On the first day of the festival, the head of KCAP Kes Christians handed the publication of the Strategic Masterplan of Perm to the Governor of the Perm Territory and the Mayor of Perm. This project is part of an ambitious and highly unusual mission undertaken by Governor Oleg Chirkunov, Mayor Igor Shubin and Senator Sergei Gordeev several years ago - to turn Perm into the country's cultural capital. The city began to develop a new role for itself in 2007, when C: SA held for Perm the first international competition with the participation of Peter Zumthor himself on the jury, for the project of reconstruction of the building of the Perm Picture Gallery; however, the competition turned out to be two winners and the matter did not go further. Then, in 2008, the Moscow gallery owner Marat Gelman first brought the exhibition "Russian Poor" to Perm and exhibited it in the building of the former River Station, and then accepted the post of director of the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art located in this building. The regional leadership, carried away by the new ideology, began to allocate funds for high-profile exhibition projects and international architectural competitions. A contemporary art center has emerged in the PERMM Museum in the River Station building, and a new information project by Marat Guelman "Salt" has emerged in the network. And finally, in the spring, a competition was held for the construction of a new stage and reconstruction of the building of the Perm Theater.
But the most ambitious of the plans of the Perm leadership is, of course, the master plan for the city's development, commissioned by the famous Dutch bureau KCAP in 2007. Kes Christians spoke about him in detail at his lecture on the opening day of the Biennale. The head of KCAP first came to Perm with his students and studied the city for several months, observed the local "urban anarchy" and worked out ways to overcome it. As a result, according to the architect, KCAP faced two main tasks. The first is to overcome the state of a closed city. The point is not only that in Soviet times political prisoners were exiled to Perm, and after the war, heavy industry enterprises were evacuated. Now - says the architect, this is a city of architectural arbitrariness, "as, indeed, the whole of Russia." There are many fenced-in monofunctional spaces like government agencies, hospitals, institutes - each behind its own fence and with a single access axis. Kees Christians is convinced that the city needs to instill a multidirectional structure; in other words, to "condense" its space, especially in the center, with many additional functions and to make them open.
The second task is to establish the correct use of resources. The conceptual premise of the Perm masterplan is that you cannot solve the quality problem by simply adding, completing, and so on. Now in Perm, the balance between resources and the ability to maintain them is upset. For example, the water supply system would be enough for one and a half of such cities, but it works smoothly only in the central part. There are rich green resources, but the city looks uncomfortable. There is no need to talk about a significant historical and cultural heritage.
Optimize Kees Christians offers not only the use of resources, but also urban development. He advocates the consolidation of the city instead of sprawl. Today, 40% of the urban fabric is subject to demolition and this frees up enough space for the transformation of neighborhoods: new buildings should not go beyond the boundaries of the existing ones. Thus, Kes Christians strives to achieve the density necessary for the full-fledged economic development of the city, especially in the center. For the same reason, he is fundamentally opposed to the development of the city on both banks of the Kama. For this point of the KCAP masterplan, Perm architects especially criticized it, reaching accusations of unprofessionalism. However, Kees Christians emphasized that the idea of developing a city on two banks is an absolute illusion; in order to master the two banks fully and be like Paris or London, Perm needs at least 200-400 years. Today, the completion of new micro-districts and further growth in breadth with the construction of high-rise multifunctional complexes on the periphery threatens only with new traffic jams.
Unlike a master plan, a master plan is not a normative document, and it is less detailed than a master plan should be. Masterplan is, rather, a kind of philosophical or political doctrine of the future development of the city. Of course, when "transferred" to the master plan, it will change somewhat. But in any case, such a serious interference in the existing urban fabric, social and other processes, it is difficult to take root, as the architects themselves noted, it is necessary to cut it with the precision of a surgeon. How to do it? Kes Christians sees two ways to influence the city. The first one is "from above", i.e. an administrative decision, for example, to take and draw a double solid next to the tram tracks so that they are not blocked by cars, etc. fight for the efficiency of public transport. The second method is "point", or the construction of individual important objects that form around themselves some enclaves of culture. There have already been three such attempts in recent years - according to the number of international competitions: for the project of the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art, the reconstruction of the River Station and the Opera and Ballet Theater. The results of the last two, already held at KCAP, are presented at the exhibition. In addition, on the basis of the masterplan, competitions for individual microdistricts are already being held; one project was made by the same KCAP and can also be seen in the CHA.
In 2010, the reconstruction of the Perm embankment will begin. KCAP conceived to make it multi-functional in a European way, with a museum, park, sports grounds. Now the embankment is cut off from the city by the railway - the Dutch proposed to build several so-called "Connectors" - impressive passages above the line with elevators and retail premises. The initiative, meanwhile, was criticized by the Perm City Council, which considered the nine-storey staircases-bridges a threat to the existing building ensemble of the 19th-20th centuries. with the cathedral. This is far from the only case of a clash between KCAP and a local architectural workshop, which has joined the ideological war between “local” and “foreign” cultural figures. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that there are indeed controversial places in the Dutch project - for example, the desire to turn Perm into a compact city by the recognized Russian architect and urban planner Alexander Vysokovsky (who also worked on urban development projects for Perm) considers it illusory: Perm will never be like this, because to. the city is already lanky, stretched along the bank of the Kama.
However, all these particulars do not negate the main thing - a unique for Russia precedent of cooperation between leading architects and local authorities, ready to accept an additional burden in the form of new landscaped areas from the municipal fund in favor of the city. At least for now, everything looks exactly like this. And it is not excluded that if it goes like this, Perm will "surpass" Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny and will become the first city in Russia, equipped in a European way.
