center in its place was approved by the City Council and KGIOP and will begin in the spring, writes the portal "City 812". The construction of another piece of glass near Palace Square is an event, unfortunately, an ordinary event for today's St. Petersburg and, nevertheless, challenging, so that almost all leading media, including Izvestia, responded to it.
And the last important topic of this month - the restitution of church property and valuables, has also continued to develop since the beginning of the year, when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the transfer of the Novodevichy Convent to the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, the Ogonyok magazine published an interview with the chief curator of the Historical Museum, which until very recently was in charge of the Novodevichy Convent. And the portal "Tatiana's Day" posted an article based on the materials of a recent roundtable in RIA Novosti, at which representatives of the scientific and restoration communities discussed restitution. In the meantime, Vladimir Putin's "gesture of goodwill" greatly excited the representatives of other faiths, who also voiced their hopes for restitution. Nezavisimaya Gazeta tells about this in detail.
There is only one month left until spring, and the events of the end of January hint, apparently, at the beginning of the post-crisis thaw in the investment business. Such large projects as Zaryadye, Pushkinskaya Square began to stir … Inteko became more active. Together with the "cleansing of territories" from the "squatters", all this speaks of some revival in the construction sector, however, so far in its investment part, it is far from architecture. On the contrary, sonorous architectural projects disappear somewhere: Foster finally disappeared from Zaryadye, and he is mentioned less and less in relation to the reconstruction of the Pushkin Museum. And only the monuments and the historical environment were again unlucky - there is no money for them, no desire to save, in any case, those on whom it depends more than on the activists-townspeople. However, funds were found for the luxurious replica of the Kolomna Palace …
