Central and regional mass media have already begun to sum up the results of 2010, and bloggers are not lagging behind. Thus, critics Alexander Lozhkin and Nikolai Pereslegin have compiled their ratings of the main architectural events of the year. According to Lozhkin, they were the opening of the Strelka Institute and the departure of Yuri Luzhkov from the post of mayor. The critic considers the project of the year to be the main exhibit of the past Moscow biennale of architecture - the Strategic Master Plan of Perm, the objects of the year - the Novosibirsk business center "Cocoon" and "Perm Rotunda" by Alexander Brodsky, shown in Paris. Lozhkin named Sergei Skuratov the Architect of the Year, and the Factory Russia exposition in the Russian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale as the exhibition of the year.
The results of the year from Nikolai Pereslegin include the most negative events of 2010 - for example, the reappointment of the "court" chief architect Alexander Kuzmin or the scandal with the House on Mosfilmovskaya by the same Sergei Skuratov. The critic calls the Tsvetnoy Central Market, which was opened in December, under the project of Meganom as the Object of the Year. The adviser to the head of the Moscow Heritage Committee did not forget to mention the monuments: plus they deserved the Kadashi, where the demolition of ordinary historical buildings was suspended, minus - the Pozharsky chambers on Bolshaya Lubyanka, which over the past year have not found an owner.
However, the main attention of bloggers in the last two weeks has not been focused on the "objects of the year." The most discussed building in the blogosphere during this period was the Senator business center under construction on Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg, designed by the architect Alexander Kitsula (published on the Gorod 812 portal). The neoclassical building caused strong discontent among the supporters of modern architecture, and bloggers came out in its defense. Perm architect Alexander Rogozhnikov writes: “This is a wonderful project. The only thing that hurts the eye is the disproportionately huge flowerpots on the attic. Perhaps I would have made the three arches on the ground floor more active. But these are all trifles … "A colleague in the shop Andrei Barkhin joined the defense of neoclassicism:" Classicist architects are accused of unethicality !! What else will it get - to accusations of witchcraft? The future has arrived. Everyone saw the new aesthetics of the future. /… / They are outraged that not a battle of flying stomachs the size of a house appeared in such a tasty place for a modernist, but a normal building! " Blogger lufer, in turn, notes: "Architects brought up on the" Pompidou Center "and criticism of Zholtovsky will never accept neoclassical trends, which are more relevant" here and now "."
The modern residential complex "Victoria", designed for Perm by the Bureau "A-B", was much less famous. As Alexander Rogozhnikov writes in his blog, "this not quite architectural idiocy, which is gigantic in size, is an ordinary multi-storey building, a communal apartment for small oligarchs and destroys the place of the historical center, which could become much more attractive for life."
In about the same epithets, St. Petersburg architects and city protection activists describe the glass shopping center, which not so long ago disfigured Sennaya Square. Now they decided to cover the shame with the second phase of the same shopping center, already at the corner of Efimova and Sennaya streets with more "contextual" facades, at the same time placing in it the exit from the Spasskaya metro station and the vestibule of the Sennaya Ploschad station. Blogger kleomen writes about this in detail. The architectural competition for the project for the reconstruction of the square was canceled ostensibly for the sake of speeding up the work, he recalls, but the development of a single concept was prevented by the contradictions of various groups of investors. However, the blogger is more interested in whether the Church of the Assumption will be restored: it seems that this idea has sunk into oblivion along with the competition.
However, the kleomen does not see a big trouble in the fact that the competition did not work out, since so far "nothing good has been born of them." The Perm architect Denis Galitsky agrees with this, having entered into correspondence with the local authorities about the held with violations of the competition for the reconstruction of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater. The blogger never found the truth: the Perm Ministry of Culture refused the proposal to arrange a second choice of the project from those presented for the competition, but with the participation of the general public and professionals.
Another high-profile international architectural competition - for the project of reconstruction of the Dynamo stadium - was the reason for Irina Korobyina's speech in the blogosphere. The director of the Museum of Architecture defended the historic stadium building. The implementation of the joint project of Eric Van Egeraat and Mosproekt-2, which won the recent competition, according to Korobina, is impossible, because, in addition to destroying the monument of constructivism, it will also reduce the surrounding park and worsen the transport situation on Leningradka.
The issue of the loss of heritage sites - not possible, but, alas, already taken place - has been actively discussed in the last two weeks in St. Petersburg. The city authorities sentenced to demolition one more house on Nevsky Prospekt, at number 68, carefully restored after the war according to the project of architects B. N. Zhuravlev and I. I. Fomin. The house in which Belinsky, Pisarev, Goncharov and Tyutchev lived, interfered with the underground parking lot. Live City responded with criticism in LiveJournal.
This event, of course, darkened the long-awaited victory over the Gazprom skyscraper. It is also noteworthy that public figures are not inclined to exaggerate their role in the fight against this project: “Unfortunately, the decision to build a skyscraper on Okhta was canceled in the same way as it was adopted - by the individual expression of the will of the governor. All attempts to cancel it in a civilized way (ie through a court or through a referendum) have ended in failure."
Another cardinal urban planning and socio-economic initiative of the authorities - this time from Moscow - seriously engages bloggers with its possible consequences. It is about the proposal of the new mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, to unite the capital and the region. This topic again excited the public after a memorandum appeared on the website of the Union of Architects, in which the Union fully supported this association. Not all bloggers share this position, for example, the architect Petr Vois is convinced: “I, as an architect, on the one hand, and a manager of a building, on the other, in the unification of a“big village”with a village, by definition, except for the desire to arrange a new redistribution of property, I do not look at anything..
And discussions on the urban planning policy of Moscow in the 1950s-1970s in the blogosphere were initiated by the 100th anniversary of the birth of M. V. Posokhin, the former chief architect of Moscow for more than 20 years, the author of Kalinin Avenue (now Novy Arbat), the head of the development of the general plan of the capital in 1971 and many other major projects. More about the merits of M. V. Possokhin read the synthart blog.
Another architect of a bygone era, Alexander Kaminsky, recalls the MuAra blog, which publishes not only announcements of all museum events, but materials from the funds with interesting comments on them. The informational reason for the story about the student of Konstantin Ton and the teacher of Fyodor Shekhtel was the move of the exhibition dedicated to Kaminsky's work from the White Chambers of the Moscow Heritage Committee on Prechistenka to the Hungarian Embassy, whose building was designed by this architect.
At the end of the review - a couple of posts on foreign topics. Blogger Efim Freidin published an interesting informal report from the Strelka Institute retreat in Hong Kong. And the author of the English-language blog "Archi Alternative" (which also exists in the Russian version), an American architect named Albert, gave a ruthless analysis of the behavior of modern architectural "stars". “Make no mistake, modern architects can do a lot of different things. However, these things are not necessarily related to Architecture. " The blogger divides the venerable designers into three groups - Theorists, Trepachs and Traders. Who, in his opinion, are Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenmann, David Chipperfield and other "stars", read here.
