This week, the press leaked details of the project on the site of the demolished hotel "Russia": the newspaper "Vedomosti", citing sources in Moskomarkhitektura, writes that along with the park, a concert hall for 1,500 seats and extensive underground structures - a parking lot for 500 cars and a public area. Readers were outraged: why it is impossible to make a simple park or even hide transport underground, expanding the walking area to the entire embankment, as the user Mordvinov advises. However, readers do not particularly object to the Philharmonic Hall: it will be bad if they implement an entertainment underground part with retail outlets for tourists, notes Banker Kopeikin, then Zaryadye has a chance to turn into a kind of Manezhnaya Square.
Meanwhile, next to the Manezhka itself, an incredible "reconstruction" is unfolding: trees are being cut down in the Alexander Garden, and two glass pavilions are attached to the Kutafya Tower, "reminiscent of flower stalls at the Kievsky railway station." Reporting from the scene on the drugoi blog has become one of the most discussed topics on the web these days. Bloggers are finding out why they cut down healthy lime trees half a century ago: either they were not planted along the line, or they interfered with video surveillance and snipers, the authors of the comments conclude. True, the user mishbanych claims that it is not logging, but the restoration of the historical appearance of the garden according to the documents of the 19th century.
Opinions were also divided about the fundamental additions to the Kremlin tower: city defenders have been complaining to UNESCO since the summer and asking to return the old ticket booths, while other bloggers consider the reconstruction of the entrance a necessary necessity, because, as, for example, abunin notes, “through this tiny tower about seven thousand spectators, going to some concert in the State Kremlin Palace, should pass in almost half an hour or an hour. " In any case, in the Palace of Versailles at the entrance there are exactly the same "stalls" with storage rooms, adds abunin, not to mention the Louvre pyramids.
Meanwhile, it is possible that the Kremlin's current landscaping project will be awarded some other award - the reconstruction of the Dynamo stadium, for example, was recently awarded at the International Exhibition for the Preservation and Restoration of Heritage Sites DENKMAL-2012. This is despite the fact that the monument itself was almost completely destroyed. Numerous city rights activists responded to the material posted on the Arkhnadzor website on this matter. They talk about how to protect the international image of Russia from "pseudo-restorers" and how Western experts should react to this obviously opportunistic project of VTB Bank, which also sponsored Moscow's participation in this exhibition. Natalya Samover, for example, writes that the West could be less tolerant of other people's vandalism and not hesitate to write about it in the press.
The same "Arhnadzor" recently began to collect signatures and wrote a letter to the head of state in defense of the historic mansion on Vozdvizhenka, 9, described in the novels of L. N. Tolstoy and belonged to the writer's grandfather. The house is undergoing reconstruction, the consequences of which can be the most unpredictable, according to activists, given that the building was removed from security in 2009. However, as some bloggers note, the monument was already gutted once during the reconstruction 10 years ago, leaving only a part of the facade wall with a balcony from the old one. So it is probably too late to save the "old man Bolkonsky's house" today, network users conclude.
In some blogs, meanwhile, have already begun to summarize the results of the architectural year. On the Facebook page of Project Russia magazine, for example, you can ask questions to the country's chief architectural critic, Grigory Revzin. And the architect Mikhail Belov in the same social network published a small essay with a very sad diagnosis of Russian architecture, which, in his opinion, fell into a deep crisis and ceased to be of interest to society. Cities, the author writes, are suffocating from traffic jams and are shaken by protests against any new construction, in spite of any general plans, city councils, competitions, deep and expensive urban studies. At the same time, the architects themselves "live the life of internal fights and reward each other with prizes", Normal 0 false false false RU X-NONE X-NONE - complains Mikhail Belov.
The architect and philosopher Alexander Rappaport seeks the causes of this crisis in the field of metaphysics. The publication of his lecture on Archi.ru caused an interesting discussion. The architects argued about the transcendental nature of the style, about the replication of dead cliches, which, according to the author, are filled with modern architecture, and, finally, about the genre itself, in which Alexander Rappaport acts. For other fascinating texts on the philosophical aspects of architecture, check out his Tower and Labyrinth blog.
Ilya Varlamov sums up his City Projects, within the framework of which the volunteers managed to thoroughly study the quality of the pedestrian environment in the Shchukino area and on Tverskaya Street in six months. Among his achievements, the blogger ranks, in particular, the ban on parking on the sidewalks from Pushkin Square to the Kremlin. Network users, however, suggested that the reason for the ban was the requirement of the FSO, and not at all the desire to turn Tverskaya into the Champs Elysees, planting more trees. However, almost everyone welcomed the privilege of pedestrians on the sidewalks, although for greater efficiency they proposed to install fences, signal posts or green spaces, preventing the persistent desire of some drivers to leave their cars here.
The problem of pedestrian traffic in Moscow was continued to be discussed in the blog architip, the author of which tried to clearly explain what the connectivity of the district is and why the coming transformation of residential streets into traffic-free highways is so dangerous.
