In the media, a lively discussion continues about the recent decision of the federal authorities to increase the area of Moscow by 144 thousand hectares, and to relocate state officials to the region. Architectural critic Grigory Revzin expressed his position on the upcoming expansion, who published an article in Kommersant entitled "A City with a Southern Slant." The critic, on the one hand, is outraged by the voluntarism with which the government made an epoch-making decision without any preliminary discussions, but, on the other hand, sees in it broad prospects for those regions that are of little interest to investors today. Revzin ends the article with a question: what will the authorities be guided by when it comes to implementation: economic considerations or the detached "logic of the beauty of the general plan"? Something prompts, the second scenario will win: somewhere from above, “a new government center will be drawn in the heart of the new territory. Then Moscow will turn into a pivot city like Paris, Kaluzhskoe highway will become its main artery,”the critic concludes.
The topic is continued by Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The publication asked Alexander Skokan and Oleg Baevsky for comments. The head of the Ostozhenka bureau is absolutely in solidarity with Revzin about the fact that architects have to learn about the historic urban planning solution from the newspapers: “In France, for example, the discussion about how the Grand Paris will be built has been going on for years. Goals and strategies are defined, only then concrete projects are drawn,”the architect notes. Deputy Director of the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan Oleg Baevsky is more concerned about the environmental side of the project: “Nowhere in the world have so many green areas been included in the city,” the expert is sure. - The northeastern, southeastern parts of the Moscow region are more urbanized, easier to develop. And now it turns out that we will come where we have not yet managed to shit, and will continue to destroy the green belt of the capital”.
The magazine "Bolshoi Gorod" also published an interesting discussion - the already mentioned Grigory Revzin talks with the architect Mikhail Khazanov about the relationship between architects and the authorities. The reason was the same sudden and peremptory decision of the authorities to create the so-called. Greater Moscow. It must be said that Khazanov is more loyal to the authorities and is not even at all offended by the fact that half of the competitive projects he won were successfully turned off. In the context of the current urban planning discussion, the architect recalled the project carried out under the leadership of Ilya Lezhava for the international competition in 2004 - it was called Line 2100 and proposed the creation of a linear city, which, according to Mikhail Khazanov, represents the most viable scenario for the development of modern agglomerations. Nevertheless, Khazanov does not feel any illusions about the fact that the project will be interested from above: “Architects-city planners, as it were, do not exist in nature. All urban strategies are aimed exclusively at the rapid introduction into commercial circulation of all still vacant land, forests, fields and rivers. … Architecture, like waste paper, is measured by kilograms. " Revzin believes that in such a situation, it is the architects, and not the authorities, who should be given an "agenda for society": "And then society can love this and begin to demand from the authorities to implement it."
Curious expert opinions about Russian urban planning appeared in the last issue of Ogonyok: Vyacheslav Glazychev and German expert Stefan Sievert share their views on this matter. Both are confident that the current decision to totally expand Moscow's borders stems from the Soviet planning system. As Vyacheslav Glazychev figuratively put it: “Today the settlement model, tailored according to the patterns of the planned economy, hangs on Russia, like a jacket on a very thin person.” Stefan Sievert, the author of a study on Russian urbanization, believes that the creation of large agglomerations like Greater Moscow is almost the only possible option today. This, in his opinion, was a consequence of the Soviet model of urbanization, which was partly non-economic in nature and made small cities incapable of survival.
The capital's media, meanwhile, did not confine themselves to discussing only the problems of urbanization: fateful decisions were made the other day on three most important objects. For example, Moskovskiye Novosti reported that Colliers International and the equally well-known company Populous, which is now preparing sports arenas for the Olympic Sochi and the Universiade in Kazan, were hired as the main consultant for the reconstruction of the Luzhniki sports complex. The RBC portal recently recalled the project of a shopping and entertainment complex under the Paveletsky station square, which mayor Sergei Sobyanin threatened to convert into underground parking lots. According to the latest information, trade in it will still remain, however, it will be reduced by 5 thousand square meters. m, due to which parking will increase. The complex will be completed by the previous investor. The same publication also writes about another controversial project - the redevelopment of the territory of the Krasny Oktyabr factory, which the owner, the Guta group, decided to force, despite the ban on construction in the historic center. Elite housing will begin to be built on the site of the Rai nightclub, which will be demolished at the end of 2012.
In St. Petersburg, a new project of Gazprom's skyscraper is on the beaten track of approvals: the other day the city commission for land use and development approved the "deviation" of the tower from the height allowed on Lakhta by as much as 18.5 times, Kommersant reports. Gazeta.ru notes that the skyscraper is thus. added another 100 meters compared to Okhta and will now be half a kilometer high. VOOPIiK experts, city rights activists and UNESCO have already spoken out against the construction. They didn’t even consider it necessary to ask them. the tower is not formally included in the 6 km regulated zone around the historic center. None of them, however, doubts that Lakhta will be visible from the center and, nevertheless, only two members of the commission voted against. And one of them anonymously said: “It will not be difficult to get used to Lakhta Center - as to chimneys or a TV tower,” Kommersant quotes.
The main attention of St. Petersburg residents in recent days has been riveted on the island of New Holland, which for the first time in its 300-year history has opened for free visits. Many media outlets wrote about this event, including Kommersant and Gazeta.ru. The renovation investor, Millhouse Capital, also organized an exhibition of eight competitive projects, of which four reached the final. The portal Archi.ru has already written about them in detail. Therefore, we will only note that none of the finalists, as Gazeta.ru emphasizes, now provoke protests either from city rights defenders or from architects, unlike Norman Foster's "palace". As one of the members of the expert council that selected the shortlist, Mikhail Piotrovsky, noted, “there are no projects that are unacceptable for me from an aesthetic point of view, all are more or less satisfactory”. But if one of them will reach the realization in its original form - Gazeta.ru doubts that the reconstruction of the island will be possible without the construction of elite housing there.
Another historical object, the reconstruction of which was actively interested in the press, is located in the Leningrad region: on the basis of the museum-estate "Priyutino" in the coming years will be built a Multifunctional Museum Center. The acceptance of bids was completed last week, writes Kommersant, in total 20, including 4 foreign ones. Reconstruction is planned within the framework of the implementation of the project "Preservation and Use of Cultural Heritage in Russia" of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, however, preservation here just might not work: as one of the participants, the head of Studio 44 Nikita Yavein, noted, this is a "pure tender", in which "it is not the projects that compete, but the technical and financial capabilities of the participants."
And if the future of the Priyutinsky estate so far only inspires alarming fears, then in the historical center of ancient Volokolamsk the most negative scenario has already been realized: here, in the security zone, in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin, a 7-storey shopping and entertainment center is being built, whose construction was sanctioned by the local administration and the regional Ministry of Culture. The newspaper "Izvestia" was informed about this in the department of VOOPIiK in the Moscow region. Now the remake will shamelessly obscure the views of the city from the Kremlin hill, but now that Rosokhrankultura is no longer there, it is not at all easy to find a building authority for the developers.
