In the blog of Alexander Rogozhnikov ar_chitect, a discussion began about the article by Lara Kopylova published the day before in the ECA magazine "Media Village in Sochi 2014". As you know, these first Russian eco-cities, or rather two parts of the village intended for journalists to live during the Olympics, were designed by the famous neoclassicists Mikhail Filippov and Maxim Atayants. Bloggers love these projects. Indeed, why should modern "sustainable" architecture, they say, not look like the buildings of Karo Alabyan in the 1930s? In particular, the author of the blog himself agrees with this: “But the truth - well, would anyone else build? What would be? Parallelepipeds? When solving the same issues with zoning and communications. Fake alpine chalets? Glass aquariums? Equally sickening …"
The critic Alexander Lozhkin (alexander_loz) also gives his assessment of the project: “I like the very appeal to the traditional planning structure and traditional archetypes - a street, a square, a boulevard”. But on the other hand, the blogger believes, antique villages are nothing more than an attraction imposed by a specific model of doing business from Russian developers, while “you cannot create a normal environment like that …” Orientation to the image and structure of the old city builds these projects into the concept of the so-called … "New urbanism", says Lara Kopylova. alexander_loz deciphers the fashionable term in its own way: "The Atayants project reproduces the very model of the American village, against which the pathos of new urbanism was directed." Lozhkin is sure that Atayants wanted to repeat in his village of Courchevel, but in the end he even surpassed the famous analogue, "replacing the multifunctional complex environment with private villas so beloved by our nouveau riche hearts, which, however, will not be private, since they are surrounded by roads on all sides."
Another post on the blog ar_chitect, dedicated to the results of the Perm Wooden House competition, also touches upon the topic of ecological construction. On the eve of the announcement of the winners, the blogger had already tried to predict the chances of the projects-nominees. The choice of the jury disappointed him: the competition task was devoid of any detail, as a result of which “at least a quarter of projects in the category“economy class house”are projects made by the participants for a specific customer in the course of their own practice and sent to the competition at random”. The awards, according to the author of the post, were given for the "design". The meaning of a "design" project, ar_chitect believes, is only that "a fashionable solution atones for the shortcomings or inappropriate details of the project." In this series, the winning project (Individual house-greenhouse) "does not differ in either rational planning or economical solutions" and resembles the well-known village of Sergei Skuratov "Club 2071".
The architectural blogosphere is perhaps more passionate about sustainable design lately. Of course, it could not be ignored even in the most advanced architectural institute Strelka. Efim Freidin's blog recently posted an interesting post about a discussion between students and teachers - Stefano Boeri and Farshid Mussavi - about the transformation of Moscow into an international financial center. I remember that under Mayor Luzhkov it was believed that the capital would become such a center with the completion of the Moscow City International Business Center. Under Mayor Sobyanin, it became clear that the completion of the high-rise cluster would only entail a final transport collapse. Strelka tried to determine what is really needed for the financial center to work: Efim Freidin writes about the need to “manage time” and solve the problem of accessibility, including for people with limited mobility.
Meanwhile, bloggers did not miss the recent meeting of the Skolkovo Foundation's urban planning council, at which two winners of the competition for the urban planning concept of the innovation city were determined: the Dutch-international bureau OMA and the French AREP. Council member Marat Gelman posted on his blog the jury's off-screen comments on the nominee projects. Here, for example, is the opinion of David Chipperfield: "AREP - romantics, OMA - ambitious impudent, but OMA thought at the first". Grigory Revzin: "OMA is cool, but unrealistic, AREP is practical and not bad." Stefano Boeri “goes by the method of elimination”: “Singapore and the Swedes - they didn’t give anything. The British offered not a city, but a campus …"
In the ru_architect community, at the beginning of January, five competition projects for the building of the Regional Scientific Library in Novosibirsk were published. The project of the Tilke Engineering company presented a library in the form of a stack of books, the project of the APM workshop resembles a shopping center, the Sibtorgproekt company used perforation on the facade, which was fashionable several years ago, the Nsk Gradostroy 2002 project, either as a joke, or seriously raised a glass parallelepiped from a neoclassical house with a portico, and the architect I. A. Popov placed the library in a glass cube.
As always, another part of the architectural blogosphere was on guard of the monuments on these holidays. Their labors were not in vain: during the New Year holidays, St. Petersburg's "Living City" witnessed the beginning of the demolition of the famous "Literary House" on Nevsky, 68. Attempts to stop the destruction of the monument, alas, have not yet been crowned with success. On January 10, their Kiev colleagues went to a rally against the demolition of the so-called. "Castle of the Baron" built in 1898. This remarkable house with a tower with spiers and a gabled roof has recently been completely resettled and allowed to be demolished.
Fortunately, the Moscow Arhnadzor did not have to save anything new, but the activists recalled one ugly new building - the building of the cultural and entertainment center on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, popularly nicknamed the "dung beetle", which several years ago blocked the view from Trubnaya Square to the ancient Rozhdestvensky monastery. Back in the spring of 2009, the Moscow Heritage Committee ordered to stop the construction: since that time, Arkhnadzor has been calling on the authorities to liquidate it to no avail.
Marina Khrustaleva summed up the results of the "protective" year 2010 in her blog on Snob.ru. She recalled, in particular, about the "will" of the former director of the Museum of Architecture David Sargsyan, whose death anniversary was celebrated on January 7, to save the building of the printing house of El Lissitzky and "Children's World" Alexei Dushkin. Certain positive shifts in both cases were outlined: other people came to the construction site of Detsky Mir, and it seems that the printing house is no longer threatened by Inteko.
Much further, it seems, went the story of the liquidation of the famous restaurant "Prague" on the Arbat. The building is going to be rented by the fashionable Italian designer Roberto Cavalli in order to make a restaurant here named after himself. In this regard, blogger dedushkin1 recalled the history of this wonderful place: the restaurant that existed until recently dates back to the 18th century, and from the beginning of the 20th century it was housed in a building rebuilt by Lev Kekushev.
And, finally, a curious New Year's rating of the best posts on architecture is published on the moscowwalks.ru website. The first place in it is occupied by the famous local historian and creator of the SovArkh project Denis Romodin for the publication of a little-known pharmacy building in Orekhovo-Borisovo, built in 1973 by architects E. Ass and A. Larin in the form of a red cross.
