The activists of the St. Petersburg city protection movement do not run out of reasons for concern. After the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture finally approved the half-kilometer Lakhta skyscraper at the beginning of August, thus opening another round of endless litigation, a new large-scale project was presented - it is planned to build Alla Pugacheva's song theater over the mouth of the Smolenka River. The complex is supposed to be made in the form of a giant letter "P", which has already given critics a reason to call this object an analogue of the famous arch of the Parisian Defense. The indignant bloggers, however, refer to the project as nothing more than "a farewell greeting from Valentina Matvienko as governor." The most lively discussion took place in Marina Litvinovich's blog. Some network authors very actively criticize the project, others rightly note that these are only preliminary sketches, from which it does not at all follow that a 100-meter letter "P" will actually grow on the site allocated to the singer. What is really known about the future complex so far is that it will include a concert hall, a recording studio, a school of producers, a hotel and a business center.
“What an ugly old-fashioned project! Brutalism, God forgive me. It was built this way in the 70s, 40 years have passed since then,”stilo is indignant. “Allocating land is nothing yet,” encourages the drugoi. - Pugacheva was given the Forum cinema on Sadovoe fifteen years ago. The cart is still there. There will be no theater with the letter P”. However, the giant "P" found many supporters, for example, nolison believes that "P" is "a normal modern building …". A fan of La Défense schlaflosig remarks: "I will say that the Parisians are obviously less inclined towards the prohibition of new construction, and therefore Paris has a future and potential for development, instead of the dull prospect of remaining a city-museum." He is also supported by evgeny_twit, parrying the defenders of historic St. Petersburg: “Do you know where the mouth of the Smolenka River is? The 100-meter building will not be visible from the center … This is Vaska's cesspool (Vasilyevsky Island - N. K.) There are only new buildings, from an architectural point of view, except that the Pribaltiyskaya hotel stands out. And so the district will develop …”.
Recently, the residents of St. Petersburg have also had one more "hot spot" - the details of a new version of the project for the "restoration" of the Nikolsky market have become known, the destruction of which cannot be ignored due to its dilapidation. The project of Yevgeny Gerasimov's workshop provides for the placement of a business and conference center with a hotel for 350 rooms on the territory of the market, and, having studied it, city defenders doubted that the restoration of the market itself could fit into such grandiose commercial plans. The only concession in relation to the historical building can be considered a decrease from 24 to 18 meters in the height of the glass dome, which is going to cover the monument. The author of the post on the blog "Living City" alert_dog is perplexed: “In what minds are these strange projects born - a hotel on the market, a cozy cottage in a cemetery or a restaurant in the toilet? By the way, not a single citizen of St. Petersburg will go to such a restaurant…. Those who do not know go there, and here, in Nikolskoye, tourists are unlikely to know that they are sleeping right in the Obzhorny Ryad. " Why not leave the market here, asks kosh_ko: "All the markets in the center of Moscow have been destroyed - now they are selling on the streets!" You can make a book market, as in DK Krupskaya, picks up alert_dog. “Not OFFICES,” notes kleomen, “otherwise the market will have to be virtually demolished and rebuilt. It would be better then to immediately cover it with a hood and rebuild, than to endure an imitation of an old building, from which in fact nothing will remain. "And you can “restore and distribute the premises of these small shops on a grant system for the offices of public organizations, charity shops, rehearsal points, maybe…. It is for small things that are different. And to clean up the courtyard and make there something like a recreation area with cafes, - offers tankredy. The idea of the people living in the city to preserve the historical function of the building is, of course, good, but it's too late to discuss anything here - as Karpovka.net reports, the project has passed all approvals in Rosokhrankultura and the Smolny Committee for the Protection of Monuments, work will begin this fall.
The Moscow colleagues of the Living City, meanwhile, found themselves involved in a protracted scandal over the demolition of a house in Bolshoy Kozikhinsky Lane, which is often called a provocation in blogs. This story looks really ambiguous: there are dozens of monuments in need of guardianship in Moscow, but a group of activists risk their health and life in battles with the local private security company for this very house, by the way, it is very unremarkable. Bloggers were divided into two irreconcilable halves: some accuse pseudo-city defenders in an attempt to make money on the scandal, others stop excavators for the sake of history. Without joining either one or the other, the architectural critic Grigory Revzin concludes for himself: this story debunks the myth of Sobyanin's Moscow - investors continue to work with Luzhkov's methods. In the comments to his article, tetya_motte writes: “Yes, the house was not some drop dead valuable, but in the center of Moscow, everything was already broken … And, by the way, this house was not even emergency. It could be moved in again or something could be done there - an office, a cafe …”. “As long as the house is ordinary and invaluable, it is possible to beat up the residents like that. Banditry, which is covered all over the place,”- says the activist brel_brel. And troubetzky proposes not to break lances against new construction, but to try to achieve compliance with the previous dimensions.
And on the guglia blog, a dispute flared up around the so-called. pseudo-city defenders who inflate scandals only to blackmail the developer. One of these activists, at least, has already been recognized as a street actor specializing in such actions. Esenina_o writes: “This is a provocation on the part of the people who are involved in this business…. They find an old house intended for demolition, "twist" it on the Internet for value, then wait for the builders who come to demolish the house. They begin to provoke fights … "The author of the material in the ru-compromat blog agrees with this. "It would be better if they cared about real monuments, otherwise they have been crumbled for years without restoration, that's where you need to spend your energy, and not on paid protests!" - sure ivan_korneevs. Be that as it may, this whole story has already hit hard on the reputation of the activists - maybe this was someone's goal?
In conclusion of our review, we will mention the post of the popular photographer and blogger Ilya Varlamov, dedicated to the modern architecture of Amsterdam. The article is titled "House-Boot" - bloggers discuss the headquarters of the ING bank, built in 2001 by the studio Meyer en Van Schooten. "Critics compare it to a giant sand castle, and fans compare it to the architecture of the ancient Incas," the author of the post notes, but, as it turned out, not everyone is able to appreciate the advanced Dutch school. Varlamov's audience liked only the "legs" on which the building was raised, apparently because they reminded of their native Moscow, for example, A. Meerson's house on Begovaya.
