In St. Petersburg, on the eve of the session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, several urban planning scandals flare up. The first one is connected with the new complex of Gazprom on Lakhta with a height of 500 meters. This week, Novaya Gazeta reported that its volumetric-spatial solution has already been agreed upon. This happened at a meeting of the commission for the consideration and implementation of strategic projects in St. Petersburg, held on March 26 with the participation of Governor Georgy Poltavchenko. As a result, the concept of "Lakhta Center" was approved in the absence of representatives of KGIOP and the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture. Meanwhile, the World Heritage Committee urges not to make final decisions on the project until it is submitted to the World Heritage Center to study the assessment of the impact of the new site on the urban environment. Petersburg must submit to the committee panoramas of the territories that are recognized as part of the World Heritage Site. We are talking about an overview of the sea panorama of the city from Kronstadt, Strelna, as well as the panorama of Lakhta, explained Alexander Karpov, head of the ECOM center of expertise.
The second scandal was caused by the reconstruction of the Menshikov bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Excavators excavate a three-hundred-year-old cultural layer - an earthen embankment, which is the basis of the entire structure of the fortress and the bastion in particular. The council for cultural heritage under the government of St. Petersburg explained to the newspaper Nevskoe Vremya that the earthen rampart is oversaturated with moisture, and because of this, the bricks are literally crumbling. After removing the earth, an empty space will remain, whether it will be filled up or not is still unknown. In St. Petersburg they are talking about the possibility of a two-story restaurant appearing there. But the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg denied these rumors: "There can be no talk of building a restaurant." Meanwhile, the process of work itself raises questions. The soil is delivered to a special site and examined there. Archaeologist, senior researcher at the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pyotr Sorokin said that this method has nothing to do with science: "It will not be an archaeological layer, but a destroyed object." He is sure that the soil inside the bastion is of value, as it should have preserved the remains of the original timber and earth fortress. However, the deputy director of OJSC "Research Institute" Spetsproektrestavratsiya ", which was carrying out the historical and cultural expertise, Mikhail Milchik, assured that there was no value in the soil.
In St. Petersburg, disputes over the construction of an elite residential complex "Naberezhnaya Evropy" are not abating. Pavel Nikonov, director of the bureau for surveying urban areas of the St. Petersburg NIPIGrad, member of the presidium of the regional branch of VOOPIiK, believes that the planned "monolithic development" is fraught with serious damage to the cultural heritage of St. Petersburg. The new Central Park, in his opinion, could become an important urban planning element of the city along with the trident that closes the spire of the Admiralty, with the arrow of Vasilyevsky Island and the ensemble of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The employees of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House) also speak about the need to give the territory of the Institute of Applied Chemistry for a city-wide park. They sent a letter with a corresponding request to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
At a meeting in the Moscow City Duma on June 18, the results of the competition for the development of the Zaryadye territory were summed up, according to the Moscow News newspaper. Of the 118 projects submitted for the competition, preference was given to thirty. Ten of them were recognized as the most successful and received diplomas. However, experts were unable to identify a clear leader. On the basis of the submitted works, only a "technical task" will be prepared, which will form the basis of the second stage of the competition. The newspaper writes that both a conservative version of the park and a progressive one can be implemented on the territory of Zaryadye. The first one implies the creation of a classic park with a layout of paths that reproduces the scheme of old streets, the construction of buildings, the restoration of the Kitaygorodskaya wall and individual lost temples. The second is the creation of a constantly changing space of the park, in which an analogue of the Kitaygorodskaya wall made of glass or greenery, original landscape solutions may appear, and archaeological finds will be mothballed without restoration. A group of public experts does not consider it possible to create an analogue of Hyde Park on the territory of Zaryadye. This is stated in the conclusion of a public examination conducted under the leadership of a member of the Council for Urban Development of Moscow Mark Gurari. Experts believe that Zaryadye will not be able to cope with the large flow of visitors. Also, experts oppose the construction of a large concert hall, the construction of commercial and administrative buildings, but consider it possible to recreate a part of the Kitaygorodskaya wall. Meanwhile, at the meeting, many called the restoration of the historical wall a "dummy" and doubted its expediency. In the near future archaeologists will start working in Zaryadye to determine what can and should not be implemented there, RIA Novosti writes.
The BFM.ru portal tells about the first visiting meeting of the Skolkovo Foundation's City Council, which took place in Suzdal. On it, the architects spoke about the urban environment of Skolkovo, in particular, they discussed the concept of the university quarter and the museum. The representative of the Herzog & De Meuron bureau, which designs the university, Ilya Tsachev, said that it would be a kind of center with shops, cafes, restaurants and other infrastructure, with free access to the university courtyard. And the director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (USA), Aaron Betsky, came up with the concept of creating a Digital Art Museum on the territory of Skolkovo. On the road, a cooperation agreement was signed between the Skolkovo Foundation and Suzdal. According to the document, the city is going to use innovations in the field of arrangement of the urban environment, developed with the participation of residents of the innovation city.
Afisha magazine publishes an interview with the architect Ilya Utkin, who developed a project for a low-rise residential complex in Kadashi. He proposed to recreate the buildings of the merchant Grigoriev's sausage factory, which had been here even before the revolution, and turn them into elite residential buildings. And Gazeta.ru talked with the head of the Megan Project architectural bureau Yuri Grigoryan, who is involved in the development of the concept for the development of the Big Moscow project, and found out from him how it would be correct to expand the metropolitan metropolis. It is curious that on Thursday the Moscow Regional Duma did not approve the new borders of the Moscow region, the newspaper Izvestia reports. Alexei Makarkin, vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies, believes that regional deputies “are simply bargaining for compensation” and are trying to understand how important the expansion of Moscow is for Vladimir Putin.
The Kommersant newspaper writes about the possible reconstruction of the Narkomfin House on Novinsky Boulevard. Vnesheconombank wants to buy it out and adapt it for a hotel and art space. But so far the process is complicated by the fact that the architectural monument has several owners. Meanwhile, the presentation of the concept of the development of this territory has already taken place. It was prepared by the architect Alexei Ginzburg, the grandson of Moisei Ginzburg, according to whose design the Narkomfin House was built in 1930. According to the concept, in addition to the hotel, it is planned to build a parking lot and recreate parts of the historic laundry building.
The newspaper "Moscow News" tells about one of the first books of the electronic library "Strelka" "Dot-com cities. Silicon Valley Urbanism”by Alexandra Lange, an American architectural critic and professor at New York University. The author explores the topic of the device of corporate campuses such as Facebook, Apple and Google. They are located at a considerable distance from big cities, but at the same time they reproduce the urban structure within themselves - with public spaces and amusement parks. The author considers ideal models of closed campus cities as experimental laboratories for cities of the future.
And about exhibitions. In the Shchusev Museum of Architecture at the exhibition "The Future That Did Not Happen", after a twenty-year break, the famous model of the Grand Kremlin Palace, designed by Vasily Bazhenov, is again presented to the public. The model is made on a scale of approximately 1:48 and would not fit entirely in the halls of MuArt, therefore only fragments of the palace structure are presented. Exhibition “Provincial Heritage. Kostroma Region”opened in the exhibition hall of the magazine“Our Heritage”in Moscow. And in the St. Petersburg New Museum the exposition "Leningrad architectural constructivism: palaces of culture, kitchen factories, baths, etc." is presented.
