On December 9, the governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, officially announced the cancellation of the decree approving the 400-meter height for the construction of the Gazprom tower opposite the Smolny Monastery. The Kommersant newspaper believes that the decisive word in this story was said by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Portal "City 812", in turn, puts forward a whole series of versions of the cancellation of the scandalous project, among which, in addition to the official and "presidential", there is, for example, "football", according to which the refusal of the "Okhta Center" is "a payback for Russia's right to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup”.
The notorious tower in its current form is unlikely to be transferred anywhere - representatives of the RMJM company say this, cited by RIA Novosti. According to the architects, Okhta Center was designed “for a specific location” and assumed, in particular, “the reincarnation of the Swedish fortress Nyenskans”. Now the project will most likely be abandoned. The site on Okhta, meanwhile, remains with Gazprom, the Chastny Korrespondent newspaper reminds. According to Valentina Matvienko, "here either Gazprom or another investor is implementing a project that will not cause objections." But what will become of the archaeological monuments, which the last expedition of the IIMK RAS left without conservation, is not yet clear.
Gazprom itself, according to unofficial information cited by Kommersant, is going to move to the 140-meter Lider Tower skyscraper on Constitution Square in the Moscow District. However, the authorities have already recognized the tower as a mistake, 2 times higher than the permissible height. So the company risks being drawn into a new urban planning scandal again, the newspaper writes. "A rare example of respect for public opinion" called the decision of the authorities to cancel the construction of the skyscraper newspaper NY Times.
Last week, in St. Petersburg, the first stage of the reconstruction of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building, which Studio 44 is adapting to the exhibition halls of the Hermitage, was presented to journalists. “This is the first Grand Project, equal in importance and quality to the reconstruction of the Louvre Pei and the British Foster Museum, which we were able to really implement,” writes Grigory Revzin in Kommersant. According to the project of Nikita and Oleg Yaveinov, who won an international competition in 2003, a chain of five halls with a height of three floors, the so-called A large suite, divided by 12-meter portals. To date, two of the largest courtyards have been completed, i.e. about half the work. The rest is promised to be completed by 2014. Archi.ru, Fontanka.ru and Vedomosti also published reports from the presentation.
In parallel, the City Planning Council of St. Petersburg discussed another major project - the Quarter "Embankment of Europe". The experts were presented projects of the quarter's facades, developed by architects of two dozen studios (mainly from Germany and Austria), who were invited by the authors of the town-planning concept - Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban. All facades are typical for St. Petersburg, long, in the neoclassical style. They will be visible from the embankments, and the modern part will adjoin the Boris Eifman Dance Palace. The Council approved the decision as a whole, Fontanka.ru and Izvestia report.
And the next high-profile story - with lobbying for ambiguous amendments to the law on heritage - also began in St. Petersburg and was resolved there. Recall that in November, the city authorities, together with State Duma deputy Viktor Pleskachevsky, tried to introduce the concept of "reconstruction" into the law, which immediately caused a wave of public criticism. Opposition letters and rallies forced the initiators to back down: the scandalous term disappeared from the new edition of the amendments, writes Culture-portal. In addition, thanks to the efforts of the well-known St. Petersburg legacy defender and deputy of the Legislative Assembly Alexei Kovalev, the amendments now also eliminate the inconsistency between the law and the Gradkodeks, IA Regnum reports.
Gazeta.ru, however, reminds that the second controversial amendment - about changing the level of decision-making on excluding objects from the state register - has not yet been changed. Therefore, the all-Russian protest action of city rights defenders, initiated by Arkhnadzor, scheduled for December 11, nevertheless took place, moreover, in several cities at once. The report on the rally in Moscow was published on the website of the movement.
Arkhnadzor, meanwhile, does not give up its position on another resonant issue - the reconstruction of the Shakhovskys' estate for the new stage of the Helikon-Opera. On December 14, the Union of Architects of Russia hosted a press conference by Andrey Bokov and Dmitry Bertman - a response from the project manager and artistic director of the famous theater to the stream of criticism and letters to the authorities from city rights activists. The opinions of the press on this issue were divided: for example, "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" and "Izvestia" are on the side of the theatergoers, Gazeta.ru and Archi.ru have taken a neutral position.
The tireless leader of Arkhnadzor Rustam Rakhmatullin, meanwhile, caught the city authorities in yet another illegal project: in an article in Izvestia, he writes about the commercial “development” of the areas of the Belorussky railway station: “Together with the interchange loop that destroys the Tverskaya viaduct, inside this loop, in the very center of the square, a glass cylinder with several floors is being designed. This top hat is a restaurant that threatens to block the remaining views of the church. At the same time, the critic expresses the hope that with the arrival of the new management of the Moscow construction complex, the projects of construction projects already begun on the squares near Paveletsky and Belorussky stations will be revised.
According to Kommersant, the emergence of a new head of the reorganized Moscow construction department, Marat Khusnullin, first of all means the actual removal of Vladimir Resin from the management of the construction complex. According to the mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Resin will now lead "large-scale structures on the most complex issues," including the metro and Moscow-City MIBC. City, as you know, became one of the first objects of the "cleansing" of the new mayor: a number of projects in the MIBC were canceled, others, on the contrary, were activated. Thus, Lenta.ru and Moskovskaya Perspektiva write about the resumption of construction of one of the long-term construction projects - the 250-meter "Dancing Skyscraper" called City Palace, in which it was planned to place the city wedding palace. According to Lenta.ru, by the end of 2011, the complexes "Imperia Tower", "City of Capitals", etc. should also be completed. central core.
Another urban planning news was the recent discussion of the concept of introducing the institute of independent examination of design documentation in Russia, which Kommersant wrote about. It is planned that it will replace the State Expertise, which, apparently, will remain only for certain unique projects.
The results of the architectural and urban planning policy of the Moscow authorities in 2010 were summed up in Kommersant-Weekend by Grigory Revzin. The critic calls this year the happiest for architecture in the entire post-Soviet era: “Architectural solutions have never been supported so popularly and raised so many hopes for the best.”Only architects are now encouraged not for implementation, but, on the contrary, for abandoning projects, Revzin adds: "Architecture has become a negative value in society, and this is the main result of the year."
In conclusion, one more good news: the architect Alexander Brodsky received the Grand Prix of the Kandinsky Prize. Brodsky presented for the competition an installation called "The Road" in the form of a stylized coupe interior, executed in his characteristic nostalgic manner. As Gazeta.ru writes, “for the first time the award jury's verdict is perceived with such unanimity. The figure of Alexander Brodsky is really capable of reconciling supporters of very different positions in art."
