An indignant wave of discussions on the network was caused by information that the presidential administration, which currently occupies a number of buildings in the Kitay-gorod area, intends to fence itself off from the townspeople with an impressive fence for its own safety. City activists have already dubbed the project "Closed City": inside the bureaucratic quarter, so. there will be two historical streets adjacent to the Old Square and Varvarka, and two outstanding monuments of ancient Russian architecture - the chambers of the famous icon painter Simon Ushakov and the Trinity Church in Nikitniki, actively visited by both tourists and believers. Soon, without a special pass, access here will be permanently closed. Tracking the state of the monuments will also be very difficult.
"Arhnadzor" posted on its website an appeal to the president demanding to cancel the decision that infringes on the rights of citizens in access to heritage sites. “It was not even under the communists that the concentration of cultural monuments was closed for free access of people,” the movement coordinator Konstantin Mikhailov comments on the situation to Novaya Gazeta. "In fact, we are now dealing with the alienation of an entire historical area in favor of clerical services." At the forum of the RBC information portal, this news greatly fueled readers' interest. The fenced-in area in the city center evoked associations among users with the ghetto, the Berlin Wall, the "Green Zone" in Baghdad, and even the Bastille. However, a certain plus in this situation was discovered by the discussion participant Ruslan, who knows firsthand about the capital's transport collapse: “they will stop driving around the city to work in corteges and with flashing lights…. Is it bad?" And on the nataly-hill blog, the discussion participants saw in the current conflict parallels with the recent historical past and even with the plot of a fantastic story: “The sidewalk has already been fenced in the Old Square. Reminds Bulychtva's story "Free Dictator". He transplanted the entire planet, he sits in a cage, inside which there is "will", - writes the user domety. And the Internet user andrey2 recalls: "At the time when the CPSU Central Committee was sitting there, there was also a fence there, hidden in the side streets."
In the meantime, legacy and power, in the meantime, once again clashed in St. Petersburg: the reason for active discussions on the network was the departure of the odious head of the Committee for the Protection and Use of Monuments, Vera Dementieo, and the appointment of one of the former associates of the new mayor, Alexander Makarov, to this post. The information that from now on Dementieva will be the head of the Pavlovsk Museum-Reserve added fuel to the fire. “Soon in Pavlovsk, everything will be built up with cottages and skyscrapers, and everything else will be cut down and asphalted,” the user Olga makes her gloomy forecast in the KP-Saint Petersburg blog. “Poor Pavlovsk, we need to go and see it faster before it is destroyed,” Valery agrees. “The appointment of Mrs. Dementieva could have been foreseen. Generally, Mr. Poltavchenko's staff rotation is strange and original. The monuments will be guarded by an FSB general. The culture is run by a banana merchant. Kekhman, of course, raised the bar for Mikhailovsky high, although it is far from indisputable. But the manager in the theater and the head of culture in the city are probably different things,”argues Marina in the blog of the Balt-Info news agency.
If the bloggers were in solidarity with respect to the qualities of Dementieva, the role of the ex-director of Pavlovsk Nikolai Tretyakov was assessed differently by the commentators: “It's a shame - they remove a respected specialist in order to attach a fined official,” notes Dmitry. “I'm almost sure that Tretyakov is not an angel. But, living in Pavlovsk, I can quite clearly understand: how it was before him and how it became WITH him - the abyss. From "no" GMZ has turned into a very attractive and good place to relax, "- says Kirill. “The bad thing is not that Tretyakov was removed, but that Dementyeva was added!” Protests Lyubov. The novel fully agrees with this: “The dismissal of Tretyakov is a blessing for Pavlovsk. What Tretyakov did - turned Pavlovsky Palace into a dirty market, around the palace, in the historical interiors - there is trade everywhere. In the halls there are leaks - as soon as you enter the first floor, it is definitely not the first year that you meet a terrible picture - an empty corner of the ceiling infected with a fungus. Park pavilions under him are destroyed - the Dairy - turned into a filthy cereal institution where barbecue is fried. Aviary has also become a terrible cafe. Cold Bath - closed and destroyed, the Temple of Friendship - restored, but ugly in violation of all historical documents … ".
Continuing the St. Petersburg theme, we note an interesting discussion on Natalia Shustrova's blog, where a conceptual project of the Lakhta Center recreational zone, created by a team of young architects for the Artery-2011 festival, was recently published. The authors were not afraid to go into bold and even utopian form-creation: they advocate the introduction of aeronautical transport that will connect the Lakhta Center with the urban massif, and propose to periodically move high office buildings underground. The project was received ambiguously by the audience and caused a heated discussion on the topic of whether it makes sense at all to create deliberately impracticable projects today.
