On April 22, the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage published on its website a draft concept for the preservation of monuments, which, as its head Alexander Kibovsky expects, will help to effectively implement the existing 73rd Federal Law. Today the law is being implemented somehow: an audit in early February revealed numerous violations, reminds the Moscow News newspaper. For example, the register lacks information about the owners or users of 43% of historic buildings. The new concept is a kind of strategy for managing heritage sites, and the developers see it as the main optimization tool in actively attracting private capital: for this, the department promises to create a public register of monuments that can be privatized. In addition, it is planned to introduce insurance of the owner's liability for damage to the object.
The new strategy expects to switch the department's activities from the “fire engine” mode, when employees leave when activists call, but often find themselves unable to stop the demolition of the monument, into a more rational channel, Nikolai Pereslegin, adviser to the head of the Moscow Heritage Committee, comments on the situation. “The new rules will regulate the terms of agreement of documents, terms of work, their order, responsibility of the parties, etc.,” he promised. Gazeta.ru, however, believes that the document only describes the problems, but "still does not offer specific solutions and developed mechanisms." Be that as it may, on May 10, the new concept will be submitted to the city government.
Together with cultural objects, the inventory of city property, deployed by Sergei Sobyanin, continues in relation to large complexes: after the Central Park of Culture and Leisure and the All-Russian Exhibition Center, the authorities took up the Luzhniki stadium. Gzt.ru reports that after the mayor announced on April 21 that the complex should belong to the city, Luzhniki unexpectedly changed its director. Experts welcome the changes, because until now the gigantic territory has been practically excluded from urban use. “Moreover, according to the new planning project, adopted in an atmosphere of complete secrecy, it was supposed to block the alleys, re-plan the territory and even demolish the pool,” Boris Pasternak, director of the CIGI, told reporters. Sergey Sobyanin himself commented on the situation. "You won't pass, you won't enter," the mayor told the press, "and this is a park area where people would walk, play sports … We will get rid of unnecessary assets and, conversely, concentrate what the city needs."
Interestingly, the city needed not only modern public spaces, but also a new brand. RBK daily reports on a meeting chaired by Deputy Mayor for Economic Policy Andrei Sharonov, at which the issue of shaping a new image of the capital was discussed. It is curious that the Moscow brand is going to be developed on the basis of attracting the attention of tourists and residents to the capital's architecture, in particular, the legacy of constructivism.
Meanwhile, a number of experts have rather weighty doubts about the ability of some members of Sobyanin's team to change the situation in Moscow urban planning for the better. Moskovskiye Novosti published a detailed story about the activities of the former head of the Kazan Ministry of Construction, and now the vice-mayor of Moscow, Marat Khusnullin, and the former chief architect of Kazan, Ernst Mavlyutov, who now heads the capital's Research and Development Institute of the General Plan. As a survey conducted by a newspaper correspondent has shown, the Moscow architectural community is not happy with both officials, but he still has more complaints against Mavlyutov, who was fired from his post in Kazan due to a construction scandal.
However, not only in Kazan, urban planning policy is not complete without scandals. So, this week, the head of the Nizhny Novgorod administration, Oleg Kondrashov, threatened the architectural workshop, which allegedly delayed the appointment of the chief architect, that he would “call the Varangians” from abroad, that is, invite a foreign specialist to this position. In response, the Nizhny Novgorod organization of the Union of Architects of Russia issued an open letter to the authorities, in which it explained the current situation by the lack of clarity of the powers and functional responsibilities of the chief architect, which prevents it from developing the Regulation on the Chief Architect of the city. It is also quite clear from the letter that the union does not want the "Varangians" and is ready to propose candidates from its ranks "with experience of more than a dozen years."
Several urban planning news came from St. Petersburg, where Gazprom is still one of the main newsmakers. Recently, the company officially announced that not just a public and business center would move to Lakhta from Okhta, but a project developed by the British bureau RMJM. It will only be "adapted to the specifics of the new site," RBC daily reports, although not long ago the project's architect Philip Nikandrov told the publication that "neither the mechanical transfer of the project from one place to another, nor changing it to the requirements of the new site is impossible." Ogonyok gave a detailed analysis of the continuation of the Gazprom epic.
