The meeting began with the consideration of a new and little-known urban development project - "the territorial scheme of the Eastern zone of the formation of urban development complexes." We are talking about several districts at once: the project includes Preobrazhenskoe, Bogorodskoe, Semenovskaya, Sokolinaya Gora; the area of the territory is more than 2 thousand hectares. Such large-scale projects have never been considered at a council before, - according to the chief architect of the city, Alexander Kuzmin, now he has submitted it for consideration specifically, in order to check how the new master plan will cope with such a task. The listed districts have many problems: low provision of housing, social infrastructure, vast industrial zones requiring sanitary protection.
The authors of the project propose to find a reserve of free space inside the designated area and use it to modernize the housing stock: replace up to 93% of uncomfortable housing, increasing its area by 1.7 times. A significant part of the land is proposed to be allocated for the development of a network of streets and highways. Suffice it to say that they are going to build the Northern Rockada - a chord highway, as well as a large section of the Fourth Ring. Taking into account the 10% increase in population included in the project, the building density is growing significantly, which made some experts doubt whether the future living environment, which Alexander Kuzmin talked about, will be so comfortable.
In favor of the project, meanwhile, the innovation of the developers of the general plan - to allocate in a separate project a special zone of "historical Preobrazhenka", located between the Yauza and the former Kamer-Kollezhsky Val, in the development of which a special working group will be involved.
Vladimir Resin supported the project, but was embarrassed by the speech of those experts who predicted overconsolidation of the development. The interim mayor said that the main task of such global reconstructions is to get a comfortable living environment, first of all, for local residents, even if at the cost of economic benefits. Therefore, "the density indicators in the project need to be corrected." That was why the project was accepted.
Then the council turned to the fate of the famous complex of Provision Warehouses, the existing reconstruction project of which with adaptation to the Museum of Moscow was very harshly criticized by experts for the idea of blocking the courtyard between the historical buildings and the proposed construction of an extensive underground part. Apparently, the recent announcement of the Russian Orthodox Church, which decided to finally evict the Museum of Moscow from the premises of the Church of St. John the Theologian on Novaya Square, made me recall the project at such a difficult time for the city administration. At the same time, the Provision Warehouses, which were not easily vacated by the Ministry of Defense and transferred to the balance of the city, have not yet become the final haven of the museum, since the exhibition concept can be developed only after the conclusion of the restorers. But they still could not start their work in the absence of a finally agreed project.
Yesterday the council made a historic decision - to adapt the monument to a museum exclusively within the framework of the law. And this means, first of all, to refuse to overlap the yard in any form. Alexander Kuzmin himself unexpectedly came out with this position. He recalled that the ensemble of three U-shaped buildings and a small corps guardhouse is the territory of the monument, on which the 17th workshop of "Mospoekt-2" developed and approved the so-called "subject of protection". As you know, no new construction is permitted here by law - neither the overlap of the courtyard, nor a free-standing glass volume (like the Louvre pyramid) in the center of the courtyard. Moreover, the courtyard will not be jammed and an attempt to block it would entail the construction of an additional wall from the side of Kropotkinskiy Lane. In the meantime, this covered courtyard gives practically nothing from the point of view of the exhibition area, Kuzmin said: only 4 thousand square meters, plus to the existing 35 thousand.
Nevertheless, the chief architect insists on another controversial point of the project - underground construction. He believes that it is necessary to build a complex of auxiliary premises under the open courtyard - lobbies, toilets, engineering rooms, a storage facility, etc., in order to free the historical buildings themselves from them, in which nothing other than restoration is expected. Such construction does not contradict the law, and even the fierce opponent of the project, Rustam Rakhmatullin, impressed by the unexpected speech of Alexander Kuzmin, agreed that the removal of the "distribution center" would only prolong the life of the monument. However, he questioned the need to expand underground areas for the needs of the organization and build a storage facility for the museum.
Alexander Kuzmin, meanwhile, does not give up the idea of removing a new exit from the metro directly to the museum. There will be no parking under the monument, but it may be arranged under the Garden Ring: Kuzmin reminded that in this place it is wide and in the central part it has no communications.
As for the adaptation of the buildings themselves to the museum premises, Alexander Kudryavtsev and others insisted that the restorers first determine what kind of "potential" the monument can offer - and only then start developing the concept, and not vice versa. Alexei Klimenko, for example, lashed out at the Museum of Moscow itself, which, with its “local history collection”, is not worthy, in his opinion, to be located “in premises of a heroic scale”. Remains controversial, by the way, the issue of "unauthorized construction" in the historical buildings of the Ministry of Defense, which, as you know, for a long time used them as a garage. Whether it is worth disassembling additional reinforced concrete floors and ramps made in the Soviet era or retaining - will be decided by experts.
