Remaining one of the main events of the architectural year, the Zodchestvo festival has traditionally caused critical reviews and gloomy reflections on the state of the domestic workshop, including in blogs. For example, on the Facebook page of the Association of Developers of Urban Planning Documentation, a discussion about the architectural competitions of the RHD Foundation presented at the festival unfolded. Alexander Antonov reminds of one of them - on a residential block 20 km from the center of Nizhny Novgorod, wondering how and why “among fields and villages” a new city could appear: “I did about the same senseless work on the 4th the course of the institute /… /. Visualization technologies have gone far ahead since then, but the urban planning idea, it seems, remained in the same place, in the late 80s,”the author notes. User Sergey Khvastunov suggests building a series of cities - business centers between cities with a population of one million - instead of residential quarters. And Alexander Sidorov believes that while the city code allows the use of PZZ tools without general plans and planning projects, solely in favor of the customer, such “cities in the desert” will continue to grow, since there are few “Don Quixots” among architects who go against the order.
In the same community, they wrote a little earlier about the results of the urban forum that took place the day before. In particular, the participants in the conversation were worried about how to create an institution of expertise in Russian urban planning, despite the fact that there is no trust in experts today, and their role is often reduced to wedding generals.
Architect Mikhail Belov did not stand aside from Zodchestvo, calling in his blog the main evil of our modern architecture outdated norms and "nightmarish federal legislation that recognizes the cheapest project as the best." This is the only reason, the architect believes, that all the large projects of recent years have turned out to be unfulfilled or perverted, and appeals to experienced foreigners and wise master plans have remained at the level of Manilov's conversations.
In another of his notes on the search for architectural identity, Mikhail Belov found that the current “Architecture” demonstrates an absolute dead end in this regard: “Quite recently, everything was clear: there was a non-identical Luzhkov gang that tormented the body of his beloved city /… /. And there was an elegant group of such aristocrats of the spirit in harmony with the Western humanitarian vision. " When Luzhkov left, the identity of the "crooked rectangles" was lame, writes Belov, neither coloring nor ornaments saved it. However, some readers of the architect's blog called the idea of instilling antique forms in a "rotting society in inequality" crazy. Belov himself remarked to this that it had not yet been possible to form a "method of viable shaping" at least for an individual, and not for the whole society.
By the way, Mikhail Belov dedicated a separate post to “Luzhkov's style”, calling it “Ode to turrets”. It is characteristic that, having become a part of history, this architecture somehow ceased to annoy many, and Mikhail Belov noticed that it is generally a “unique gesture” and even symbolic in its own way.
Against the backdrop of the crisis in architecture, the current crisis of humanitarian knowledge looks symptomatic, which recently resulted in a scandal around the plans of the Ministry of Culture to “optimize”, or, more simply, to disband the research institutes under its jurisdiction. Particularly heated discussions took place at the Institute of Art History. Following the employees, bloggers attacked the officials with criticism, calling the statement that scientists are worthless as managers, the height of cynicism.“The consolidation of institutions and their unification under a single auspices are not needed, because the community of art critics is not that large,” Director of the Institute Dmitry Trubochkin, whose commentary appeared on the Opinion.ru portal, confirmed his position in this dispute. And Professor Andrei Batalov in an interview with Archi.ru noted that the liquidation of the institute would deal a huge blow to the prestige of the country, making it more provincial. Meanwhile, Kirill Razlogov, a proponent of consolidation, a well-known film critic and culturologist, believes that the creation of an integrated center for sociocultural research on the basis of existing research institutes will make it possible to discuss issues of cultural knowledge on an equal footing with representatives of natural and technical sciences.
In the blog of the popular St. Petersburg portal "Fontanka.ru", meanwhile, they again argued about the upcoming reconstruction of the historical center of the northern capital. This time, we were talking about the fact that the composition of the population that has developed here is no less important than the buildings themselves, since the inhabitants, in their own way, are also the keepers of heritage. At the same time, the experts of the St. Petersburg branch of ICOMOS found in the renovation program that there is no provision for settling people back into the renovated apartments, and its essence boils down only to new construction, more precisely to the "improvement" of territories for large investors - on the Field of Mars and in Novaya Holland ".
The attitude of the Petersburgers themselves to the project in the blogs is quite different, although almost no one doubts that it is necessary to reconstruct the dilapidated housing, the question is only in the methods. User grannie writes, for example, that in order to keep the center alive "it is quite enough just to put strict restrictions on new construction." kot-masilij notes that it is possible to rebuild, but only in blocks - "reconstruction with separate buildings will not allow creating normal intra-block volumes and will create a lot of problems for the residents of adjacent buildings." In addition, the blogger advises to prohibit changing the style of street facades and to make the first floors and the underground level a continuous covered pedestrian zone. But the user Engineer is sure that first you need to introduce your own security standards for the center, otherwise it will be problematic to do something serious there.
Meanwhile, without taking into account security regulations, the general plan of Tver, which is being prepared for approval, has been completed, its opponents believe. The participants in the discussion on the portal tvernews.ru found that the document simply ignored the layout of the old city and the parameters of the historical buildings, proposing a program for the center that was completely unrealistic in scale - seven new bridges, 400 streets and 16-storey buildings instead of the current ruins and Khrushchevs.
In turn, the new general plan of Perm, as Denis Galitsky reports on his blog, is hardly pushing forward its main provisions. The city rights activist writes that the ban on construction in the center above 20 meters will most likely be legalized in the coming days, leaving such an opportunity only at certain points of "high-rise accents", the choice of which is possible only through public hearings. The user of perfectmixer, however, is sure that the evil lies not in the number of storeys, but "in boring architecture, poor planning of territories, lack of a building base and high-rise construction technologies."
The project of the art gallery of Peter Zumthor continues to raise many questions among the residents of Perm. The author of the blog ar-chitect.livejournal.com believes that the construction of a building in this very place for Perm is tantamount to the development of Palace Square in St. Petersburg. As alternative sites, the author suggests a former candy factory, an esplanade in front of the House of Soviets and Razgulyay.
