The city authorities intend to separate the posts of the chief architect and the head of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction. The post of the chief architect of Moscow may be taken by architect Sergei Kuznetsov, managing partner of the Speech Choban & Kuznetsov workshop. In turn, Andrei Antipov, who now holds the post of deputy chairman of the department, may become the chairman of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction. The retired Alexander Kuzmin was at the same time the head of the Moscow City Architecture Committee and the chief architect of the capital. “The separation of the posts of the chief architect of Moscow and the head of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction is a way out of the current situation when it is necessary to resist unprofessionalism and greed in the architectural and construction spheres,” said Andrei Bokov, President of the Union of Architects of Russia, in an interview with RIA Novosti. In his opinion, the chief architect should solve strategic tasks, including those related to the formation of the general plan of the city, and the head of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction should deal with the implementation of urban policy. Andrey Bokov, among the priority tasks facing the head of the Moscow City Architecture Committee and the chief architect, distinguishes: the creation of an efficient and transparent structure of the Moscow City Architecture Committee, the revival of the architectural council as a tool for quality control of design solutions and the preparation of the necessary urban planning documentation.
On Tuesday, August 14, President Vladimir Putin spoke for the first time about the expansion of Moscow. He chaired a meeting on the future of agglomeration. “This is not someone's wishlist, no PR action. The city is suffocating, and the city's problems are growing,”Putin said in a statement to RBC daily. The President listed large-scale projects, the implementation of which is scheduled for the near future - the Universiade in Kazan, the Olympics in Sochi - from which it became clear that the expansion of Moscow is not such an important event, the author of the article notes. The meeting did not shed light on the issue of creating a government center on the annexed territory. If the officials do not go to the "new" Moscow, the plans for the construction of roads and infrastructure, including the ten-lane Kaluzhskoe highway and the metro, will have to be changed, experts say. As a result of the meeting, Putin instructed the government to conduct an inventory of buildings occupied by the authorities by March, determine the areas where officials can move, and finalize the model of financial support for the project, the Vedomosti newspaper writes. And the Ministry of Finance has already developed a financial model for the relocation of government agencies to the "new" Moscow. In particular, the ministry proposes to take a loan of 500 billion rubles from foreign banks to finance the move on the security of buildings in which civil servants now work.
Soon, work may begin in the very center of Moscow - in the Kremlin. The State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve "Moscow Kremlin" announced a competition for research and development of design estimates for the restoration of the 19th century architectural monument - the Kremlin Armory.
The city authorities also noted this week: the mayor's office decided to develop new architectural norms. The experts shared their views with the Izvestia newspaper about what should be spelled out in these norms. So, the honored architect of Russia Zoya Kharitonova believes that the norms should prohibit the construction of underground garages in the center of Moscow, since the pits can cause failures and flooding, as well as determine the permissible dimensions of buildings. The chief architect of the Center for Historical and Urban Planning Research, Boris Pasternak, believes that the regulations should prescribe the need to maintain buildings in a well-groomed form. In turn, the head of the design workshop in the structure of "Mosproekt-5" Sergei Tkachenko believes that new construction restrictions are not needed. And the President of the National Association of Designers Mikhail Posokhin wonders who will develop new architectural norms and decide what measures are needed to improve the image of Moscow.
The mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, declared invalid a number of orders and decrees of the city government and the former mayor Yuri Luzhkov concerning the reconstruction of the hotel complex "Russia", reports "Interfax". This includes, among other things, the cancellation of the construction of a new multifunctional complex of buildings on the site of the building of the Rossiya hotel, which means that a park will soon appear in Zaryadye. Architect Yuri Avvakumov believes that the idea of creating the park appeared in the absence of other proposals. “We can't do anything else, so let's make the park, it won't get any worse,” he says. The architect believes that first it was necessary to decide what kind of park is needed in a given area, and how it will function for all seasons. One of the authors of the project of the demolished Rossiya Hotel, Vitaly Mazurin, emphasized that two underground tiers of the Council of Ministers building have survived on the territory of Zaryadye, which were built in the middle of the 20th century, and later they turned out to be a kind of hotel foundation. The total area of the premises in the surviving tiers is more than 100 thousand square meters. m. Vitaly Mazurin proposes not to break the structures, but to equip museum storage facilities there.
Gazeta.ru asked the architects to formulate the main problems of the capital. Thus, Sergei Tchoban believes that Moscow today is an extremely uncomfortable city for life. To increase its comfort, it is necessary to restrict traffic in the city, think over the design and functional purpose of the first floors of buildings, and also prohibit the construction of buildings from short-lived, low-quality materials. Architect Boris Stuchebryukov also highlighted the transport problem, in addition, the destruction of public spaces and monuments of historical and cultural heritage. Architect Konstantin Savkin believes that Moscow is being spoiled by the territories of abandoned enterprises, neglected residential quarters and public buildings, littered parks and many ugly buildings. He says that it is necessary to return "public respect and architecture itself to architects" and replace tenders with open professional competitions.
RIA Novosti discussed the concept of placing street signs published by Moskomarkhitektura. Experts agreed that the concept is still crude and highly controversial. Andrey Bokov said that signs should be clear and readable for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike. Art Director of RIA Novosti Ilya Ruderman believes that city navigation should have QR codes and be a single multilingual system linked to the map and to the direction of travel.
The public movement "Arhnadzor" spoke out this week for excluding the estate of the Vsevolozhsky princes on Timur Frunze street from the register of cultural heritage objects. The old wooden manor house was dismantled four years ago and replaced with a new one. City activists believe that the building is "a completely conventional copy built from other materials" and it is no longer possible to consider it a monument.
And Petersburg is dissatisfied with the project of the building of the cultural and business center LLC Alla Pugacheva's Song Theater, which is planned to be built on Vasilievsky Island at the mouth of the Smolenka River. The City Planning Council of St. Petersburg criticized the draft design of the building, developed by the British bureau Populous. The architects considered inappropriate the 70-meter height of the building, as well as its appearance in the form of a precious stone. The final decision on the project will be made by the Land Use and Development Commission.
