Veteran architects, who used to be somehow not very immersed in the element of web-2.0, devote more and more time to communication in blogs and social networks. In this issue we present to you Sergey Estrin's blog, which is undoubtedly dominated by the architect's own graphics (the blog is called the "Gallery of Drawings"). Although there are also reflections about why "the most expressive and famous houses have long been either museums or country villas." The last post is devoted to experiments with the technique of Chinese painting, and the previous one is about the collection of antique inkpots, which is being collected by the architect. It ends with a story about how an inkwell of the Napoleon III era, bought in Italy, aroused a lively, albeit impartial, interest in customs.
The blogs continue to discuss the results of the competition for the concept of the development of the historical center of St. Petersburg on the example of the territories around the Field of Mars and New Holland. The jury chose Nikita Yavein's Studio 44 project, which, according to many, turned out to be the least radical. This also pleased the network audience, however, bloggers immediately had doubts about the possibility of implementing it. Readers of the Fontanka blog, for example, noticed that the beautifully drawn promenades of a single pedestrian zone along Galernaya and Millionnaya streets with cafes and fountains in our climate are unlikely to be as pretty as in Paris or Barcelona. Meanwhile, the competition itself was initially fantastical, the participants of another discussion in the same blog considered: the center, in their opinion, needs not only public spaces, but mainly the solution of problems of transport and dilapidated housing stock, but theirs in the competition works and it was not.
The Ministry of Culture, meanwhile, does not lose hope of building a super-building for the Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA). Having finally abandoned the Khazanov-Mindlin project, the department will now conduct a new competition. Meanwhile, members of the Public Council, as noted in the Opinion.ru blog, recommend allocating an existing building for the NCCA, for example, Provision Warehouses. Network readers of the blog agree with this, for example, journalist Valentin Dyakonov considers new construction to be too large a budget for culture, even "by Moscow standards", especially since "any cultural construction, starting from the 2000s (Winzavod, for example) is a matter of much personal, even if the initiative itself is state-owned,”the author of the commentary concludes.
Another high-profile project also faced unexpected opponents - the construction of the Orthodox Church of Alexander Nevsky on the Quai Branly in Paris. The French media write that they are trying to interfere with the project in the Elysee Palace, allegedly at the direction of François Hollande himself, who thus decided to settle scores with his initiator, Nicolas Sarkozy. Russian bloggers are not so willing to go into intrigue, but they write that the project is not viable without politics. For example, the user Titus notes that the cathedral will not gather enough parishioners and, if we are to invest in the promotion of Russian culture, it would be more appropriate to create Russian centers at universities.
Three more metro stations of the first line have opened in Minsk. As the blogger vadim-i-z comments, the new design is quite diverse - here are the motives of an autumn garden with pears as tall as a man at the Grushevka station, and a star dome in Petrovshchina. Users were also impressed by the architecture of the stations, but the graphics of the inscriptions were criticized.
In the group "Architects and Architecture" on VKontakte, they discussed how Russian customers can disfigure the project during its implementation. Thus, in a photograph of the Premier shopping center published in the group, one can hardly recognize the initial project. The pedestrian space in front of the entrance, as the user Tyoma Zaitsev notes, has turned into just a large parking lot, and the stained-glass windows have been replaced with ugly cheap cladding. However, some bloggers blame the architects themselves for this, whose tasks, as the user Andrei Nikitin writes, in addition to "drawing illusions", also includes assessing the customer's capabilities.
The Cities for People exhibition is open at the Museum of Architecture until November 26, curated by blogger Ilya Varlamov and Shchukin's municipal deputy (and also blogger) Maxim Katz. A comfortable urban environment is "not difficult and does not require crazy money", the authors believe, and show how to apply the European experience to solving Moscow problems with parking, public areas, the dominance of advertising, etc. However, for some reason, all this did not convince other bloggers: trying to turn Moscow into a European city by drawing bike paths and arranging street ashtrays is ridiculous, Afisha readers think: “Moscow should not equal Copenhagen, but Dubai,” notes Valery Subbotin. "The social structure determines the city, Moscow is not Europe." If you want a Europeanized center, you will have to change its social composition, bloggers believe, evict cheap tenants and tenants who are not able to pay for parking their cars, and leave only elite offices, housing and cultural institutions. And “ashtrays and bus stops are not a development of the city, they are an increase in the comfort of living,” concludes the user Bardak. "These guys may be good for this business, but let the specialists deal with the development of the city." The details of the project were also discussed in the ottenki-serogo blog, where a photo reportage of the installation of the exhibition in the Ruina wing was published.
However, in the city of Yoshkar-Ola, the problems of urban development were solved in an even more original way: a new city center was built, consisting of architectural "quotes" from Holland, Italy and even the Moscow Kremlin. As the author of the post periskop notes, the view is bizarre: "the Kremlin wall, towers, pointed arches, temples, late Soviet modernist theater" and even "St. Mark's Square", adds Alexander Lozhkin, surprisingly, with a tsar cannon.
Last week, interest in the results of the reconstruction of the Bolshoi Theater, which flared up, was, exactly a year ago, when the reconstruction was completed, unexpectedly woke up at Tina Kandelaki (apparently, the TV presenter decided to go to the theater, or read the press archive). She published a sad post on her blog that "a market stall now stands on the site of the temple of art." The old interiors, according to Kandelaki, have lost their original details and unique acoustics: old bronze handles and candelabra, solid wood doors and antique chairs from boxes, "on which the kings and general secretaries were still sitting", have disappeared somewhere. Probably, fans of the TV presenter for the first time drew attention to the fact that the reconstruction took place, because the post turned out to be very popular and quickly went to the top of Yandex, although the questions were posed and answers were given a long time ago.
However, not all participants in the discussion on Kandelaki's blog believed the story, accompanied by photographs of the interiors from a mobile phone. For example, the user alexat assures that all the old door handles are in place, and the new ones are in the new doors, which were not there before the restoration; the same with candelabra and make-up. In order not to lie, you need a simple photo comparison "was-now", says the blogger. True, there were also those who witnessed the appearance in the theater and "plastic gold", and cracks, and cheap toilets.
