This week, blogs are vigorously discussing the victory of the SPEECH bureau in the competition for the facades of the new museum complex of the Tretyakov Gallery. Recall, the competition was disgraced already at the time of the announcement: some of the architects strongly condemned the very idea of choosing a facade designer for an already designed building, seeing this as a gross violation of copyright. The competition called the competition offensive to the authors, for example, Dmitry Khmelnitsky in the blog Archi.ru. According to the architect, there is no such thing as a good project, and only the facades are bad. "It's easier to bury the idea until the money is found for a normal project with a full-fledged competition," because, writes Dmitry Khmelnitsky, "in its current form, the whole idea looks like an operation to cut off unwanted competitors."
“Gross interference in someone else's project is becoming the norm. All methods are good as long as the power is in the hands! " - the user by the nickname Persikov Zyuzya comments on the results of the competition. And Vitalij Anančenko adds that "closing in on only one dozen architectural firms will not create healthy competition." However, another part of the colleagues in the shop supports the competitive initiative; for example, Alexander Bondarenko believes that Moscow now has to "disentangle the results of the work of the previous leadership," so it's better to change the facades before it's too late than to spend millions of rubles on a new project, the blogger writes; "And it is great that legally there is still an opportunity to revise at least the appearance of this building."
Bloggers, meanwhile, gave most of the sympathy among the top three winners to the project of Vladimir Plotkin - “because it is bright, light and continues the Russian cultural tradition at a new technological level,” comments Lanita Kuprinas. The Totem / Paper project received less positive responses: user Kirill Velikotny, for example, wrote that, on the contrary, he clearly lacks lightness - “the heaviness of the red walls is not supported by anything on the embankment”. Well, the project of Sergei Tchoban's workshop gave birth to very controversial assessments in the network; for example, Dmitry Khmelnitsky was embarrassed by the huge windows in it, while in the exposition rooms of the museum, according to the author of the commentary, large side lighting is unacceptable. But the blogger Kirill Velikotny reminded the windows of the hanging of paintings, allowing him to guess the gallery behind them. Vitalij Anančenko considers the project to be very tactful in the historical development of the embankment, with which, in turn, they disagree in Denis Romodin's Facebook blog, where the SPEECH idea was recognized as not too scaled to the surrounding buildings.
By the way, the blog of the Strelka Institute published an excerpt from the new book of the architectural critic Grigory Revzin "The Magnificent Twenty: Moscow Architecture and Why It Was", which probably contains answers to where the above-described conflict with the Tretyakov Gallery came from. Grigory Revzin reflects on why architecture has repeatedly “died” throughout history and what has happened to it in Russia over the past twenty years.
Meanwhile, the philosopher Alexander Rappaport wrote an interesting post on his blog about the dying of any cultural meaning in modern architecture. Architecture has become "an empty shell of hygiene, order and accessibility," writes Rappaport, and has been reduced to "a neutral means of weatherproofing, organizing space, and providing communication." In it - "universal, hygienic and comfortable design" and nothing sublime, concludes the author of the blog.
Meanwhile, bloggers are still haunted by the transport problems of the capital. For example, Alexander Shumsky, head of the Probok.net project, started another discussion in his magazine. Using the example of a new microdistrict between the village of Putilkovo and Khimki, the blogger criticizes the initially flawed transport infrastructure, which is why the courtyards of such "new buildings" inevitably turn into parking lots, and residents, getting out into the city, are stuck in blind traffic jams. The topic was picked up by Ilya Varlamov, who has repeatedly written about the need to prohibit or severely restrict parking in courtyards, for example, by making it paid. In the comments, meanwhile, some write that they are not able to pay, others - about the need to book underground parking spaces even in municipal housing projects. ilyastup, for example, believes that such micro-districts will continue to be built, because the demand is very unpretentious, and anderson_mike is sure that the courtyard crowded with cars is the business of the residents themselves, who, apparently, do not need it, since there is a wasteland under the windows.
“The concept of parking in courtyards has long been forgotten in civilized countries. Parking only under the yard! There are guests in front of a residential building from the side of the road,”Valery Nefedov writes in the RUPA community, commenting on a similar situation in Izhevsk. With the Moscow density of development, there is no place for a separate flat parking, notes, in turn, Alexander Antonov; and if during the construction of 5-9 floors the problem can still be solved by dispering commercial vehicles from the courtyards and introducing a parking fee, then the “anthills” have only an underground option. Alexander Lozhkin adds that in the master plan of Perm it was even proposed to limit the area that cars in the yard can occupy by thirty percent.
However, this most progressive urban planning document of recent years, judging by the decisions of the recent City Council under Governor Viktor Basargin, seems to remain on paper; microdistricts will be built in free territories, and height restrictions will be lifted in the center, fedpress.ru reports. “Perm’s development is decided by the governors, not the city itself, and certainly not the townspeople,” Igor Popovsky comments on RUPA. According to Dina Sattarova, it was not possible to introduce the best foreign experience in Perm, because it was introduced “from above”; meanwhile, “in Holland, for example, the involvement of citizens, stakeholders, business communities in the process of discussing the development of the city is, one might say, a religion, because only the adoption of the project by society, in their opinion, can ensure the sustainable development of the project,” the user notes. “Developers just need to build. Short-term goals are more important. It is in any of our cities,”concludes Nikolai Soloviev. It is curious, however, that literally following the news on the Internet that Perm and Khabarovsk were recognized by UN-Habitat as cities with exemplary urban planning policies, which caused a stream of ironic comments on RUPA.
And finally, one more curious perspective on urban planning problems is found in the blog oldcolor.livejournal.com, the author of which wrote a post about the excessive overgrowing of Russian cities with trees. Judging by old photographs, a hundred years ago, the size of urban vegetation was controlled more carefully, writes oldcolor, while today the spreading crowns obscured the views of the most important architectural ensembles. And if in the magazine itself the author was found to be an enemy of ecology, then in the RUPA community maintaining a reasonable size of vegetation was recognized as an urgent urban problem, and urban thickets are not only unaesthetic, but also unsafe.
