The fate of the St. Petersburg long-term construction "Northern Crown" is again in the spotlight. Let us remind you that the “longest-running long-term construction” of the city on the Neva, located on the embankment of the Karpovka River, has been in an unfinished state for almost a quarter of a century. The construction of the Severnaya Korona Hotel began in 1988, but the construction was “frozen” due to the all-Union and later all-Russian economic crisis. From 1992 to 1995, an attempt was made to complete the hotel, but the building, which was about 90 percent completed, was never completed. The last time the press was attracted to the "Northern Crown" was in the summer of 2009, when a project to demolish the ill-fated hotel was announced in the press, but the dismantling was not carried out either. In February 2011, the authorities decided to convert the almost finished hotel buildings into a residential complex. True, the first variant of reconstruction has already been rejected by the City Planning Council of St. Petersburg, considering it "raw and unfinished."
The second edition of the transformation of the "Northern Crown", submitted for discussion last Friday, also did not find support from the members of the City Council. According to Fontanka. Ru, experts considered the development made by the studio of architect Viktor Yass as a "parody of Leonty Benois." Architect Sergei Oreshkin spoke in more detail about the project itself and its discussion at the city council in the ru_architect blog. It also published information that the current investor, Severnaya Korona LLC, prepared a lawsuit against the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Architects, the founders of the Architectural Petersburg newsletter, which published an article about the first city council, and other organizations whose members took part in the discussion of the project … The developer is demanding a large sum for "damage to his reputation." What is remarkable, notes Sergei Oreshkin, at the same time "the investor's representative informed the City Council members about the real possibility of the building collapsing on the architectural monument Pokotilova's mansion." One way or another, the concept of the "Northern Crown" is again returned for revision. The new date of consideration of the project has not yet been announced.
Another controversial project is being actively discussed in the blog of the Governor of the Perm Territory Oleg Chirkunov, where the official published a draft of the new airport. The working name of the future air complex is "Diaghilev", the design of this terminal is being developed by the famous Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, whose sketches were published in Chirkunov's blog. The official discussion of this concept at the town planning council is scheduled for the second half of January next year, and the unofficial one is already in full swing. So far, users have been rather wary of the expensive development: "I would like to see a coherent concept, with quantitative and time estimates, cost and ROI calculations." The aesthetic component of Bofill's project was also criticized: “You can suggest not a hang-glider wing, but, for example, the silhouette of a supersonic aircraft in the shape of the letter“Y”(since we need an association with flying). This would allow us to have a long line of check-in counters and landing areas, while at the same time narrowing the search area."
Meanwhile, the Moscow Heritage Committee began to sum up the results of the outgoing year. A newsletter with the results of the year's work was posted on the blog of this organization. It lists the main merits of the committee - both the "Program for the Protection, Preservation, Use and Popularization of Cultural Heritage Sites" adopted in September, and the creation of a structure that replaced the notorious "passable commission", and the rebranding of the free distribution magazine "Moscow Heritage", which, according to the publishers, it will now become "more modern and democratic." True, the report was drawn up in a dry bureaucratic manner typical of this institution, and so far it has not collected a single comment.
But for the Arkhnadzor movement, 2011 is not over yet: today, on December 21, its activists held a press conference dedicated to the fate of the Circular Depot of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, and on the eve of this event, they published information proving cultural and historical the value of this object.
One of the most popular architectural stories on the Internet last week was the article about the construction of the first American skyscrapers. The bright, dynamically written text, accompanied by a rich selection of archival photographs from 1920-30, collected over 700 comments in the first days after publication. Images of installers and riveters working at a height of many meters without belay, as well as the fascinatingly described process of installation work in the first skyscrapers, aroused the curiosity of a variety of bloggers. Some admired the courage of the builders, while others were more interested in the technology of assembling the steel frame of the building. The discussion of this material continued on facebook in the blog of the Project Russia magazine, where architects and architectural critics discussed not only photographs and technologies for the construction of the first high-rise buildings in the USA and the USSR, but also found out the modern specifics of such works. Most commentators were shocked by the fact that even now welders in high-rise buildings often work without insurance: “Where are the safety engineering, trade unions and medical insurance - we do not know; these guys are still like an order."
At the end of the review - a link to another post published in the "Community of Architects" under the comic title "Snails Eating Plaster". Photo report from the territory of the former machine-building plant "Vperyod" (St. Petersburg) is an excellent proof of how uncommon it is possible to approach the repair of the facade of an industrial building. An unknown designer placed plaster figures of snails on the walls of the building, usually decorating the landscapes of suburban areas. The white painted snails contrast perfectly with the bright walls of the house and bring an optimistic note to the gray scale of the industrial landscape.
