Acceptance of applications for the competition for the concept of the development of the Moscow agglomeration was closed on February 13. In total, 67 applications were submitted for it, including 37 from foreign teams. According to Kommersant, collectively, teams from 21 countries have expressed a desire to take part in the competition for the development of Greater Moscow. The ten most suitable teams were selected by a special editorial committee, which included the chief architects of Moscow and the region, representatives of the Ministry of Regional Development, the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan of Moscow, as well as the director of the Greater Paris working group Bertrand Lemoine and the deputy director of the regional planning department of Madrid Alberto Leboreiro.
The finalists (the full list can be found on the Moskomarkhitektura website) included four Russian teams - the Ostozhenka architectural bureau, Architectural and Design Workshop of Professor IAA AA Chernikhov, TsNIIP Urban Planning and the Moscow Architectural Institute. True, none of these organizations plans to participate in the competition on their own - realizing that the development of such a large-scale and multifaceted project like "Big Moscow" requires experts of various profiles, the Russians enlisted the support of foreign colleagues. Note that the majority of foreign bureaus, selected by the editorial commission, did the same, so that the Russians will also take part in the competition for the best concept for the development of the Moscow metropolitan area as part of European and American teams - for example, Project Meganom, Group Ark, Bernasconi LLC "And LLC" United Projects ".
When studying the list of finalists, the heterogeneity of the selected teams immediately catches the eye. For example, Ostozhenka has enlisted the support of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, leading transport specialist Alexander Strelnikov, director of the Center for Strategic Research North-West Foundation Vladimir Knyaginin, and the developers of the Greater Paris development concept, Ateliers Lion Associes. As the head of the bureau Alexander Skokan told us, having made the decision to participate in the competition, Ostozhenka immediately began to study the experience of the Greater Paris and from the many projects developed for it, it chose the one that was closest to itself in spirit and outlook. The author of such a project turned out to be Ateliers Lion Associes, which, in turn, invited the company La Société du Grand Paris, responsible for the project and construction of the transport network of the expanded capital of France and the state structure for the improvement of the La Défense EPADESA district, as consultants.
Andrey Chernikhov's team turned out to be the most international: this architect invited colleagues from the USA (Diller Scofido + Renfro), Croatia (Tower 151 Architects), Bulgaria (Projects EOOD), Denmark (Juul-Frost Architects), Great Britain (McAdam Architects). In a conversation with Archi.ru, Andrei Aleksandrovich admitted that the selection was carried out mainly on the principle of personal acquaintance: Chernikhov had already collaborated with some of the named designers before, with someone he had communicated with within the framework of the Chernikhov Prize. “If we talk about the professional qualities of the invited colleagues, then all these are people with non-standard thinking and the broadest outlook, and their projects are distinguished by their scrupulous elaboration. In addition, we considered it necessary to involve in the work on the concept about 12 Russian experts in the field of urbanism, geopolitics and economics, who are well aware of the real needs of the future agglomeration."
But the Moscow Architectural Institute, which itself is a collection of all kinds of experts, invited only one architectural bureau to co-authors - this is Devereux Architects from Ireland, who participated in the 2010 international competition for the best concept for the development of the 179th quarter of Perm. TsNIIP Urban Development also relied on a minimum of assistants - together with the institute, the Japanese company NIKKEN SEKKEI will participate in the competition, which, in particular, designs the Metropolia quarter at the intersection of Volgogradsky Prospect and the Third Transport Ring, and the English bureau RTKL, in Russia so far the most known for the project of an underground shopping complex under Paveletskaya Square.
In addition to the Ostozhenka co-authors, among the selected teams were three more developers of the Greater Paris development concept - the Italians Studio Associato Bernardo Secchi Paola Viganò (by the way, the only one of 10 teams that decided to work on the project independently), as well as the French Antoine Grumbach et Associes (invited Wilmotte & Associes, the Higher School of Economics and the Moscow workshop "Line") and L'AUC, in tandem with which, in particular, Boris Bernasconi will work. Also among the future authors of "Greater Moscow" were the legendary OMA bureau (acts in a predictable tandem with the Strelka Institute and Project Megan), the Spaniard Ricardo Bofill, who plans to use the experience of Barcelona's development in the project, and the united team of urbanists from Canada, UK and USA led by Urban Design Associates. In addition, the four bureaus, based on the results of the consolidated evaluation of applications, recommended inviting consultants to participate in the competition seminars. These are GRAN LLC and SPEECH Choban & Kuznetsov (Russia), Gregotti Associati International SRL (Italy) and the Beijing Design Institute for Urban Construction Design (China).
The fact that the commission gave preference to the authors of the "Greater Paris" is by no means accidental: the complex controlled expansion of the French capital is the model, in the image and likeness of which Moscow also intends to develop. Of course, not all Parisian know-how is applicable in the Russian latitudes, but the competition for the best concept of the agglomeration is held precisely according to the scheme invented and implemented in 2007-2010 by the French authorities. In particular, the idea of the parallel work on a project by ten teams at once, among which the best one is not chosen, was borrowed from them. The amounts of the participants' fees coincide with an accuracy of up to euros - the teams selected by Moscow will also receive 250 thousand euros for their projects.
The contract with the finalists will be signed by the ordering party of the State Unitary Enterprise "NIiPI of the General Plan of Moscow" this week, on February 24. Then, within 6 months, each of the teams will have to develop three logically complementary and developing projects: the Moscow agglomeration itself, the capital with the annexed territories and a new federal government center, which is supposed to be located on the annexed lands. “While there is no clarity about what exactly needs to be developed, the composition and nature of the submitted materials is also not very clear,” Alexander Skokan shared with Archi.ru. - It is unlikely that effective drawings and visualizations are needed here, rather, regulations and recommendations, but it is still very difficult to get intelligible explanations from the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction. I hope the situation will clear up after the signing of the agreement and the holding of the first of the promised seminars."
It is not clear yet who exactly will evaluate the final work of the selected teams. According to Alexander Kuzmin, the composition of the jury will be determined by this summer. “So far, I can only say for sure that it will not include bureaucrats from the government of Moscow, the Moscow region and federal structures. This is the demand of the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin ", - quotes the chief architect of Moscow, the agency" Interfax ".
The leadership of the Moskomarkhitektura promises that all the projects of the finalists will be shown at a special exhibition in September 2012, and a little later the jury will mark in each of them the sections and solutions that are most interesting and applicable for Moscow. “The fact that there will be no winner in the competition (as in the competition for the Grand Paris) seems to be a very sensible and logical idea, because projects of this scale can only be developed collectively,” Professor of Moscow Architectural Institute Vyacheslav Glazychev said in an interview with Archi.ru. - Of course, the choice of the commission raises certain questions: not all teams are equally known and successful in the field of urban planning and urban planning, but personally, it seems to me a huge plus that both Russian and foreign bureaus, with rare exceptions, decided to act as teams, and teams are quite big. This will not only open our usual circle of backstage design, but also guarantee a variety of approaches to solving Moscow's problems."
