When asked how to create an urban environment, the quality of which would be comparable to that of a traditional European city, there is a very simple, seemingly obvious answer: this environment must be copied. If almost a century and a half experience of urban planning experiments did not give positive results, is it not worth discarding them and returning to the schemes tested by the previous five centuries - in the home era? These ideas became very popular in the late 1970s and early 80s after the publication of Charles Jenks's book "The Language of Postmodern Architecture" [1].
Perhaps the most famous example of historicism in urban planning is Poundbury, a suburb of Dorchester, a town in the south of Great Britain. This project arose thanks to the support of Prince Charles, a great lover of classical architecture and not a lover of modern. Back in 1984, at the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), he harshly criticized modernist and postmodern architecture, for which he was subjected to obstruction by these same British architects. Then he decided to prove the correctness of his ideas in practice.
In Great Britain, the treasury has not been involved in covering the expenses of members of the royal family since 1337, when King Edward III did not want to pay the expenses of his son and gave him land to manage. Now the lands of the Duchy of Cornwall belong to Prince Charles, and it was on them that he decided to conduct his experiment. The concept of the master plan, which was commissioned by Leon Crieux, follows the prince's book A Glimpse of Britain. Personal vision of architecture”[2].
In Poundbury, the planning principles of a traditional medieval city are repeated; the building density here is about twice that of the older parts of Dorchester. There is no functional zoning, the urban environment is formed by a mixture of retail shops, small businesses, medical institutions, offices (in 2009 there were about 70 companies in the town), private and social housing (the latter, according to the project, should be built at least 20%). As conceived by the authors, this should avoid the problems of functional and social differentiation. The organization of the urban environment here is carried out according to principles very similar to the ideas of "new urbanism", which I wrote about in the previous part of the "Essays". There is also an absolute pedestrian priority on the streets - sidewalks on many streets are not even separated from the carriageway and motorists are forced to obey the leisurely rhythm of their walks. But there are also obvious differences: in Poundbury, a prerequisite for new construction is historicity in everything: in planning decisions, archetypes, images, used building and finishing materials. Advertising and many other signs of modern cities are missing here. The system of regulation of urban planning processes and economic activities is similar to that established in the centers of historical cities protected by the British state. The Poundbury Building Code prescribes in detail what extensions to buildings can be, materials for walls, roofs and architectural details, lintels of windows and doors, drain systems, fireplaces, windows, doors, gardens, fences - to the point that stone for construction can only be taken in four local quarries, and the bricks are laid in the English or Flemish way [3].
The city plan was developed by Leon Krieux in the late 1980s, and construction began in October 1993 and continues to this day. It is expected that all four stages will be completed within 25 years, with a total of 2.5 thousand houses for 6 thousand people being built. So far, the idea of a ten-minute availability of jobs for Poundbury residents has not been possible: only 16% of residents manage to find a job directly in the town, most of the population is forced to go to work in Dorchester. Poundbury is very popular among retirees, they make up 40% of the population [3].
The construction of Poundbury has caused a lot of imitations around the world; an exact copy of it was simply built in Shanghai. This wave did not bypass Russia either.
Perhaps the most striking example of "poundberism" in our country is the village of Ivakino-Pokrovskoye near Sheremetyevo airport, built according to the project of Maxim Atayants.
Ivakino-Pokrovskoe outwardly resembles Poundbury, although the typology of buildings in it is not so wide - in fact, only four types of townhouses are replicated (probably, it seems to the developer that this is easier to organize sales), and the variety is achieved by painting the houses in six standard colors, using several sets of parts for external design and the use of external improvement techniques, characteristic of old European cities.
Ivakino turned out to be a commercially quite successful project - its construction helped the developer to survive the crisis of 2008 safely, and today there is not a single unsold townhouse here. However, when you begin to compare Ivakino-Pokrovskoye with Poundbury not externally, but meaningfully, you find that they are similar only externally. Ivakino is actually a typical "sleeping" village near Moscow, only pretending to be a city. There is no question of any mixing of functions, ten-minute availability of places of work and service, and, moreover, social mixing, there is no talk here - in the village there is nothing but housing. Residents have nowhere to go, they are used to driving to work, for entertainment and shopping - so the streets and benches on the boulevards remain empty. Only in a bad dream can a realtor dream of the appearance of social housing in such a place - how will it affect sales?
The master plan finally puts everything in its place. This is a gated community, securely fenced off from neighbors, ignoring their presence. Here they tried to simulate a traditional city, but have not yet realized that copying only the external appearance is not enough for this. The environment is determined not only by the archetypes of buildings, streets, squares, boulevards, but also by city life, which is in full swing in these buildings, in squares and boulevards. If there is no such life, then instead of a city we will get only a semblance of Roman ruins that inspired Maxim Atayants when designing.
The question that naturally arises when one examines the phenomena of urban planning historicism, such as Poundbury and Ivakino-Pokrovsky: is it necessary to copy their stylistic features so carefully in order to obtain in a modern city a quality comparable to that of old cities - all the more so if it turns out that not only they determine this very quality? Is it possible to achieve it by means of modern architecture? More about this in the next series of essays.
[1] Jenks, Charles A. The Language of Post-modern Architecture. Rizzoli, 1977 = Jencks, Charles A. The Language of Postmodern Architecture / Ed. A. V. Ryabushin. V. L. Hayt. M.: Stroyizdat, 1985.
[2] Charles, Prince of Wales. A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture. London: Doubleday, 1989
[3] Evgeniya Kharitonova. Poundbury Code // EC-A. RU. URL:
See also: Grigory Revzin. City of Millionaires from Housing for the Poor // Classic Project, XXIV-MMVIII. URL:
