For the third week already, the demolition of the Dynamo stadium and the Detsky Mir department store remain the hottest topics in the field of heritage protection. Natalya Samover, the coordinator of the Arkhnadzor public movement, published a post on the blog of the Echo of Moscow radio station, dedicated to both losses. The author is surprised by the lack of reaction to these actions on the part of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and Samover justifies his position very simply: the reconstruction of Detsky Mir is being carried out by Hals-Development, controlled by VTB, the main shareholder of which is the Russian Federation represented by the Federal Property Management Agency under the leadership of the second person of the state, and the reconstruction of the Dynamo stadium is carried out by VTB Arena, a subsidiary of the same VTB. Recall that some time ago "Arkhnadzor" drew up an appeal addressed to the prime minister, in which he asked him to give an order to immediately suspend the dismantling of the department store. No answer was received, and in the meantime, Detsky Mir has already installed the fourth tower crane, designed to extract large fragments of dismantled structures through the dismantled roof. Now Natalya Samover asks the question: “Will the prime minister be silent this time too? Does he think today's breaking the law is a reasonable price to pay for future football victories?"
The Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage, meanwhile, continues its planned work to approve the boundaries of the territories of cultural heritage sites. As the same "Arkhnadzor" writes in its blog, in the very near future new borders of 85 Moscow monuments will be legalized, and, according to the new project, the territories of the overwhelming majority of objects will be adjusted downward. In some cases, the boundaries are designed directly along the foundation of the building. Arkhnadzor is convinced that such a practice devalues the very concept of “territory of a cultural heritage object”, since a territory can be considered a historical property or a land plot, and not a building spot under a monument. The coordinators of the public movement have already sent a letter to the head of the Department of Cultural Heritage Alexander Kibovsky, demanding to withdraw this draft document.
The blog "Architectural Heritage" dedicated a separate publication to the architect Ivan Apollonovich Charushin (1862-1945). This year marks the 150th anniversary of his birth. The architect is the author of projects for more than 500 buildings of the Vyatka province, which includes modern Vyatka, Izhevsk, Sarapul, Votkinsk and other cities. The blog describes in detail two mansions built according to his project - for Nikolai Afanasyevich Vakhrushev and the steamship owner Tikhon Filippovich Bulychev.
In the same 1862, another famous architect was born - Lev Nikolaevich Kekushev. He is remembered in his blog "Arhnadzor". Kekushev is one of the founders of Moscow Art Nouveau, and the buildings designed by him can be recognized by the author's "signature" in the form of a statue or a bas-relief of a lion on the facade. Many of its buildings have been lost or disfigured, but the destruction continues: today the master's late work is being destroyed - Bykov's house in Moscow. A post dedicated to Kekushev, more precisely, one of his most famous buildings, the Metropol Hotel, has also appeared in the My Moscow community. Also "My Moscow" writes about the unrealized project of the Garden Ring, which in many ways could solve the transport problems of the city center.
In general, it should be noted that most of the blog posts this week are of a local history nature: network authors willingly talk about interesting buildings and share their impressions of what they saw. For example, the blog aroundtree, with reference to the Project Classic magazine, writes about Tarasov's house on Spiridonovka in Moscow, which was designed by Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky. The World in a Tree blog tells about the “shops” - wooden public warehouses of the late 19th century. They were intended for strategic reserves - salt, flour, seeds. In the same blog you can read about Norwegian wooden temples of the 12th-13th centuries. on the example of the church of St. Andrew in Borgund. Another interesting publication is dedicated to the 241-meter Woolworth Building in New York, which was built by the architect Cass Gilbert in 1913 and was considered the tallest building in New York for 17 years.
