Perm architect Igor Vasilyevich Lugovoi left a funny comment on the skyscrapercity forum, characterizing the well-known company KCAP, the developer of the Perm Strategic Master Plan and the Perm 179th Quarter Master Plan:
KCAP - Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners, a Dutch firm that has not developed a single PCB.
PP is a territory planning project.
It's funny because the largest international planner, who developed, in addition to the above master plans, also master plans, for example, the London Olympic Village and Hafen City in Hamburg, as well as many other things (if you are interested, you can see their website), are blamed for the fact that in their portfolio there is no documentation on the planning of the territory, made according to the requirements of the Russian city code.
At the same time, I must note that such a position evokes understanding among our domestic designers: yes, they are climbing busurmanes on our sovereign Motherland, but they themselves have not completed a single project according to our standards, they do not know anything and do not understand, but they are poking around! And if we start comparing the portfolio of KCAP and the corporate design institute of the diversified holding “Saturn-R”, in which Igor Vasilyevich works, then “Saturn” has more planning projects - as many as two. Only here KCAP is called to work in a bunch of countries and they, in addition to Rotterdam, have offices in Zurich and Shanghai, and the design institute "Saturn-R" is not particularly called anywhere, as I understand it, except for the objects of the holding?
I am writing this not to offend anyone, Igor Vasilyevich is a good architect, and Saturn-R is a design institute not bad by Russian standards. I am writing in order to understand myself - what is the difference in the scale of values of our and Western architects and urban planners? What is there in the bourgeois master plans, which is not in the planning projects? There is an idea - and not the idea of an artistic-compositional arrangement of houses on the layout, but a provable concept of improving the quality of the living environment in this area while, of course, making a profit for the investor-developer. Unless, of course, the quality task is set, which does not always happen in Russian conditions. And this is precisely the key to the answer to the question I asked just above. A professional is a person who comes to a client and solves a problem that he has.
An architect comes to a client. What problem does he pose to him? A Russian client in front of a Russian architect - usually - to give the maximum yield of the sold areas from the land plot. Nothing is impossible! The architect has all the necessary knowledge, skills, tools for this, a lot of similar projects have been done, and after a short time the client receives what he is looking for. Our architect's difficulties begin when the task turns out to be non-standard. For example: to increase the sales of apartments. And then the architect either says: “Go to consultants, to sellers, this is beyond my competence,” or he starts looking for and developing his own professional tools that allow solving the problem posed. But architects in Russia are rarely approached with such problems, and when they do, they often turn to Western architects, since they have already developed tools for solving non-standard tasks.
Hence our grievances: “We are so smart, talented, with a large portfolio, and our name is not us, bourgeois. And we could have done no worse. Not the fact that we would have coped. Not the fact that it is not worse.
With urban planning, everything is still more neglected. The client here is the municipality, and the main problem for him is to comply with the law. The law requires that there be documentation on the layout of the territory and that its developer be selected at an auction for a lower asking price for development. Sometimes there is still the problem of attracting investments or building new square meters of housing, and then the terms of reference include the requirement to cut a large number of new free areas for construction - without assessing the consequences of such development. Accordingly, the documentation is developed by the one who, having saved on research and design, releases, under the guise of a general plan or a planning project, a kind of fictitious demonstration product that formally meets all the requirements of the terms of reference and city code, but you cannot live and build on it. So the real problems for the municipality begin after the appearance of such a project.
We noticed that we have not yet talked about the master plans from which this note was started. Because a master plan, as a concept for the development of a district or a settlement, based on the study of the patterns of its development and, of course, provable, appears when the client is faced with the need not only to obtain a territorial planning document “to have it”, but also to understand that the city is faced with a whole set of problems that can be solved through urban planning tools. “City planners” issuing “typical” general plans and planning projects definitely do not have such tools. The new generation of planners - the Glazychev, Vysokovsky, Trutnev clans - already have them. True, so far there are not enough clients and, accordingly, experience.
It turns out that the art of passing the examination becomes the highest value in the mentality of Russian architects. In the mentality of Russian urban planners, there is a detailed observance of SNiP 2.07.01-89 * with masterly inscribing areas for knocking out carpets into courtyards cramped by high-rise buildings. And really, who needs all these ideas of yours, if we are so good at technology?
