During the week, Lenta.ru met with Japanese architect Toyo Ito, winner of the 2013 Pritzker Prize. One of the main topics of the conversation was the interaction of architecture and nature. According to Ito, architecture of the 21st century should be environmentally friendly: “I believe that it is necessary to think about creating cities in which architecture merges with nature,” since outside of nature, in a metropolis, a person is doomed to feel unhappy. On the other hand, the architect expressed the opinion that in the future the city as such will disappear, but he found it difficult to answer what would replace it.
Although such a difficulty is understandable, because questions of the future are a topic for serious research. By the way, the students of the Strelka Institute were engaged in just such studies in the ended academic year. "Moscow News" told about 4 students' graduation projects. The authors of the first set as their goal to reconcile residents with the diversity of the architectural styles of the capital. In the second work, students explored the concept of a "smart city", examples of its implementation abroad and in Moscow. The authors of the third project developed a model for an architectural laboratory for continuing education. And the fourth team was rethinking the components that make up the city and their role in urban planning.
Meanwhile, the participants of the second stage of the competition for the development of the concept of the Zaryadye park came to Moscow to study the site. Afisha asked Dutch, Chinese and American architects about their first impressions. Experts expressed the opinion that the main thing in the park should be, after all, not architecture, but nature, since the architectural environment near Zaryadye is already “very strong”.
Let us mention another metropolitan competition, the results of which were announced this week. The competition for the architectural and artistic design of the facades of the new museum complex of the Tretyakov Gallery was announced at the end of May. The winner, as reported by RIAN Nedvizhimost, was the architectural bureau SPEECH. The Archi.ru portal briefly recalled the history of the competition, and also published photos of the winning project and projects that took second (Totem / Paper bureau) and third (Vladimir Plotkin and Elena Kuznetsova, TPO Reserve) places.
Continuing the theme of the competitions: Art1 asked the St. Petersburg architect Boris Ustinov to analyze the competition concepts for the development of New Holland, Northern Kolomna and the neighborhoods around Konyushennaya Square. Speaking about St. Petersburg, Ustinov turned to the terminology of medical practice: “The pain of St. Petersburg is a consequence of the fact that there is no urban planning project activity in the city. Unfortunately, the concepts proposed for the competition do not contain an answer to the question of how to cure an urban organism”. It is interesting that, according to Ustinov, foreign experience can do little to help St. Petersburg, because every city is unique.
The uniqueness of the cities was also attended by the authorities of the Moscow region. They intend to hold regular meetings with the chief architects of cities and districts, so that each settlement finds its own unique architectural appearance, RIAN Nedvizhimost reported.
Also in the week, the Moscow press reported that the City Planning and Land Commission of the City Hall has finally completed the revision of the city planning documentation from the times of Yuri Luzhkov. As a result, according to RBC daily, some investment contracts were terminated, and some were corrected. Now the next step is the approval of new city plans, where priority will be given to the layouts of industrial zones in need of renovation, as well as the territories of New Moscow.
Meanwhile, the Perm authorities seem to have decided on a new urban planning course. FederalPress news agency published a report from the town-planning council under the governor Viktor Basargin, at which several significant projects for the city were discussed, including: projects for the development of the Bakharevka microdistrict and block 179 in the center of Perm. It is interesting that the presented projects contradict the General Plan of the city. According to him, it is forbidden to build housing in Bakharevka, and the center should be built up with low-rise European quarters, but not in any way the 30-storey towers proposed for Quarter No. 179. It is interesting that the developer of the master plan for Perm, Andrey Golovin, in an interview with the Business class correspondent predicted a similar development of events.
Another regional news: in Cheboksary, an updated draft of the General Plan for the city's development until 2035 was presented this week. A report from the joint meeting of the republican and city town planning councils was published by IA Regnum.
And in conclusion, a few words about the Volkonsky House, for which Arhnadzor has been desperately fighting for more than 3 months. According to IA Regnum, this week the situation with the destruction of the House was discussed in the Moscow City Duma. The head of the Moskomstroyinvest department said that the work is being carried out legally, since the building was excluded from the lists of identified heritage sites back in 2009. Representatives of "Arhnadzor" did not agree with this opinion, noting that the house is located in a security zone, where any reconstruction is prohibited. Meanwhile, the head of the department of cultural heritage of the capital, Alexander Kibovsky, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, explained why the authorities are unable to reverse the situation with the Volkonsky House: the rights of the owner of the House to dispose of his “property” are reliably protected by law.
