At the meeting of the Moscow construction complex, held on March 11, Sergei Sobyanin spoke about the new urban planning policy of Moscow, which, according to the mayor, will help reduce the density of buildings and reduce the number of frauds. According to the Kommersant newspaper, in order to achieve these goals, the city is actually introducing a ban on new construction within the Third Ring Road. Izvestia also spoke in detail about the results of this board. According to analysts' estimates, about 1.5 thousand investment contracts will now undergo revision, most of which are located just within the Third Ring. However, so far the authorities have officially announced the termination of only fifty - those that may interfere with the functioning of the road transport infrastructure. In addition, the immediate plans of Moscow leaders are to deal with the unfinished construction, the total cost of which, according to Gazeta.ru, exceeds 1 trillion rubles. Sergei Sobyanin also intends to stop speculation on long-term land lease, for which the lease period for land plots for development projects will be reduced from 49 to 5-6 years, Kommersant informs.
Among the documents issued by the previous administration of the city and canceled by the current one, in particular, was the resolution of Yuri Luzhkov "On the registration of immovable monuments of history and culture in the ownership of Moscow, which are in the operational management of the Main Directorate for the Protection of Moscow Monuments." According to Kommersant, this document was signed in 2001, and a year later amendments were made to it, which did not change the essence: Moscow secured the right to 1,513 historical buildings. For example, number 533 in the list was "Upper Trading Rows of 1889-1894", in other words - GUM. Now the court has overturned the ruling of the mayor's office, leaving Moscow the rights to only 11 buildings, including the Petrovsky Travel Palace, the Shtalmeister Palace, the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy of the 17th-18th centuries, and the estate of Milyutin and Lyashkevich. Now, according to the newspaper, the capital has actually lost its legal arguments in the prolonged redistribution of monuments. Indirectly, the loyalty of Sergei Sobyanin in this matter is evidenced by the recent decision of the Moscow arbitration tribunal, which transferred ownership of the famous Orlov-Denisov house on Lubyanka from the private owner to the Federal Property Management Agency, writes the RBC Daily newspaper.
And in St. Petersburg, the story of the construction of the Gazprom skyscraper continued: as reported by the Gorod 812 portal, the company has officially announced that it has found a new location for the project of its headquarters. This time we are talking about Lakhta, which is just outside the city, between the Primorskoe highway and the Gulf of Finland. It is not yet known, however, whether a new competition will be announced for the construction of the office or whether the building will be built according to the RMJM project, Gazeta.ru notes. The second scenario threatens Gazprom with new problems: it turned out that, according to the PZZ, in Lakhta the maximum building height is even lower than in Okhta - only 27 meters. On the other hand, today Lakhta is outside the boundaries of the protected zones - the buffer zone around the historical center, which UNESCO requires to create, is still being designed. By the way, just last week this issue was discussed by the KGIOP, which gathered on the occasion of the discussion of the results of the activities of the working group created at the initiative of UNESCO to clarify the boundaries of the world heritage site. According to the portal "City 812", the experts proposed to expand the list of objects included in it and the area of the protected area.
So, this time, it seems, Gazprom is still better off to heed the warnings of the city defenders in advance. Moreover, the Supreme Court has recently sided with the latter, which upheld a lawsuit against the construction of more than a hundred high-rises in UNESCO-protected areas, authorized by the governor. According to Kommersant, the activists proved that the draft law on the boundaries of protection zones, approved by Rosokhrankultura in 2008, is radically different from the final version adopted by Smolny. A number of high-profile projects are now under attack, for example, the building of the city administration in the Nevskaya Ratusha complex and the Boris Eifman theater.