Alexander Kuzmin's speech, on the whole, caused the most positive emotions in the audience; no one objected to the removal of the question of overlapping the courtyard, and almost everyone supported the idea of developing the underground space, including the head of the Moscow Heritage Committee Valery Shevchuk. And Yuri Roslyak urged to start archaeological and geodetic work immediately. Vladimir Resin also spoke approvingly. He also noted that he had already signed an order on the survey of the foundations of the monument. Finally, the Acting Mayor thanked the Ministry of Defense for not demolishing the buildings "in those dashing times", but keeping them, even under a garage, as the sailors of Kronstadt once did and saved the famous cathedral by marking a club in it.
The third in a row, the council considered the project of the Kremlin museums depository on Borovitskaya Square (Mosproekt-2, workshop of Vladimir Kolosnitsyn), which has become famous in recent weeks, for the sake of which several dozen journalists attended yesterday's meeting - three times more than usual. Alexander Kuzmin in his speech this time was very predictable, he has already stated his position to the media more than once. Placement on the depositary square, in his opinion, is possible, since the Kremlin museums, first of all, still do not have their own building - and it is necessary, and somewhere nearby. And secondly, on the plot chosen for construction, the ensemble of the square needs to be completed, since now there are "blind ends" of buildings that are accidentally left over from the clearing of the old quarter in the 1970s. To restore it would mean again to hide the view of the "… back, but magnificent facade" of Pashkov's house, as well as the views of the Kremlin from Volkhonka. Therefore, the area still needs to be preserved, people are already used to it. The idea to complete the ensemble conceived back in the General Plan of 1935 with a certain building between the Pashkov House and the Kremlin existed, as Kuzmin noted, back in the 1990s and was supported by the decree of the then president, the Moscow government and the monuments protection authorities.
A well-known project was presented to the council. It provides two underground levels for storing exhibits, three floors of restoration workshops with windows facing the Kremlin wall, two floors of the information center for museums, two small exhibition halls and an underground lobby.
The reaction to the project, as expected, was stormy, although absolutely everyone agreed with the very idea of expanding the Kremlin's museums. But many, however, were in favor of finding another place for this purpose, and not touching the square at all. Honored Architect of Russia, Zoya Kharitonova proposed to transfer GUM to museums for this purpose: any construction on Borovitskaya Square, in her opinion, deprives the Kremlin of the remnants of airspace and thereby destroys its scale: 5-9 meter fortress walls will have to argue with the 22-meter depository. And Aleksey Klimenko proposed to find a reserve of the square inside the Kremlin itself, to evict from it, for example, a garrison of many thousands and not to take the "property of the nation" out of these walls.
Boris Pasternak came up with more realistic plans. He recalled that ECOS has always welcomed the possibility of developing Kremlin museums on the square, but it is not at all correct to concentrate all functions in one place, which causes the volume to swell to unacceptable proportions. “The location of the building presupposes its accessibility and publicity,” says Pasternak, exhibition halls are appropriate in it, and restoration and other technical premises can be easily removed, for example, in buildings already owned by museums on Lebyazhy Lane. Boris Pasternak also noted that ECOS at one time insisted on changing the central composition of the building and spoke in favor of lowering its right corner, which visually adjacent to the Kremlin. The experts also hoped to get a video visualization of the new object, but so far none of this has been done. The current scale is impossible, especially since the 16 meters of height permitted by UNESCO must be measured from the foot of the earth, and not from the hill, which is why the real height of the building according to today's project is more than 20 meters. Finally, it is wrong to consider the object without a system of pedestrian links and without an architectural solution on the opposite side of the square.
Architect Nikita Shangin supported the possibility of developing underground spaces and transforming Borovitsky Hill into an artificial one. As for the appearance of the building, the “quasi-classical language” of the current object in the 21st century looks, in his opinion, already “complete provincialism”.
The chairman of the council, Vladimir Resin, supported critics, saying that the building resembles not a museum, but a building of a Sochi sanatorium. “The fact that we have released this 'monster' on the council is our common mistake,” he said. Its roots lie in the desire to fit everything into this object at once. In order to reduce the volume, Resin proposed to revise the project assignment and exclude something from it, and place something in an artificial hill. According to the Acting Mayor, the project must also include underground pedestrian connections. The last thing that Resin proposed was to hold a national competition for the depository and instruct the Union of Architects to formulate a task for him. On that optimistic note, the unusually liberal council meeting ended.
