The Facebook audience is outraged by the unprecedented act of vandalism in French Abbeville: local authorities, following the decision of the European Union, demolished a neo-Gothic monument - the Cathedral of St. James. Art-Blog clarifies that "in its place it is planned to build a complex of casino buildings with a fashionable brothel for VIPs of the European Parliament and the European Union." Bloggers, meanwhile, found out that the cathedral was completely abandoned back in 2010 and no one, as user Ivan Cherepukhin writes, “wasn’t eager to throw a lot of money into its restoration, that’s after all, the cathedral is useless, it’s amazing!”
There is a version on the network that the building, badly damaged in both world wars, required urgent repairs, for which the municipality did not have four million euros; a crack went through the cathedral, and it threatened to collapse at any moment. This, for example, is pointed out by the user Ivan Potapov, in whose opinion Saint-Jacques, among other things, is "an unremarkable neo-Gothic church, which is in every second French city." According to the blogger, there are much more outrageous examples of demolitions from what was built over the past 130 years (the time of Saint-Jacques' existence): “These are the masterpieces of Northern Art Nouveau in Helsinki or the Five-Year Palace in St. Petersburg, on the site of which the Mariinsky ", - says Ivan Potapov. But according to blogger Misha Most, the incident in Abbeville is part of a deliberate policy “to devastate European churches, to replace morality and traditions,” as a result of which many temples rent out their premises or are simply abandoned.
Meanwhile, photos of the interiors of the second stage appeared on the website of the above-mentioned Mariinsky Theater. After the scandal that caused the appearance of the new building, the artistic director of the theater Valery Gergiev promised this time in a good way to surprise everyone with the interior design and acoustics of the hall. Bloggers' opinions on this matter were divided: for example, designer Anatoly Snop, commenting on his photos to the art1.ru portal, noticed that inside “everything is scattered and not connected either in architecture or in space. This self-footedness smacks of the Soviet "House of Life" ". Others, on the contrary, found that everything was harmonious and even “rebellious”. Bloggers were especially impressed by the abundance of glowing onyx. And Anatoly Belov wrote in his blog that after visiting the second stage with Jack Diamond, he was very pleased: “I don’t understand why everyone is so indignant - the beloved Grigoryan does about the same thing.” And even though the architectural image turned out to be “none”, Belov adds, “it is still better than garbage bags or a golden turtle”. In response, the user Alexander Vaysfeld did not find anything truly "theatrical" in the interiors, but Mikhail Belov completely agrees with the author of the post and did not change his position loyal to the Mariinsky: “An absolutely Baltic theater with an amber interior. I believe that operas will be staged here on a grand scale and with great cultural resonance,”added the architect.
The best and worst projects implemented in recent years in the center of St. Petersburg, meanwhile, were chosen by the readers of the St. Petersburg portal Karpovka.net. The best network users named the business center "Senator" on Bolshoy Prospekt on Vasilyevsky Island, and the most unfortunate were the first building of the residential complex "Classic" at the corner of Malaya and Glukha Zeleniny Streets and the reconstruction of Smolninsky Baths. At the same time, the bloggers themselves are dissatisfied with the voting results: in St. Petersburg, in their opinion, there are much more serious "urban planning crimes", for example, the scandalous high-rise residential complexes "Mont Blanc" or "Financier". The latter, as Denis Sadovsky writes, "ruined the Petersburg panoramas no less - this horror is especially visible from the Bronze Horseman."But the user Hippogriff does not consider both buildings ugly: they do not correspond to the environment, but they are made soundly by themselves, the blogger believes, which just cannot be said about the current winner: “Senator”, in his words, is an uninteresting, epigone building, “averaged by this kakbe classicism without any spark of creativity."
In the meantime, Facebook is discussing with interest the new advertising campaign of the Moscow Museum of Architecture. Shchusev. Someone is delighted and in architectural “icebergs” looking for “hidden meanings”, someone, on the contrary, calls it “the apotheosis of vulgarity”. However, despite the criticism, the museum achieved its main goal - they remembered about it. As Andrey Logvin writes in his blog, “in our context, this rather sweaty advertisement with poor typography is perceived as something outstanding. She beckons to the museum. More than all the MUAR ads that I have seen before, taken together. - “It looks good,” notes Alexey V. Petrov, in turn, “but the following tendency is depressing: we are so fed up with the wow factors of modern postmodern culture that the past and reality seem too insipid to us, and we invent and lay new floors, we are piling turret after turret on what we have ceased to see a miracle in”.
“What such hidden meanings will the museum tell us about? - Elena Rymshina is interested. - About the truth of the Manege? About the truth of architectural restorations? About the truth of the real protection of monuments? Judging by this poster, our reality, which is not so well studied in authentic monuments, seems to be something so sluggish and boring, / … / that you need to come up with some kind of secret, look for amber rooms in bunkers to justify the existence of a museum, everything is sad this is… . And the user Alexei Mikhailov interpreted the prints as follows: “It seems to you that the masterpieces of architecture are something majestic, noble and very, very harmonious. But in reality, this is a complete absurdity, a dull heap of meaningless architectural details and mediocre chaos. And we will explain all this to you in our museum!”.
Sergei Estrin, in his blog, meanwhile, revealed one of the secrets of the birth of architectural sketches: it turns out that the architect makes some of them during business negotiations as a kind of relaxation: “The brain switches from one tedious task (meeting) to a pleasant task (picture) and thus reduces fatigue. From the pictures published on the blog, we can confidently say that it turns out to be doubly productive.
And Mikhail Belov in recent posts again returned to the topic of architectural advice, which he wrote about not so long ago. Despite Sergey Kuznetsov's attempts to update the council, diluting its composition with people "with a very good professional reputation", the situation in which, in the words of Mikhail Belov, some professional architects judge the projects of other professional architects, still causes "confusion and bewilderment": "The market he is the market to clean it up under “someone”, and this “someone” will not necessarily be able to raise the level of Moscow architecture to a high level, but rather he will simply combine this level with his own,”the architect concludes.
We will conclude the review with a crowded discussion in the blog of Alexander Shumsky (proboknet), who published, in his words, "the most graphic version of the possible future of Leninsky Prospect." Several alternative reconstruction options have already appeared on the Internet, for example, with priority to public transport and a tram line in the center of the City Projects. The peculiarity of the project for proboknet is that the road in the sides remains at the same distance from residential buildings, and traffic improvement is achieved not by expanding the avenue, but by building tunnels and one overpass (where the metro line runs underground), notes blogger. However, even one is enough to ruin the lives of residents of neighboring houses, noticed by users who also did not like the absence of lanes for public transport in the pictures. And the blogger sopass suggested leaving Leninsky alone and using the understudy provided by the General Plan between Vavilova and Profsoyuznaya streets as a high-speed highway.