“The concept of saturating the territory with human masses and effectively using the site is surprising, to put it mildly. In this case, a horizontal or vertical skyscraper is more suitable. It looks like this proposal is an alternative to building a skyscraper. Moreover, it is extremely unsuccessful. It makes no sense to create such a center if it can be organized in the city center, where there is something to see, the territory is human-scale and interesting spatially and functionally (which is not and will not be in this project),”Alexander criticizes the work. User Yu, on the contrary, likes the project rather than not: “Yes, the idea is impressive! And in principle it is realizable, but the idea of imprisoning everyone in a "sunflower", where everyone will sit in a cube, and then put together their cubes and indulge in a common weekend, resembles the structure of human robots, for example, from some American film … ". But the blogger ermakoff-67 is unambiguously scared by the latter: “It's scary to imagine: you stayed in such an office later than 18-00 and you, along with the office module, are pushed into the technical space. And upstairs there is a disco! " According to the commentator, it is impossible to combine any media libraries with office and living spaces, as things are incompatible in principle, otherwise office employees will indeed turn out to be robotic people who are imposed a common daily routine.
“Of course, the guys got excited about transport,” notes Vadim about the aeronautics proposed in the project. - They would rather rent electric planes here, or better - overpasses for electric bicycles. All the same, electric planes are energy-ineffective”. However, according to Natalia Shustrova herself, conceptual design, by definition, does not imply a discussion of the issue of profitability: "It is fantasy, in my opinion, that is lacking in Russian architecture, which is vainly trying to catch up with someone and never looks directly into the future." One of the authors of the project Danil fully agrees with this: “The projects of Archigram, Piranesi, Bulle, Leonidov, Soviet Wallets were, for various reasons, unrealizable for their time, but how huge was their influence? It is not necessary to reduce architecture to narrow technical aspects, it is the same as to reduce physics to the development of teapots."
At the end of the review, let us turn to the topic of heritage again: in the opinion of a number of bloggers, the famous Church of the Intercession on the Nerl is in a critical situation. Only, ironically, if in the case of Kitay-Gorod the monuments are threatened to be closed for access, then, on the contrary, a road is laid to the UNESCO monument. An active discussion of the problem unfolded in the Internet community "Medieval Rus", where a detailed report from Vladimir was published. It turns out that just thirty meters from the walls of the temple, the local authorities decided to continue the highway. In addition to the fact that it is not yet known how this will affect the state of the monument and change the landscape, it is highly likely that a cottage village with a powerful infrastructure will be erected nearby, the author of the post believes.
"Nightmare. This road already spoiled the whole view. Do they really have no other place to build cottages? " - is terrified mos_podoroznik. Part of the Internet audience, however, doubts that the situation is so critical. “How can a road spoil the view of the temple? They build it on the opposite side of the meadow, if you go from the station - everything remains in place, nothing will be visible, especially since it is two-lane, with a dead end in the form of a temple and for household needs. What are car washes and cottage settlements? Vladimir is not Moscow, this will not happen there. But with the road, it will be possible to allow construction equipment to drive to the temple - in order to clean the old woman and simply carry out improvement work. Now the special equipment can only drive directly through the reserved meadow - otherwise it will not get close to the church,”the blogger nickned reassures others. Antongribanov agrees with this point of view: “They do at least something for tourists so that they could not walk to the monument in wading boots - they did not please here either. Which cottages, which car washes? If only to read louder. Apart from fantasies, there are real reasons to believe that there will be something else to be built there besides the road? The user tibetmonk objected to him: “For me, even the fact that this ugly road was built there looks wild. There is also a forest belt on the left, which makes this place a truly original piece of history. The expensive landscape is barbarously cut in half. And there is no sense in this road in principle. There is a path leading to the church, and it is great and distinctive."
The user sverc, who wrote the original post, asks everyone who is not indifferent to the fate of the temple to spread the information as widely as possible. The news has already reached facebook, where it was actively discussed on the page of the architectural critic Marina Ignatushko. According to Elena Gonzalez, the condition of the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl raises serious concerns in any case, regardless of whether the highway will be laid or not: “We were not so long ago, however, even before the construction of the road. The way we found the church and the surrounding area left the most sad impressions. The temple itself was cluttered with shelves with church goods, thus the interior was practically destroyed. " Vlad Kunin urges the participants of the discussion to take real action: "I am killed by the blasphemous attitude of the architectural community of the Vladimir region, for example, the chief architect of the region or the head of the regional branch of the Union for inaction, and if there is no legal authority, then for" professional "silence …". As a result of the discussion, its participants decided to write an official letter and send a request to the administration of the Vladimir region, as well as to hold a special action in defense of the temple.
