One of the loudest and most discussed in the network of architectural events of recent weeks was the announcement of the results of the competition for the Spiritual and Cultural Orthodox Russian Center on the Quai Branly in Paris. Let's say right away that among bloggers there are much more opponents of the winning project Arch Group and Manuel Yanovsky than supporters. True, judging by their very emotional argumentation, hostility to the project is explained not so much by an architectural decision as by claims against the Russian Orthodox Church itself. A lengthy discussion unfolded in Marina Litvinovich's blog (abstract), and this is what the author herself writes: “The palace (officially called the Spiritual Cult Complex of the Orthodox Religious Organization of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church) in Gelendzhik is not enough for them! The pseudo-Russian baroque was replaced by high-tech glass concrete and "snow-white drums". The author of the anonymous commentary supports: "This is not a temple of God, but a huge, mocking tombstone over my nation." But ir_researcher considers the project not so scary: “Well, what's wrong with that? If you are not greedy for the materials used and really make everything so wavy and transparent, it should be beautiful."
“Why not build an ordinary temple with a park and benches? - kalle31 is surprised. - Why is this pile of glass on top? It looks like a big stall or, as they are now called, a "shopping center". With this idea, apparently, the members of the so-called. group "Les Miserables", created by architects, "who sincerely wanted to take part in the international competition and did not receive technical conditions from the organizers." Ignored by the organizers - the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation, "Les Miserables" created a blog on the network to publish projects of an alternative competition, "participation in which will become a kind of protest against the methods of holding state competitions in Russia that have already become the norm, the outcome of which is predetermined." So, the first projects have already appeared on the blog, and the Spiritual Center on them really looks much more traditional than in the project of Yanovsky and Arch Group: one of them proposes, for example, a pillarless eight-petalled temple covered with glued wooden arches.
For the Petersburg bloggers, no less hot topic was the transfer of the Gazprom skyscraper to Lakhta. As soon as the news about the purchase of a plot by the company for the proposed construction of a business center appeared in the press, the topic immediately came to the fore in Internet discussions. In general, the residents of St. Petersburg do not criticize such a decision: for example, in the "Living City" they immediately tried to make panoramas with a new skyscraper from the Palace Embankment and other key points and found out that the tower would spoil them insignificantly. As the author of the panoramas Volokhonsky writes, “of course, due to the distance and haze, it will be seen rather like a pale shadow. I have no objection in principle. It does not get out of the general line. But we have no reason to believe that they will again try to promote the idea of a super-skyscraper, there is more land there, so, rather, it will be some kind of Egyptian pyramid 80-120 meters high. " melusine_de agrees: “If everything is as you calculated, then it really will look no worse than in Paris La Défense. It even somehow agrees with the St. Petersburg perspective”. However, there is another opinion, this is what, for example, writes mar_: “In fact, with panoramas, these are also those games: beautifully (or rather, horribly) it will be seen in protected panoramas. Even if the clarity is lost, it will still be looming behind Peter and Paul (albeit with lost clarity). And what kind of "view" of the city will be, say, from Peterhof … Can you imagine?"
However, the very possibility of realizing a skyscraper at a new location is still a big question: as it turned out, the permitted height of new construction on Lakhta is only 27 m. Bloggers are perplexed why, because the site is located quite far from the center. irgend_etwas finds an original explanation: “It seems like a limitation appeared in the PZZ due to migratory birds. There will be skyscrapers - the birds will not fly. That is why there are 27 meters in the PZZ, although a high-rise cluster of 160 meters or more was planned for that territory. " And bloggers are also puzzled by the very fact that such information appeared on the eve of the elections, writes 5oclock_teapot: “But why raise this topic at all before the elections? Why give an extra trump card in the hands of Alexei Kovalev, Oksana Dmitrieva and Maxim Reznik? There is no doubt: they will play on this topic in full, so that little Smolny clearly will not seem. " The rest of the opinions on this topic can be found in the review of Delovoy Petersburg blogs.
Oleg Chirkunov's article in "Expert" received positive reviews from bloggers - the governor of the Perm Territory, as it turned out, is well versed in urban planning nuances and writes the right things. Aap-ekb, a blogger from Yekaterinburg, liked how Chirkunov explained, for example, the advantages of a compact city: “It is interesting, for example, to partially rehabilitate the consolidated buildings in the center and the actual verdict on the fashionable topic of integrated development of territories - as a hopeless direction that can, by and large, simply kill town. The thought expressed gives me an explanation why, despite its compact to the point of closeness, Yekaterinburg seems more comfortable than the seemingly spacious Chelyabinsk. And it makes my native Ozersk a model of urban planning in general”.
