The prompt demolition of monuments seems to be becoming a New Year's tradition. Last year, during the holidays, Muromtsev's dacha in Tsaritsyno was destroyed, and at the beginning of 2011 in St. Literary House on Nevsky, 68, and so boldly and unexpectedly that the city rights defenders were unable to save even the facades. A detailed account of the events can be found on the portals Gazeta.ru and Fontanka. On the site of the building, which was visited by Goncharov, Turgenev, Tyutchev, Belinsky, the company "Autocombalt" is going to build a hotel with underground parking. The developer justifies his actions by the fact that the house is not formally listed as a monument, since the building was practically rebuilt after the war by the architect Ivan Fomin.
After several pickets in defense of this heritage site, the Living City could not prevent its demolition, Delovoy Petersburg writes, although even the chairman of the KGIOP, Vera Dementieva, spoke out against the dismantling of the famous facade. However, the activists managed to achieve a change in the project, which will now be as close as possible to its historical appearance. Mikhail Zolotonosov, in his article on the Gorod 812 portal, criticizes the social movement: house 68 was moved out for two years and the demolition could have been foreseen, although, according to the critic, the building does not deserve such attention due to its architectural qualities.
The Okhta Center remains an equally relevant topic for St. Petersburg. While Gazprom is looking for new sites for the implementation of its ambitious urban planning plans, archaeologists cherish the dream of creating a museum on the site of fortresses excavated at the mouth of the Okhta River and a Neolithic site about 5 thousand years old. The Architectural News Agency talks about this in more detail. In Moscow, at the Museum and Public Center named after Andrei Sakharov recently opened a photo exhibition dedicated to the fact that unprecedented finds after the investor left the site have now actually been left to their own devices. You can read more about what archeology has discovered in Gazeta.ru and the Theory & Practice portal.
Meanwhile, no less dramatic events are unfolding in Moscow in the field of heritage. However, this time the scene of action was not just another historical address, but … virtual space. The updated website of the mayor's office held a "popular" vote for / against the reconstruction of the historical monuments of the capital. The authorities needed to find out public opinion, apparently, on the eve of the second reading of the law on cultural heritage objects, the Vesti TV channel suggests. However, just a couple of days after the start of the poll, activists discovered on the site a clear cheating of votes in favor of reconstruction: overnight, the number of its supporters unexpectedly exceeded the usual attendance statistics by almost a hundred times. IA Regnum was the first to report this. The mayor's office angrily denied this information, accusing some bloggers of libel (for example, the well-known TV presenter Alexander Arkhangelsky got it), but in the end the vote was stopped. According to RIA Novosti, a repeated online survey revealed a completely different picture: more than 78% of participants spoke in favor of creating reserves and preserving old Moscow.
The story with the website of the mayor's office looks the more ridiculous, the more loyalty to the heritage the mayor himself demonstrates. So, in the first working week of the new year, Sergei Sobyanin said that the fate of the Children's World, already destroyed by the reconstruction, will be decided by the town planning and land commission, which he heads. Arkhnadzor does not exclude that the mayor may correct the project and save the monument. In addition, along with a number of other public movements, "Arhnadzor" also recently addressed the mayor with an open letter, in which he thanked for the suspension of the construction of the notorious shopping center on Pushkinskaya Square and called on
generally refuse any underground intervention, i.e. from tunneling and underground parking.
The projects of typical trade pavilions and kiosks, presented on the official website of the Moskomarkhitektura, developed by a team led by the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, and intended for widespread distribution on the streets of the capital, also became the subject of wide discussion in the press. Grigory Revzin in Kommersant compares the "lineup" of kiosks to the work of a sophomore, done superficially and in a bit of a hurry. The Architectural News Agency reminds that the current types are based on practically the same ones that were presented at the Public Council back in 2008. Gazeta writes in more detail about the typological variety of kiosks designed in classical, modern and other styles.
The Bolshoi Theater has recently become another hero of the capital's urban planning news, whose epic reconstruction is slowly but surely approaching its completion. This time, its permanent curator Vladimir Resin, who gave an interview to the Ogonyok magazine, reminded the journalists about the protracted construction project. The press also recalled the MIBC "Moscow City": "Kommersant" found out that the investor Shalva Chigirinsky, who once planned to build the tallest skyscraper in Europe, the tower "Russia", is returning to the construction of the business center. Now, in its place, Chigirinsky's company will build a more "modest" option - a complex for 250 thousand square meters. m.
As for the artistic life, in the first half of January it was predictably not very active. In the absence of new exhibitions, the professional press analyzed in detail the exposition “We have turned Moscow into the capital”, which opened at the Museum of Architecture on the New Year's Eve and dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Mosproekt-1. In particular, Gazeta.ru and Kommersant wrote about the exhibition, and Grigory Revzin believes that with this exhibition the hero of the day has appropriated someone else's glory. Mosproekt-1, one of Luzhkov's main architectural institutes, does not show a single work of its own at the exhibition, only the work of its organizational ancestor. They built it themselves - but they are shy,”the critic writes.
In conclusion of the review, let us note a detailed interview with Grigory Revzin, which the architectural critic # 1 gave to the Afisha magazine. The journalist, thanks to whose articles "people began to notice architecture", talks about his attitude to contemporary art and urban protection movements, the "nationalist" architecture of Yuri Luzhkov and the "generational ideals" of the country's leaders.
