A regular meeting of the Arch Council took place this week in Moscow. The subject of discussion was the architectural concept of reconstruction and development of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. As the portal Archi.ru wrote, following the advice, the Museum was recommended to contact the co-author of the reconstruction project, Norman Foster, in order to find out whether he would accompany the project. If the architect refuses, according to Sergei Kuznetsov, the city will probably have to hold a new competition. At the end of the week it became known that Foster would still not be involved in the project. Portal "Lenta.ru" with reference to The Art Newspaper reported that the Foster + Partners bureau sent an official letter of refusal to supervise the project on June 5, 2013 after a series of unsuccessful attempts to continue participating in the fate of the Pushkin Museum.
The newspaper "Vechernyaya Moskva", meanwhile, recalled the results of another competition - for the design of the facades of the new building of the Tretyakov Gallery - which were announced in July. The publication quoted the words of the architect Ilya Utkin, who is one of the experts who are confident in the need for a second competition. In his opinion, among the participants should be not only representatives of the modernist direction, but also neoclassical and neo-Russian: "There should be a real professional competition, to which the organizers will invite diverse architects."
In addition to architectural competitions, another Moscow agenda is the improvement of the urban environment. Gazeta.ru talked with one of the authors of the concept of the Boulevard Ring and the pedestrian route from Vorobyovy Gory to Krasny Oktyabr. Oleg Shapiro told the publication about how difficult it is to combine the spirit of a place with a comfortable urban environment, nevertheless, it is necessary. Moreover, “the presence of shops and general obvious civilization” will not lead to the loss of the identity of the urban space. The expert also noted that it is time to redirect the improvement vector from the center of the capital to the outskirts, starting to create there "youth factories".
By the way, Izvestia wrote about another project of Oleg Shapiro's workshop this week. This is the so-called "low embankment" intended for pedestrians and cyclists. In winter, the project will be presented to the Council for Public Spaces, and as early as next summer, it may be implemented. Interestingly, according to the historian of architecture Natalia Dushkina, such wooden-metal structures violate the historical stone appearance of the embankments.
Continuing the improvement theme, Gazeta.ru spoke with the director of the recently launched What Moscow Wants project Olga Polishchuk. Let us remind you that the project is a website where, until September 20, anyone can post an idea to improve the city. In September, based on the collected ideas, architects and designers will develop appropriate projects, which will then be presented at the Moscow Urban Forum: to the authorities and potential investors. According to Olga, she was initially inspired by the New York project, but "if in New York these guys just gathered ideas, published a book and that's it, then we understand that we need to go further, try to find some ways to implement it." Moreover, having debugged the mechanism, Olga hopes to launch it in other Russian cities.
Activists are not asleep in St. Petersburg either. According to The Village, the chairman of the City Transport Infrastructure Development Committee, together with the coordinators of the cycling communities, will take a bike ride through the city center. The activists will tell the official where, in their opinion, it is necessary to equip the bike paths.
Another news from St. Petersburg concerned the Committee for Construction, which, according to Kommersant, proposed to suspend the construction of housing within a radius of 30 km from St. Petersburg. The officials explained their initiative by the aggravating transport problems, as well as the uneven development of the Leningrad region. In their opinion, such a step will also give an impetus to the renovation of industrial zones in the city center. Developers and the authorities of the Leningrad region took the idea with hostility, noting that in a market economy, prohibitive measures are ineffective.
Meanwhile, during the week Izvestia announced the plans of the Moscow Region authorities to unite small settlements in the region in a “mini-agglomeration”. Officials motivate the decision by the fact that "there are a lot of small settlements in the region, which are often subsidized and have absolutely no basis for economic development."
And in conclusion - about the news that touched upon the topic of heritage preservation this week. Novaya Gazeta spoke with the head of the Moscow cultural heritage department, Alexander Kibovsky. The conversation, mainly, was about how the situation with the preservation of heritage has changed since the departure of Yuri Luzhkov. According to the official, important victories have been won on a number of fronts. In particular, a significant number of construction contracts have been terminated in the historic center. Investors were attracted to the restoration of historical buildings thanks to the "1 ruble" program, and fines for the destruction of monuments were increased significantly.
The 66.ru portal wrote about the initiative of the Yekaterinburg activists of their Podelniki arch-group, who are engaged in saving the White Tower avant-garde monument. The guys launched a fundraiser for the last stage of the Tower research, which will be carried out with the involvement of German specialists. As a result, a project for the restoration of the structure will be developed.
And the site of ISTU told about the expedition of students-restorers to survey the monuments of wooden architecture in the north of the Irkutsk region, which was held for the first time in the last 20 years.
