Activists from City Projects recently published the work of independent experts - Vukan Vuchik, Jean-Claude Ziva and Tour Hotwaite, who completed their research on the capital's largest transport projects - the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt and the North-West Expressway. The report, published in the blog of Maxim Katz, noted, in particular, that projects not only neglect public transport, but even reduce its quality. For example, OT routes are sent to a U-turn so that cars can go without a traffic light, Maxim Katz cites the report. However, bloggers who donated money to pay for the study will probably be disappointed, since the city authorities turned out to be completely deaf to it.
As blogger Anton Buslov writes, light rail transport, in particular a high-speed tram, in favor of which foreign experts speak out, is stubbornly ignored by the capital's leadership and the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan. Namely, this institution is, according to Buslov, the author of the entire urban planning policy of Moscow and remains "a classic Soviet ineffective monopolist." Meanwhile, a tram in New Moscow, the blogger continues, "can branch out, creating a whole cluster of lines, and directed not only in the direction of Moscow, but also traced along the chord directions." The tram line along Leninsky, meanwhile, can be run into the center - its advantage, according to Anton Buslov, is that you can combine high-speed and non-high-speed sections.
“The Research and Development Institute of the General Plan, despite the loud name and regalia of its leading and important specialists, illustrates the well-known phrase“the mountain gave birth to a mouse”,” the Masterino user agrees. Working at the institute, _ravis_ writes that the fault of its inefficiency is "a hellish race of a bunch of projects at the same time, which does not lead to anything except to further deteriorate the situation." “There is a transport model in the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan,” tanuc explains the situation, “however, the main task of the institute is“to pass through itself the cash flow of all urban planning documentation that is played out in the city. Moskomarkhitektura does not allow anyone except the General Plan to participate in competitions. Employees do not have time to complete projects, and no one thinks about the correctness of decisions! " The most correct, according to the blogger, would be to take away from the NIiPI "at least some of the transport facilities to create competent competition." Vasily Baburov writes about this in the RUPA community: "For the essential transformation of an institution, it is necessary to remove it from subordination to the state and force it to function in a competitive field."
However, criticizing the city's transport policy, bloggers were suspicious of the report of the independent council: "They promised an expert study, raised money for it, and in the end received a" report ", the essence of which boils down to one phrase" you need to think, but first build a tram. " … So the "experts" were paid money to think! " - outraged moonlight_guest. “A high-speed tram is a small metro. It is built when there is no need for a big metro,”tsirkunov notes and adds that such a tram on Leninsky is stupidity. And logon495 believes that Vukan Vuchik, who wrote a book about American small cities, generally underestimated the Moscow situation: it will not work to ride safely on such transport, "if one high-speed tram gets up, the whole park gets up in both directions!"
In the blog "Tribune of the Public Chamber", users criticized another initiative of the capital's mayor's office, which proposed replacing some of the monuments in the city with copies, hiding the originals in museums. The adherent of the idea, the head of the Department of Cultural Heritage Alexander Kibovsky refers to the experience of Rome, but the creative community doubted whether the originals would simply be dumped somewhere and inaccessible to the audience, as the director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts noted. Pushkin Irina Antonova. The sculptor Alexander Tsigal recalled that when the monument to Maxim Gorky was being removed, the sculpture's legs were torn off. And the bloggers decided that the initiative turned out to be quite in the spirit of postmodernism; as the user Vladimir Krasnoshchekov noted, there can only be a real monument and nothing else.
At this time, the RUPA urban community, using the example of Cheboksary, was trying to figure out why the general plans of cities, adopted less than ten years ago, had already become outdated. For example, in the same Cheboksary in 2013 a new master plan will be developed, although it is still no more than eight years old. As Alexander Antonov comments, “the history of Moscow will repeat itself in many cities of Russia. A new mayor will come in 10 years and it turns out that the previous mayor was a hacker and an urgent need to solve the "transport problem". " According to Nikolai Solovyov, the reason is that such general plans are aimed exclusively at legalizing the intentions of the construction complex: “The city has no idea of its own here. There is an adjustment for the land plots of "their" developers. Spontaneous development and complete lack of management … ".
At the same time, ideally, the general plan, as Alexander Antonov writes, should contain a strategy for the development of the city, the principles of which are determined after extensive discussion with the population. Dmitry Narinsky proposes to raise the quality of general planning by forming a professional community with a certification system and personal responsibility for work. Irina Irbitskaya, in turn, is against attestation - another “fence” that does not guarantee protection from the intrusion of hackers. And Andrey Chernov reminds that the most difficult and important thing in the master plan is the connection with the budget and with the forecast of land payments: “Without this, the master plan is not a plan in the normal sense of the word, but a set of pictures“like now”and“how it should be in 20 years.
