The renovated Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure now boasts not only the largest skating rink in Europe, but also the star name of an architect who will take part in the fate of one of its pavilions. So, this week it became known that the reconstruction of the pavilion "The Four Seasons" will be carried out by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and personally by Rem Koolhaas. “The new building project combines two levels of outdoor exhibition galleries, a creative center for children, a rooftop terrace, a bookstore, a café and a lecture hall. The design presupposes the preservation of such decorative materials of the Soviet period as tiles, mosaics and bricks,”RIA Novosti reports. After reconstruction, one of the halls of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture will be located here. According to Kommersant, the second stage will be the reconstruction of the Hexagon pavilion, also intended for the Garage, and before the move, the center of contemporary culture will work in a temporary pavilion, which is being built by the equally famous Japanese architect Shigeru Ban in the park.
An interview with the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, was published by Kommersant this week. One of the main topics of the conversation was the urban planning problems of the Russian capital - according to Mr. Kuzmin, the national problem of Russia is not the development of projects, but their implementation. This is what the official explains both the failure of the Moscow City International Business Center, the demolition of Voentorg, the reconstruction of the Moscow Hotel, and other, even more global undertakings that did not have any intelligible result. By the way, according to Kuzmin, the massive cancellation of investment contracts will only benefit the capital: "The crisis has proved to me once again: the fewer orders, the better for architecture, although worse for architects."
Architectural critic Nikolai Malinin, reflecting on the political situation in the country, shared his opinion with the readers of the Vedomosti newspaper about why “not a single building has appeared in the city in 20 years, from which a genuine drive emanated”. According to Malinin, the reason lies in the fact that the current architecture does not fill the space, but only shapes it, responding to the demands of the current reality. “The only real revolution in architecture was the 'counter-revolution' - a mass movement against new construction,” writes Malinin.
The public movement "Arkhnadzor" last week continued its struggle to preserve the historical interiors of the "Children's World". After the appeal of city rights activists spread in the media, the investor company announced a new competition for the project of the building's reconstruction. True, the conditions of the competition itself have practically not changed and still presuppose radical changes in the interior, so city rights activists again urge the Moscow Heritage Committee to expand the subject of protection of the building.
In parallel, the confrontation between Arkhnadzor and Russian Railways continues. Despite the fact that on December 21, the Moscow authorities recognized the Circular Depot as a cultural heritage site and vetoed its demolition, it is too early to talk about a scientific restoration of the building. The fact is that on December 23, the head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin publicly announced his intention to create an independent expert group and check whether the Circular Depot is really an architectural monument.
And on December 22, the activists of "Arkhnadzor" held an action called "Stop breaking our city" in defense of the house of the merchant Bykov on Second Brestskaya Street. The reason for this was the behavior of the tenant company, which, instead of the planned restoration, began work on dismantling the building. On the same day, Nikolay Pereslegin, an advisor to the head of the cultural heritage department, confirmed that the user of the building, “starting work, behaves like a boor. One gets the impression that the laws for this organization have not been written. " The Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow issued an order to suspend the work.
On the other hand, in St. Petersburg, KGIOP began en masse to bring unscrupulous investors and tenants to court who are carrying out illegal demolition or radical redevelopment of architectural heritage sites. In particular, proceedings were initiated on the demolition of Goldenov's dacha in Sestroretsk, reconstruction of the Yamskiy market and Apraksin yard. The situation is being analyzed by St. Petersburg Vedomosti.
The palace on the Yauza, located on Zhuravlev Square and better known as DK MELZ, is up for sale. A house with a century-old history may change its owner in the very near future and turn from a concert hall into a restaurant, since according to documents it is not an architectural monument. According to the same adviser to the head of the Moscow Heritage Committee Nikolai Pereslegin, the current owner of the Palace "has every legal reason to put it up for sale at an auction," Interfax reports. However, the special representative of the president for cultural cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy, who informed the media about the upcoming auction for the sale of the Palace, has strong doubts that the privatization of the building was carried out legally. “The corporation of this building was not carried out in strict accordance with Russian law, it seems to me,” he said in an interview with the Vesti TV channel.
In the meantime, the Moscow Property Department has already sold another historical object: on December 23, the National was auctioned off. “The deal amounted to 4.67 billion rubles, and the new owner of the architectural monument in the center of Moscow was the president of Rusneft Mikhail Gutseriev,” writes ASN-Info. However, the terms of the auction raised questions from representatives of several media outlets. “The auction witnesses and market participants are convinced that the auction was formal, no competitive environment was created. Experts believe that the real price of the trophy is twice as high, Moskovskie Novosti writes. “It is possible that the new owner will decide to convert the object into apartments,” the Slon.ru portal believes.
In conclusion of our review - about two exhibitions that have opened at the Museum of Architecture. Anfilade of the main building hosts an exhibition dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Boris Iofan. “Despite the memorial items and a documentary film with relatives talking about my grandfather, the exhibition seemed to set the task of renouncing everything human that was in Iofan. Everyone knows that he has every project, the famous monument of the Stalinist Empire style, and here this stardom is once again emphasized - either in tribute to the anniversary, or simply from admiration. It is very easy and pleasant to succumb to the charm of totalitarian architecture,”writes Kommersant. And according to the newspaper "Vedomosti", the main merit of Iofan is that he "selflessly transformed the megalomania of the Soviet leaders into plans and reality."
This exposition is in perfect harmony with the "Vertical Moscow", which unfolded in the Aptekarsky Prikaz. The authors of the project - photographer Gabriele Basilico and architect Umberto Zanetti - took panoramic photographs of the capital's landscapes from the rooftops of seven Stalinist skyscrapers and arranged the exposition so that images of urban dominants alternate with much more "mundane" landscapes, emphasizing the heterogeneity of Moscow architecture.“If we remove the Stalinist skyscrapers (and it is very easy to remove them - you need to climb on them), then we will have a“blurred”city devoid of clear landmarks and composition,” writes Novye Izvestia.