The details of yet another project of great importance for St. Petersburg have become known - the reconstruction of Sennaya Square, which is finally presented to the public. Exclusive material appeared on the portal "City 812". The reconstruction, according to the chief architect of the project, Ilya Yusupov (Suart bureau), involves “restoring the historical urban planning perimeter of the square, constructing a shopping center on the site of a residential building demolished in the 60s, recreating the bell tower of the Savior on Sennaya and a memorial place there, where the temple itself was located. " The latter - to restore a bell tower without a temple - seems to experts a “semantic curiosity”: there are temples without bell towers, but just the opposite…. But the restoration of the temple is impossible not only because of the lack of finances: it turned out that the building of the PIK-2 shopping center, laid down in the project, fits on the spot of the temple. Architect Rafael Dayanov believes that this shopping center will be the second (after the attic on the house in Spassky Lane), "an even more significant violation of the scale, which will finally ruin the square." As the critic Mikhail Zolotonosov summed up: "Here the dominant that determines everything else is simply wrongly chosen - this is PIK-2, and not the Assumption Church with a bell tower."
Another urban planning mistake, but already, to the regret of experts, has come true - this is the Summer Garden, which after a scandalous reconstruction of its 27 buildings and structures received 19 rebuilt. Among them there are many and completely "new" ones: for example, the so-called. A small greenhouse, the images of which have not survived in principle, or the "Poultry yard" bosquet. 70% of the budgetary funds (2.3 billion rubles) have already been spent, but the famous Petrovsky Palace, which turned out to be with a bare facade due to excavations and museumification of the so-called. "Havanese" on the south side, apparently, this time will not receive money for conservation. Novaya Gazeta tells about the situation with the reconstruction in detail.
In Perm, the story of the reconstruction of the square in front of the "Theater-Theater" was continued, which caused an extraordinary intensity of passions in the blogosphere on the eve. The newspaper "Sol" tells about a press conference held the other day, at which the author of the project, Yevgeny Ass, had to calm down the local community. The architect emphasized that the project is not limited to just one wall-fence, but also involves "a full-scale reconstruction of most of the city esplanade … right down to the number and types of vegetation." Evgeny Ass also said that he does not believe that the Permians are “fantastic vandals”, despite all the threats in the blogs, he will deal with the object. Perhaps the local residents will be a little reassured by the fact that the favorite fountain in the square will be left and even made more interesting: one option suggests creating a massive bowl, in the other the fountain will be located at ground level and will become a continuation of the square.
While the residents of Perm are only threatening to destroy the facility, the most real vandalism is taking place in Moscow, and, as usual, under the decent brand of reconstruction. Not having time to recover from the battle for the Serpentine depot of the Nikolaev railway, the Arkhnadzor activists moved on duty to Yakimanka, where on April 23, the demolition of the apartment building of the architect Fyodor Kolbe began, Gazeta.ru writes. Back in March, Arkhnadzor was promised that the house would be preserved; then the construction site again promised to stop the demolition and preserve the front wall, etc. None of these promises were fulfilled, and as a result, part of the facade collapsed directly onto the sidewalk, RIA Novosti reports. The representatives of the Moscow Heritage Committee, who promptly arrived at the site, could not do anything, since the previous leadership of the committee issued permission for partial demolition. However, activists consider it illegal, since although the building is not a monument, the dismantling requires the consent of the current head of the department. So the watch will continue in the near future, Gazeta.ru reports.
In conclusion of our review - a collection of the most unusual residential buildings of the Soviet era, collected by the magazine "Afisha" (in two parts: the first and second). The correspondent of the magazine asked the residents of such buildings as the "house-ship" on Tulskaya, "Severnoye Chertanovo" and "centipede" on Begovaya about how they live today within the experimental walls, and the history of their design and construction "Afishe" was commented on by a well-known local historian and author of the Internet project "SovArch" Denis Romodin.