The philosopher Alexander Rappaport was thinking about the growth of the professional consciousness of architects the day before. According to the author, in order for architecture to come to the fore in social life, and architects to gain special weight, special political conditions are needed. Best for architects - a small but rich city like Thebes, Athens, Florence; in the empire they languish under the yoke of an overgrown administrative apparatus. Architecture can be moved out of its place by competing design areas such as industrial design, writes Rappaport. However, in any case, in order to form new ideas in architecture and go beyond the profession, people with high intellectual experience are needed, who, according to Rappaport, are able to see architecture as a breeding ground for their life-building social or political concepts.
The Moscow architectural community recently started talking again about professional ethics and copyright. The reason was the recently announced competition for the facades of the new building of the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane. Mosproekt-4 has been working on the project for 15 years and its head Andrey Bokov hoped, according to him, that at least the list of participants would be agreed with him. However, this did not follow. As Bokov writes in his refutation on the Archi.ru website, there are all fears that "competitions of this kind, in violation of professional ethics and copyright, are becoming a form of unfair competition, a form of architectural censorship, a reason for dividing into friends and foes …".
At the same time, a creative competition was held among the students of the Moscow Architectural Institute for the facades of the State Tretyakov Gallery, but even here there were some dark spots. As Ivan Ivankov, a user and student of the Moscow Architectural Institute, writes in the comments, many students did not hear about any clause, and those who found out did the project in a little over a week - "they gave out meager materials and told to draw one picture of the facade that overlooks the embankment." “I am opposed to the chief architect having the power to cancel approved projects. And I think everything that happens with this project and with Tsarev's Garden is a gross violation of copyright, "the blogger adds. A blogger under the nickname Nikolai is also opposed to unfair competition: it is such an environment, in his opinion, that develops when issues are resolved behind the scenes, in a narrow circle, and at public competitions “not their own” participants are cut off by preliminary selection of a portfolio. But the user Tim Shapkin believes that it is impossible to leave “facades of dubious quality” in the center of Moscow and the chief architect should be supported for the initiative “to stop this galaxy of unsuccessful construction projects in the center”. Architect Mikhail Belov also joined the discussion, surprised at how easily the community abandoned traditional copyrights, allowing outsiders to participate in the finished project. For the second time after Tsarev's Garden”.
In addition, a funny post about the "wormy" architecture of the new Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, designed by Rudy Ricciotti, appeared on Mikhail Belov's blog the other day. The museum reminded the architect of the history of the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater: in St. Petersburg, its bridge blocked the perspective of the Kryukov Canal, and in Marseille, the panorama was spoiled by the bridge connecting the new building with the old fort. If Marinika-2, according to critics, looks like a shopping center, then the Marseilles museum, according to Belov, is like "a suitcase with rotten food, which has been seized by a mobile army of decomposition soldiers." “The decor in the Tuscan or Ionic order by itself does not express the essence of the Civilizations of the Mediterranean, if the matter is decor in the form of worms or maggots,” the architect laments. User Michael Korol has more pleasant associations with the museum's sunscreen coating - “knitted dress, chopped truffles, coral reef, or rippled sea in the wind”. According to Andrey Nikitin, the decision is quite neutral for itself, "and the bridge, you know, is a thread compared to its utilitarian counterpart in St. Petersburg." - "An architectural critic would have seen the" brutalism "of Egypt, the Arabian" lace "and the Gothic of" strange "columns …", adds Eduard Zabuga. By the way, critic Grigory Revzin praised the museum, comparing its shell with a veil, which has nothing close to the Mariinsky shopping center: “This is an exceptional, albeit unpleasantly exceptional against the background of the fort, but exceptional building. And the bridge here is different - not a technical passage, erected secretly not according to the project, in spite of the expertise, but something made with artistic calculation”.
We will finish our review in the blog of the architect Sergey Estrin, reflecting on his series of drawings "Black Edition". The black background, according to the architect, makes it possible to be a little lazy, but the energetic and not at all scrupulous manner has its advantages. Such a drawing, writes Estrin, makes it possible to sweat less and think more effectively: "I begin to draw fictional cities from some balcony door handle, around which details of arches, balustrades, bas-reliefs and bridges unfold, where every little thing is an interesting element in itself."
