The demolition of Rogov's house, a remarkable monument of residential architecture of Pushkin's time, was carried out according to a scenario exactly reminiscent of the recent events on Khitrovskaya Square in Moscow. In both places, construction equipment appeared on the first day of the holidays, was stopped by vigilant citizens, who found out that there were no permits for dismantling the monument, and then work resumed, despite public protests. Fontanka.ru tells in detail about the true motives of the investor and how the monument, brought to an emergency state, was deprived of its protection status.
Having actually lost the fight for Rogov's house, the activists of St. Petersburg still hope to defend the monument of the Art Nouveau era - the wooden Gauswald dacha, located on Kamenny Island. Almost a year ago, this object was "sentenced" as allegedly irreversibly eaten by a fungus and not subject to restoration. Only now, at a meeting of the Council for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of St. Petersburg at the end of February, the city authorities finally reacted to the numerous protests of security organizations and allowed an independent examination to be carried out. This is reported by ZAKS.ru.
While St. Petersburg activists held pickets near Rogov's house, their Moscow colleagues from Arkhnadzor were on duty at Potapovskiy Pereulok, 6, where the 300-year-old chambers of the merchant Guryev are hidden behind a Soviet-era superstructure. After the December fire, the commission of Vladimir Resin hastened to state that everything in the house had burned out and it was now pointless to protect it. However, "Arkhnadzor" has a conclusion on the results of the survey of the house by the architect-restorer I. V. Izosimova, which testifies that much can still be saved in the monument. Excerpts from this document are quoted by Alexander Mozhaev. The publication on the Tatiana's Day portal is devoted to the same plot.
The effectiveness of public protection of monuments this month was proved by the positive experience of Petrozavodsk, where residents were able to defend two historic wooden houses on Lenin Avenue, scheduled for demolition for the construction of a new office center. This is reported by "Vesti".
However, not all monuments in Russia need an ambulance from restorers and a vigilant watch of heritage defenders. There are objects that are very generously funded by the state. So, last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin checked how the funds allocated for the restoration of the Mikhailovsky Castle in St. Petersburg and the objects of Tsarskoye Selo were spent. According to the same Vesti, the prime minister was especially interested in the fate of 140 kg of gold that the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve received for gilding the facades of the Catherine Palace.
Timely control over the course of restoration work at one time would not have hindered the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve. Then, perhaps, cracks and mold would not have appeared on the walls of the Bread House just a year after the builders left. Nezavisimaya Gazeta tried to figure out who is to blame for such a deplorable outcome of the shock restoration and what are the prospects of this monument now.
Talk about restitution and the return of real estate to cult organizations in the press in the second half of February almost faded. However, on February 19, Novye Izvestia published an open letter from museum workers to the president; the letter contains an intelligent request to speak out against the "thoughtless legislative initiative." It is not yet known how the president reacted to the letter; but for some reason it did not receive a significant response in the press.
Unexpectedly, religious objects became participants in two urban planning scandals in St. Petersburg. Last week, the City Planning Council reviewed the project of a business center and a residential building in Kovensky Lane (workshop "Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners"), close to the Church of the Mother of God of Lourdes, a monument of federal importance, erected in 1908-09 according to the project of architects L. N. Benois and M. M. Peretyatkovich. The projected complex is almost 6 meters higher, and it can visually overwhelm the temple. Novaya Gazeta tells about this in more detail.
At the same time, residents of the Moscow district of Sviblovo witnessed the dismantling of the wooden chapel of the Holy Martyr Vladimir. The official version says that instead of it a stone church will be built at the address: Beringov proezd, 1, and the chapel itself will be transported to the Vladimir region. However, according to the residents quoted by Gazeta, the site was simply vacated for another shopping center.
The revival around the Moscow megaprojects, which was observed at the beginning of this month, was continued by the news about the reconstruction of the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin. The head of the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan of Moscow and the main co-author of the Lord, Sergei Tkachenko, said at the end of last week that the project of the first stage, which includes new construction in Kolymazhny Lane, is nearing completion and will soon be submitted to public hearings. This is reported by "Arguments and Facts".
The end of February brought unexpected news - the city authorities announced their intention to erect a monument to the architect Le Corbusier in Moscow. According to Izvestia, the great Corbyu will "sit down" on a bronze chair next to the Tsentrosoyuz house on Myasnitskaya, his only building in Russia.
However, the capital is traditionally more interested not in architects, but in builders, and not a century ago, but now alive and able to carry out active investment activities. In order to make it easier for them, the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, came up with an initiative to reduce the total number of approvals for new construction projects within the city. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the scheme proposed by Kuzmin looks like this: all design institutions subordinate to the Moskomarkhitektura (for example, Mosproekt-3, Mospromproekt and Mosinzhproekt) are reorganized into open joint-stock companies with a 100 percent stake city, and NIiPI General Plan, GlavAPU and "Mosproekt-2" are granted the status of state autonomous institutions, so that signatures from them will no longer be required. Yuri Luzhkov enthusiastically supported this idea, so that the administrative reform in the field of architecture and construction can be considered begun. Read about the benefits it will bring to the industry in our next press reviews.