The blogger also supports the idea of transforming neighborhoods with the division of courtyards and streets into private and public spaces, that is, dividing the areas of responsibility of residents and the municipality: re-motivation of Homo Sovieticus to be the owner of not only the occupied living space. The fruits of which we are reaping. " The topic continues in the comments of petrakov_ac: “In many ways I agree, although it seems to me that we have just not a quarter, but a courtyard that is a“unit of communication”. Rather, he was. I think there are many options for the layout of the quarters. For example, why not one day, somewhere for the purpose of experiment, refuse to build up "rectangles" or "squares" of courtyards and neighborhoods and try to build buildings so that they together form rather circles? I have always wondered what will happen ?! " And the Perm blogger ar-chitect is simply pleasantly surprised by the insight of the local authorities: "To be honest, I am very glad that an official of such a level in our country suddenly learned and understood almost the best that is in urban planning today."
Continuing the Perm theme: in the blog of the director of the Regional Center for the Protection of Monuments, Svetlana Savostyanova, you can now track the process of preparing the local River Station for the long-promised reconstruction for a museum of modern art. So, recently a comprehensive survey of the building was carried out, the condition of which turned out to be close to emergency; the formation of the initial permits for the site was completed, and the financing project, the Russian Avangard Foundation, met with invited restorers from Tiamat-project LLC. By the way, in the same blog it is indicated that by September 2011 we will see the results of "the development of constructive, space-planning solutions, internal engineering systems" entrusted to the British firm Ove Arup & Partners. But what fate awaits the project of the Meganom bureau, which won an international architectural competition last year, alas, there is still no information.
A curious blog by NIITAG postgraduate student Eduard Hayman has appeared on the Theory & Practice portal: he devoted his first review to the study of the so-called. field architecture. We are talking about the latest design method, which moves away from operating with structures and chooses much more ephemeral things as a material - light, fog, etc. One of the protagonists of the review is the Swiss architect Philip Ram. He set himself the task of “inventing a new type of planning of the architectural environment, in which new types of typologies will be formulated in the fields of meteorology and physics, articulation of air movement, conversion of water into steam, etc. The main architectural interest here lies in creating not a homogeneous, permanent space, but plastic and climatically dynamic, controlled by forces and polarities …"
The same portal published an interview with Jean-Christophe Masnada, an architect of the French bureau King Kong, and Thiago da Fonseca from the Rolinet bureau, who visited Moscow as part of the Changing the Face international competition for the best concept for the reconstruction of the Pushkinsky cinema. Architects, as it follows from their statements, profess a very cautious approach to the modernization of the city: "All other things being equal, reconstruction is preferable, not demolition, this is the last resort." The Italian architect Giuliano Moretti, who worked in Moscow for many years, is even more cautious in his intervention in the urban fabric - an interview with him was posted on the ru_archiblog community. Moretti has repeatedly worked with Alexander Skokan - together they designed, for example, the famous building of the International Moscow Bank on Prechistenskaya Embankment (now UniCredit Bank), and also developed a project for the reconstruction of the Rossiya hotel: “When our plan for the reconstruction of Rossiya won an international competition, we proposed something in the style of old Russian architecture, which would allow the center to return to its former harmony. Alas, no one took these aspects into account when they later decided the fate of the hotel,”recalls the architect. Another big project for Moretti was the reconstruction of the mansion of Vasily Bazhenov himself - the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture on Myasnitskaya. “Old Moscow, its historical center, bears uniqueness, and this image must be preserved with great care…. I am always painful about the construction of skyscrapers and huge high-tech buildings in old cities. What's the point of making New York from Moscow? There is no urban planning or architectural sense in building high-rise buildings in Moscow,”the architect is convinced.
At the end of our blog review, there is a traditional selection of the most curious posts on the history of architecture and local history. In the blog appassionata, for example, there was an article about the unique sculptural high reliefs from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, blown up by the Bolsheviks in 1931. The sculptures were transported to the territory of the Donskoy Monastery by the staff of the Museum of Architecture, along with other architectural fragments and ancient tombstones that were collected from civil and church buildings destroyed in those years. Thus, in 1951, five surviving high reliefs by the sculptor A. V. Loganovsky were installed in the arches of the eastern monastery wall. And the magazine of the famous lover of Moscow antiquity, dedushkin1, published a virtual walk through the now defunct Zaryadye, which, fortunately for local historians, is very well documented in old photographs.
