This week, July 23-24, the fifth seminar for the development of the Moscow agglomeration was held. The teams participating in the competition came up with new ideas for Greater Moscow, proposed their options for locating government organizations, and also estimated the development budget of the annexed territories. The French team of Antoine Grumbach proposed to locate federal ministries throughout the Moscow metropolitan area. So, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications and the Ministry of Regional Development, according to the team, should be located in the area of three stations, the Ministry of Economic Development, Finance, Energy and Customs - near Moscow City, the Ministry of Education - near the metro station "University", the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor's Office - near MKAD. The team also proposes to build a new metro line 80 km long, which will run from Three stations to the southwest. Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill believes that a complex of buildings should be built in the Kommunarka area for the federal center. The dominant feature of this complex should be a skyscraper. Dutch architects from the OMA workshop propose to transfer government organizations to the territory of the "new" Moscow, and to open the territory of the Kremlin for wide access, turning it into the Hermitage. In turn, the head of the Ostozhenka architectural studio, Alexander Skokan, believes that the parliamentary center can be located in Zaryadye. He is confident that there will be enough space on the territory of the former hotel "Russia" to accommodate the park. And the financial center, according to the architect, should be located on the site of the Expocentre on Krasnaya Presnya.
At the seminar, the architects estimated the budget for the development of the lands annexed to Moscow. So, the architect Andrey Chernikhov believes that the development of the new territory will cost the budget 86 billion euros, the team of Antoine Grumbach called the figure twice as much - 187 billion euros. Political analyst Alexander Morozov told the Izvestia newspaper that he does not consider these figures to be accurate. The amount may grow due to the rise in land prices in new territories, he said. The final sixth seminar for the development of the Moscow agglomeration will take place in August, and the results of the competition will be summed up in early autumn.
The French newspaper Le Figaro writes about the construction of "Big Moscow" this week. The article says that in 2008, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, by proposing the development of the "Greater Paris", set an example for the Russian authorities. The newspaper tells about the team of Antoine Grumbach, which took part in the development of the "Greater Paris", and is now developing the concept of the Moscow agglomeration. The text notes that the French team is going to modernize the metro so that it will be possible to go around Moscow in an hour, as it was in the plans for the construction of the "Greater Paris".
Another competition has come to an end in Moscow - for the concept of development of the All-Russian Exhibition Center among students. Three teams became its laureates. The first proposes to create an office center, an amusement park, an equestrian club, an avenue of peoples' friendship, as well as a congress center on the territory of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, which can be used as a concert hall. The second team also proposed to build a business center on the territory of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, which will house lecture halls and coworking offices. In addition, they proposed to place an indoor beach with a swimming pool, and to run a sightseeing tram along the perimeter of the VVC. The third team proposes to create a theme park, an additional education center and a business center. These ideas are planned to be used in the concept of the exhibition center development. The project should be completed by 2024.
Architectural critic Grigory Revzin devoted his articles to the activities of the former chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, the urban planning situation in St. Petersburg and one of the main works of Santiago Calatrava - The City of Science and Technology in Valencia. The critic writes that Kuzmin failed to realize the main point of his program - to achieve the approval of the master plan, developed on the basis of the ideas of the theorist of architecture Alexei Gutnov. According to this master plan, it was planned to develop urban development regulations for each section of the city. The main activity of Kuzmin was reduced to professional responses to the initiatives of the city authorities, Revzin writes. “From the Soviet times, teams with over-qualified skills remained, for two decades they tried to somehow implement their programs, but the real content of economic and political processes was too simple, too reduced to the elementary tasks of capital accumulation so that they could survive”, - concludes the critic.
In an article about St. Petersburg, Grigory Revzin says that $ 10 billion has been allocated for the implementation of the program for the reconstruction of the historical center. The critic fears that big money could ruin the legacy of St. Petersburg, as it once happened in Moscow. He believes that second-row houses are under threat, in the place of which new buildings may appear. And all this is because no one discussed the program, and no one has any ideas for the development of the city center, Revzin writes.
The third article of the critic is devoted, in the words of Revzin himself, to Calatrava's "completely meaningless" work - "The City of Science and Technology." This huge complex has become meaningless, since it is practically not used at all. The City of Science and Technology consists of the Reina Sofia Palace of the Arts, the Prince Philip Science Museum, the Semisphere building and the Oceanarium, which was designed by the architect Felix Candela. Today, only the Prince Philip Museum is used.
At Strelka, developers, architects, officials and bloggers discussed the future of Moscow's industrial zones. Afisha magazine publishes the most interesting opinions. The architect, head of the Latz + Partner bureau, Peter Latz, believes that the territories of the former factories should be landscaped and open for public use. Natalya Chernyshova, senior researcher at the Moscow General Planning Institute, emphasizes that before doing the improvement of industrial zones, it is necessary to resolve the issue of their transport accessibility and environmental rehabilitation. Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Economic Policy Andrei Sharonov said that parks or educational institutions could be created on the site of former factories. At the same time, he stressed that Russia is still not mentally ready for this.
Ogonyok magazine selected ten of the most significant losses of avant-garde architecture in the last decade. This list includes the Moscow Hotel, the former NKVD garage in Moscow, the Palace of Culture and Technology named after the First Five-Year Plan and the Kirov Stadium in St. Petersburg, as well as the building of the former Commodity Exchange in Yekaterinburg that was demolished this spring. Currently, Melnikov's house in Moscow is under threat, the Kommersant newspaper writes. It is planned to build a shopping and entertainment center with an underground parking near the architectural monument. Melnikov's house is located in an unsafe place, where there are voids and rivers underground, therefore, the development of underground space is prohibited next to it. The excavated foundation pit can cause the destruction of the monument.
The online newspaper The Village has created a map for the development of cycling in Moscow. On it, all users can apply bicycle parking, as well as tire shops, bike shops, bike rentals. The "Chain Reaction" map, as conceived by the authors, should demonstrate the state of the bicycle infrastructure in Moscow and how it should be further developed. Architect Alexander Perov and entrepreneur Dmitry Ugryumov believe that the future of cycling is in the creation of covered highways over the water, inside which there will be two paths in each direction for cyclists and a separate one for pedestrians and wheelchair users. The authors will present the project at the Archstoyanie festival of landscape architecture in Nikolo-Lenivets, which opened on July 27.
The Bolshoi Gorod magazine has compiled a list of 16 main objects of Archstoyanie that must be visited without fail. These include the capsule hotel "Your Cupboard" by the Architectural Bureau "ArchNakh", the "Remote Office" of the artist Alexander Konstantinov, the object "Storming the Sky" by the Bureau Manipulazione Internazionale, which is a huge pyramid of wooden stairs put together. The magazine highlighted the "Rotunda" and "Bed" of the architect Alexander Brodsky, as well as the art object of the artist Nikolai Polissky "Border of the Empire", consisting of border pillars crowned with sculptures.
Those who are not ready to go out of town to "Archstoyanie" can go to the exhibition of the architect Yuri Avvakumov "Eyesight Test" in the "Triumph" gallery. It presents three series of photographs, the newspaper "Vedomosti" writes. One of them includes landscapes with tables superimposed on them for testing eyes, the other - landscapes of the starry sky, created using rhinestones, the third - identical photographs of the same tower, when combined, an unexpected optical effect arises.