Oleg Chirkunov, the Governor of the Perm Territory, demonstrated an unusual awareness of urban planning issues, whose article was published in the Expert magazine. Several years of work on the strategic master plan for Perm forced Chirkunov, according to him, to radically reconsider his views on urban planning. In the article, the governor speaks in favor of a compact city, reflects on the disadvantages of residential areas and typical high-rise construction, insists on special attention to the design of the inner-quarter space, etc. It is in this coordinate system that the Perm authorities have been planning the reconstruction of the Perm embankment and, in particular, the building of the River Station for several years now. And the matter seems to have moved off the ground: according to the portal Kvartira59.ru, contracts were recently signed with design companies, and they promise to start construction in December 2011 - January 2012. True, it is surprising that the British firm Ove Arup & Partners will be engaged in the development of structural, space-planning solutions and internal engineering systems, and not Yuri Grigoryan, who last year won the architectural competition for the reconstruction project of the River Station. This news, however, has not yet been officially confirmed: it was leaked to the press from the personal blog of the director of the Regional Center for the Protection of Monuments, Svetlana Savostyanova.
However, the advanced Perm experience remains for Russia, rather, an exception to the rule, while the urban planning policy of most regions deserves the harshest media criticism. So, one after another, materials appeared in the press about the crushing state of historical buildings in several regions. In Kazan, local authorities recently reported on "successes" in this area, which did not at all convince a Regnum correspondent. The author recalled the missing millions of the Target Comprehensive Program for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage "Miras - Heritage", adopted in 2007 and very utopian plans to restore 66 cultural sites for the 2013 Universiade. In the Altai Territory, a global check of cultural and historical monuments was initiated by the Prosecutor General's Office. According to its results, 42 claims are already ready: in particular, buildings that were demolished many years ago are listed as federal monuments here. An interesting analytical article on the state of the estate fund in Russia appeared in the newspaper Trud. A large publication on the topic of heritage preservation was also published in Izvestia Nauki: Konstantin Mikhailov and Rustam Rakhmatullin made an analysis of the losses of historical buildings in 2010. Among them, unfortunately, there are very significant ones - for example, the Trubetskoy city estate at 1 Usacheva Street, which Pushkin visited, the house of the composer Alyabyev, the Tarkovsky house, etc.
Arkhnadzor, meanwhile, made another statement the other day against the destructive policy of the Moscow authorities, stressing that despite all his promises, Mayor Sobyanin did not stop the demolition of several valuable objects, including the building of the Khludov labor artel on Kadashevskaya embankment and a three-storey building of the first half of the 19th century on Bolshaya Yakimanka. Another object under the close scrutiny of activists - the Moscow Conservatory - does not seem to have time to fully renew itself by the announced date. According to the leadership of the university, by June 1, the building will open with limited power supply, i.e. without air conditioning.
Recently, the rarely news-driven Union of Architects of Russia made two statements this week. In an appeal to the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov, the SAR asked not to simplify the passage of the domestic state examination for projects of foreign architects through the use of building European standards. “The proposed system of measures will lead to a complete lack of control over the safety of a number of capital construction projects in terms of fire safety and sanitary and hygienic requirements,” the architects are convinced. Also, the members of the Union expressed their readiness, despite the tragedy in Japan, to go this fall to the International Congress of Architects in Tokyo.
Another international news was the announcement of the winner of the competition for the project of the Russian Cultural and Spiritual Center in Paris - it was the tandem of the French Society of Architects and Developers Manuel Yanovsky and the Moscow bureau Arch Group. The architects intend to cover the site on Quai Branly with a "glass blanket" worth about 7 million euros, which will integrate the domes of the five-domed church with a belfry, the building of the cultural center and the seminary. In the adjacent Trinity Garden, the authors plan to recreate the atmosphere of Claude Monet's garden in Giverny, beloved by the French. The second and third places were taken by the Vilmot and Partners architectural bureau and the joint project of Mosproekt-2 and French architect Frederic Borel, RIA Novosti reports.
And finally, today it became known where exactly the Garage cultural center will move. According to Kommersant, this is Gorky's Central Park of Culture and Leisure, whose reconstruction Roman Abramovich became interested in. The center will be located in the six-sided pavilion of architects Ivan Zholtovsky, Viktor Kokorin and Mikhail Parusnikov, built in 1923 for the first All-Union Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition and is now completely ruined. The Garage management plans to begin reconstruction of this building in the summer and autumn of 2011.
