The notorious "passable commission", which had successfully acted under the ex-mayor as the chief executioner of architectural monuments, was finally dismissed. According to Gazeta.ru, for several years this apparatus, headed by Vladimir Resin, managed to turn more than three thousand historical buildings into bricks, having examined a total of about four. The newly created commission as a whole will retain the powers of its predecessor - it will consider all urban planning issues in the protection zones, by the way, not only demolition, but also new construction. Its new composition is principally principled: as Nikolai Pereslegin, an adviser to the Moscow Heritage Committee, noted, now it will include exclusively "decent people." It is known that the rector of the Moscow Architectural Institute Dmitry Shvidkovsky, the deputy director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums Andrei Batalov and Konstantin Mikhailov from Arkhnadzor received invitations. Pereslegin added that “this is not an advisory body. Besides him, no one will have the right to make decisions, "Kommersant quotes. The new program “Culture of Moscow 2012-2016” promises to improve the situation with the protection of monuments in Moscow, according to him, within the framework of which officials of the Moscow Heritage Committee promise to develop urban planning regulations for each house within the Garden Ring so that “there will be no more disputes, debates and double interpretations”.
Despite promising statements, the department itself remains inconsistent in its actions. Against the background of the loud demolition of the Cathedral Mosque, the removal of the protection status from the city estate of the 19th century at 6 Aristarkhovsky Lane, about which Izvestia writes, looks, of course, much less significant. Nevertheless, such a gesture by the Moscow Heritage Committee cannot but surprise. Although this address has already appeared in last year's list of lost heritage sites, the ruins of the estate are still alive. True, the project of an administrative and office building in their place is still alive. The elimination of the protection status is actually a permit for demolition, and if this is the approach to the matter, then why create a new commission at all?
And in St. Petersburg, local authorities and security agencies, in principle, do not adhere to a single policy in the field of heritage and periodically make decisions in favor of monuments, then in favor of developers. So, the other day the arbitration court abolished the boundaries of the archaeological monument on the Okhtinsky cape, allowing Gazprom to build it up, Kommersant reports. Back in 2001, this site was fully protected, but then the Okhta Center project appeared and in 2009 KGIOP cut the boundaries of the monument so that it would not interfere with the tower. Now, when the skyscraper moved to Lakhta, and the company decided to build up an unprofitable site with commercial real estate, there was no place for archeology at all. It is impossible to extract the artifacts - they can only be museumified, but then Gazprom will have to be banned from capital construction. Who will win this dispute - the authorities will decide at the end of October, after the next historical and cultural examination of the results of the excavations.
Another major event in the field of heritage was the Moscow part of the all-European annual Denkmal exhibition, which is now taking place in the Manezh. The very fact of its holding and the fact that the exhibition was opened by the mayor personally are signs of increased attention to the monuments and, perhaps, even the desire of Sergei Sobyanin to change the rules of the game. So far, however, the matter has not moved beyond loud statements and projects, and, according to Moskovskiye Novosti, it is unlikely to move at all. It's all about the mentality: "Heritage is an organic part of modern life in Europe", while Denkmal in the Manege shows projects for the restoration of individual facades, sometimes quarters and even streets, but does not think about preserving traditional culture and continuity and does not even show this very heritage. notes the author. Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports on the success of the exhibition in a completely different vein: last year alone, 23 large objects were restored in Moscow with budget funds, without specifying, however, that basically, we are talking only about the facades.
Almost none of our recent reviews has been complete without discussing the prospects for "Greater Moscow" - and now the number one topic has reappeared in the press. The chief architect of the capital, Alexander Kuzmin, gave an interview on this occasion to the Moscow News newspaper. In particular, Kuzmin suggested that the annexed territory will have three urbanization zones - the largest one within a radius of 8 km from the Moscow Ring Road, urban formations "floating" in greenery, and a "recreation" zone. Work on the development of "Big Moscow" began for Kuzmin, oddly enough, with the task "to deal with the historical heritage." The next step is an urban competition. True, the chief architect believes that there will hardly be a winner in it, this is done for the sake of reviewing concepts that will be prepared by the invited teams of authors.
A number of large Moscow projects, such as the reconstruction of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, Luzhniki and the Polytechnic Museum, continue to be discussed in the press. A curious turn recently took place in the concept of renewing the territory of the All-Russian Exhibition Center: as Kommersant writes, businessmen God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev offered to restore at their own expense part of the pavilions and fountains of the central alley in exchange for the opportunity to build a large-scale shopping and entertainment center with an aquarium, a year-round beach, an amusement area, etc. Its area will be about 300 thousand square meters. m. - for comparison, now the area of all structures of the ensemble is only fifty more. On the other hand, investors promise to refrain from new construction in the historical core and natural complex, i.e. on about 50% of the territory. By the way, they also promise to preserve two monuments that exist on the site of the future shopping and entertainment center - the Naturalists' Club and the Panorama cinema. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who recently left the post of chairman of the board of directors of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, has already approved this plan, the newspaper notes. What will happen to the rest of the new building, the total area of which was estimated by the previous management at about 740 thousand square meters? m. is still unknown.
By the way, a branch of the Polytechnic Museum may appear in the renovated VVTs. Meanwhile, the Polytechnic itself froze until the end of October in anticipation of the verdict: the Board of Trustees could not choose a winner in the competition for the reconstruction of the building and left two for now - Japanese architects Kawamura and Ishigami and American Thomas Lieser, working together with Mikhail Khazanov. As Gazeta.ru writes, both projects exceed the limits of what is permitted in relation to a historical monument, moreover, the very idea of making something innovative out of the pseudo-Russian style consists of a difficult-to-resolve contradiction. In general, both applicants have about two to three weeks to finally convince the jury that they are right.
The consultants for the reconstruction of the Luzhniki sports complex, the British company Colliers international, are now surprising with new radical ideas. Details of the project were recently published by Komsomolskaya Pravda. The British are going to implement their main idea - to separate professional sports from amateur sports and recreation areas - with rather bold permutations within the ensemble: for example, take and swap the swimming pool and the Small Sports Arena. They promise to reshape the large sports arena more carefully - its capacity will not be increased by a superstructure, but by a tunnel: a 6-meter pit will be dug in the place of a football field and a field will be lowered there, extending down the steep stands, like in a circus. Experts will consider how expensive it is to implement, while Muscovites are still more concerned about another question: will at least the facades of this remarkable ensemble survive during the reconstruction, since not a single Luzhniki building has yet been guarded.
