On January 26, Valentina Matvienko sent a letter to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a request to exclude St. Petersburg from the list of historical settlements. According to the Kommersant newspaper, in the governor's opinion, only the historical center, i.e. only a quarter of the city corresponds to this high status, but the regimes of the zones of protection are already operating in it. The status, meanwhile, in order to preserve all "historically valuable town-forming objects" obliges the St. Petersburg authorities to coordinate all town-planning plans and regulations with Rosokhrankultura. Matvienko believes that this is too long and difficult, and as an argument he points to the absence of such a status in Moscow, Novgorod and Pskov (which really were not included in the list of historical settlements, with less than 55% of the old buildings preserved). As Baltinfo points out, there is a certain grain of truth in Valentina Matvienko's letter: agreements with Rosokhrankultura are indeed often dragged out for record long periods.
The public reacted to such a letter with predictably violent reactions. For example, a whole group of St. Petersburg cultural and scientific workers have appealed to the Prime Minister to defend the status of St. Petersburg, Novaya Gazeta reports. In the "Living City", in turn, they said that the recent demolitions on Nevsky Prospect clearly prove the inaction of the "working", according to the governor, regulations in the security zones. Rosokhrankultura also made public its position: according to the information disseminated by this department, only the documentation on the planning of territories within the boundaries of the historical and cultural reference plan existing in St. Petersburg and a number of other cities is subject to approval. So Valentina Matvienko's fears that Moscow would have to coordinate the entire development of sleeping areas, in any case, were not confirmed. However, under pressure from the public, the governor of St. Petersburg already on January 31 rejected her proposal.
Meanwhile, the former head of Rosokhrankultura, Alexander Kibovsky, who is now head of the Moscow Heritage Committee, is busy reforming the system of protecting monuments in the capital. According to Izvestia, the committee has begun to develop a strategy for preserving Moscow's cultural heritage, which should be submitted to a government meeting on May 10 this year. First of all, the acts and regulations adopted in Moscow in recent decades, which contradict federal legislation, will be revised. Kibovsky also wants to introduce a strict system of places of interest in Moscow and conduct an audit of all declared monuments.
However, the revision of Moscow urban planning will affect not only the sphere of heritage protection. It will also apply to all investment contracts accepted for implementation and the provisions of the General Plan of the capital adopted last year. As Lenta.ru reported, Sergei Sobyanin directed the efforts of almost half of the mayor's office officials to correct (and cancel) construction projects. Until the end of September, the City Planning and Land Commission of the Moscow Government will have to consider 1,175 objects. And, according to the same Lenta.ru, the commission has already canceled 8 investment projects, including residential buildings on Ostozhenka, in Khilkov and Turchaninov lanes, a shopping and entertainment complex in a park near Smolenskaya Square,underground parking under the Krasnye Vorota square. As Marat Khusnullin, Deputy Mayor for Urban Development Policy and Construction, said in an interview with Vedomosti, the city administration made a fundamental decision not to build shopping centers and office complexes within the Garden Ring.
The House on Mosfilmovskaya once again hit the list of heroes in news reports last week. And although formally the question of demolishing the upper floors of this complex remains open, the city authorities have already begun to say that this is impossible. In particular, Marat Khusnullin told the press that he has "a preliminary conclusion that the demolition of the upper floors of the building is extremely dangerous." In the near future, Sergei Skuratov's project may again become the subject of consideration by the Public Council.
Another project that has long been awaiting public discussion at the meeting of the Public Council is the infamous reconstruction of the Helikon-Opera theater. Twice they tried to bring the question of the fate of the Shakhovsky princes' estate on Bolshaya Nikitskaya to the council, but both times the meetings were disrupted. Meanwhile, the head of the team of authors Andrei Bokov, under the pressure of the public, dissatisfied with the destruction of part of the estate buildings for the sake of arranging a new stage, had to agree to additional expertise and partially rework the project. Alexander Mozhaev, one of the leaders of the Arkhnadzor movement, which, in fact, stopped the construction on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, published an article in Gazeta, where he tried to soften the conflict with the theater management and redirect the claims to the Moscow government, which had agreed on the reconstruction.
The reconstruction of Detsky Mir still keeps the city defenders on their toes. According to Izvestia, investors are awaiting the early permission of the Moscow Heritage Committee for the restoration of the facades: the internal structures are likely to be broken due to the danger of collapse. The Sistema-Hals development company, which is an investor in the reconstruction of Detsky Mir, is ready to submit to the Arkhnadzor public movement all reports concerning the examination of the state of the department store. The president of the company Andrey Nesterenko stated this at a meeting with the participants of the movement. The developer did not refuse to conduct a tour of the facility for journalists. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, since 2008 the building has fallen into a depressing state, but the lost elements can still be recreated.
Another project endlessly discussed by the press is the new stage of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. This week "Kommersant" announced that the new project for the reconstruction of the Marinka (recall, the second in a row) has every chance of becoming one of the most expensive theater buildings in the world. So, according to the newspaper, after repeated revision of the project, the new stage costs 19.1 billion rubles, which is twice as much as the "golden dome" of Dominique Perrault, rejected at one time due to the exceptional complexity of implementation.
An interview with another senior official in the Moscow construction complex appeared in the press this week. Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a conversation with the Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Economic Policy Andrei Sharonov. Among other things, Sharonov confirmed the intentions of the head of the city to correct the general plan of Moscow. The "update campaign," he said, will begin in May this year. According to Gazeta.ru, the priority tasks will be the demands of President Dmitry Medvedev to turn the capital into a world financial center and the order of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to coordinate the general plans of Moscow and the region.
Foreign architects working in Moscow were also generous in their comments. In particular, last week the Dutchman Erik van Egeraat, who won the competition for the reconstruction of the Dynamo stadium together with Mosproject-2, gathered journalists to present his project. However, it seems that the star of European architecture was somewhat hasty: almost in parallel with the event he held, the customer's representatives said that the reconstruction concept would be finalized and would include not only Egeraat's solution, but also projects of other participants in the competition, for example, the Speech bureau. Another foreigner who until recently worked closely with the Moscow company Inteko, Hadi Teherani, in turn, is concerned about the fate of his grandiose Cosmo Park project. With the resignation of Yuri Luzhkov, the project was canceled, but Tehrani still hopes that the authorities will return to discussing this innovative green complex.
But Yekaterinburg, on the contrary, is only going to stake on a foreign designer and invite the famous Spanish architect Josep Asebillo to the position of a permanent consultant on urban planning. Such an offer (albeit unofficially so far) was made to him by the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Alexander Misharin. It is assumed that Josep Acebillo will be engaged in the transformation of the Ural capital in the event of holding EXPO-2020 there, according to the local news agency ura.ru.
Perm, meanwhile, remembered its ambitious project for the National Gallery, which had not been heard of for several years after the international competition. As the winner of the competition Boris Bernasconi told the Business-class newspaper, the participation of the star of European architecture Peter Zumthor should serve as a new impetus for the implementation of the idea. The new concept says that the gallery will consist of two buildings: Zumthor will design a "temple for wooden sculpture", Bernasconi - a building to house the rest of the gallery's collection. “This complex of buildings, united by a pedestrian route, will connect the top and bottom of the Kama embankment,” said the architect. True, the authorities of Perm have not yet decided where exactly on the embankment the gallery will be located.
