The competition for the development of a concept for the development of the territory on the site of the demolished hotel started on February 1. On March 15, the organizers finished accepting the competition works, and for another two weeks the preparation and installation of the exhibition was carried out at the House on Brestskaya. By the way, the large-scale exposition, which occupied the entire third floor of the architectural and construction center, is open to all comers until April 6. You can also get acquainted with all the proposals at the virtual exhibition on the Moskomarkhitektura website - you can vote for the project you like there.
The exact number of projects for the improvement of the most central vacant lot of the capital selected for consideration is 118. They came both from Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kemerovo, Kostroma) and from Lithuania, Ukraine, France, Spain. Professional architects, students, foreign designers, and simply enterprising residents of Moscow thought about the future of the Rossiya hotel - in general, all those who are not indifferent to the appearance of the future park, all who felt the wind of the “architectural thaw” after long years of dictatorship point building.
The organizers of the competition themselves (the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, the Union of Architects of Russia, the Union of Moscow Architects, Moskomarkhitektura) admit that much more projects were submitted than they could have expected. “The proposals are striking in their variety,” says Viktor Logvinov, president of the Union of Moscow Architects, head of the expert group. “There are purely landscape proposals, there are those with a concert hall. There are much more daring concepts - as it always happens at an open competition,”- shared his first impressions and the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, who called such a wealth of choice“a real holiday”.
Naturally, such a large number of projects forced the organizers to rethink the structure of the exhibition on the fly - they tried to classify the presented projects, breaking them down into semantic blocks. However, this division is very arbitrary. At the very beginning of the exposition, there are projects in which there are obvious state symbols and propaganda of the power of the state. This is followed by a block of projects proposing to supplement the park with a concert hall. This is followed by work, in which other functional areas appear that are not indicated in the terms of reference. They are followed by landscape and green projects. Closing the exhibition circle are works with avant-garde and frankly exotic solutions, for example, a project in which five high-rise office "plates" are erected on the site of a former hotel or a giant Tatlin tower.
The very first acquaintance with the array of works presented allows us to speak about the amazing variety of both the architectural tastes of the participants and the manner of execution. Someone used the method of computer modeling, someone, on the contrary, hand-drawn graphics - the organizers tried to neutralize the inevitable diversity of the artistic means used with the help of rather strict requirements for the submission of works. All projects are presented on the same tablets and, of course, anonymously, although the authorship of some of the works for colleagues in the competition and the crowd of fans is by no means a secret. Plus, some concepts are accompanied by sonorous memorable names - what are at least "Kitezh-grad", "Easter eggs", "Park Vernissage", "Park of the Greatness of Russia", "History of the future", "Active grid".
As for the inclusion of a concert hall in the park, the opinions of the participants of the competition were clearly divided. Among them there were many supporters of a purely landscape solution of the territory, who believe that the construction of an "inconspicuous" concert hall for 2000 seats in the park will only complicate the already difficult transport situation in this area of the city. However, both those who advocate a park without leisure facilities and those who design a concert complex on its territory have provided for underground parking in their concepts.
The organizers of the competition promise that after April 6, when the jury will select the best concepts, the second stage of the competition will start, during which the authors of the most interesting proposals will be able to bring them to the stage of intelligible and realizable projects. However, even this can hardly guarantee that one of the works presented now in the "House on Brestskaya" will really be brought to life. So far, officials are only prudently promising that the winner of the competition will be able to participate in the development of the final project for the reconstruction of the Zaryadye territory.
But the date for the opening of the new park is called quite specific - it is 2015. In addition, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, inspired by the success of the competition, has already instructed the Moskomarkhitektura to hold another conceptual competition, this time for the best project for the development of the Khitrovskaya Square territory.
