Photos of the project of the new building of the Moscow City Duma on Strastnoy Boulevard appeared on the network Judging by them, the damage to the nearby palace of the famous Gagarins' estate (Novo-Ekaterininskaya hospital) will be greater than the loss of two courtyard buildings, which the monument lost during the "adaptation" this winter. City activists believe that it is impossible for the neoclassical ensemble to be adjacent to the next reincarnation of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, which blogs call "a nondescript little shed" and "a feast of architectural tastelessness." Not everyone, however, is sure that in the historical environment everything must necessarily be antique. For example, according to Yaroslav Kovalchuk, the current project “is definitely better than Luzhkov's turrets with monograms. The architecture, of course, is mediocre, nothing outstanding, but the style is fine. " However, the Arkhnadzor activists are concerned not only with the visual, but also with the possible physical damage to the monument, whose security zones have not hindered the active construction activities of the “adapters” so far.
And, in the meantime, the Supreme and Supreme Arbitration Courts of the Russian Federation, moving to St. Petersburg, were prepared not for existing palaces, but for a whole new quarter. The project unexpectedly emerged on the site of the ambitious "Embankment of Europe", from which, as a result, only the Boris Eifman Theater remained. Petersburgers are dissatisfied: in the blog "Fontanka" the courts were offered to move farther from the center, and Tuchkov Buyan should be made a museum quarter and a tourist zone. And on the blog Archi.ru, they took apart the projects of the finalists of the architectural competition published the day before. The presence of neoclassical and modern forms among them once again pitted two irreconcilable camps. For example, the project of Maxim Atayants, based on the project of the famous Ivan Fomin, was compared to "cheap decorations for the classics" and praised for "subtle knowledge of antiquity" and "appropriate orthodox approach." Luxurious according to user Dmitry Bondarenko, Zemtsov's project with "a perfectly organized square near the Birzhevoy Bridge, a pedestrian street oriented to the Prince Vladimir Cathedral and a theater led to the water," Dmitry Danilchuk called the new Mariinsky-2.
Philosopher Alexander Rappaport, who joined the conversation, urged to break away from the details and look at the project as a significant milestone in the development of modern architecture: “All the projects presented demonstrate some kind of arithmetic average yesterday,” writes Rappaport; Wouldn't it be better to try to create an open version, “in the implementation of which other groups would gradually take part, that is, a project with an open continuation, and create a real discussion atmosphere around the works”. Mikhail Belov also did not find a deep architectural thought in the competition projects, calling them "attack of the clones" in his blog. In them, according to Belov, things of different times are "slightly modernized" and "cloned" - from the Celsius library in Ephesus to the 1956 Lenproject complex of buildings. Alexander Lozhkin added in comments on Facebook that “counterfeit architecture” has long become the norm, and people are already writing dissertations about the “prototype method”. However, the quotation itself is not bad, Belov agrees; “Palladio also quoted, but the result was better than the quote,” notes Lara Kopylova. “It's just that in the 20th century, everyone began to clone, and not just the architecture of the past. As a result, by copying the insides of reptiles or the bodies of insects, they finally lost touch with the scale of man,”concludes the author of the blog.
The benefits and dangers of "prototypes" were also argued on in Andrey Anisimov's Facebook blog, where the other day they discussed a competition held by the Union of Architects for the best modern solution for an Orthodox church. Bloggers have different attitudes to the idea: “First, the canonical architecture will turn into a conical one, and then into a comic one,” writes, for example, the user of the Orthodox Institute Co-Action. True, the hierarchs themselves, according to Konstantin Kamyshanov, just show that they are ready to change stereotypes: “There are sculptures of saints, carriages and ships-temples. They accept icons of all styles and serve liturgy in sheds and sheds. The stupor is not with them, but the creative intelligentsia. " And Vladimir Pryadikhin believes that the competition is unlikely to give a clear result, since “everything depends on what provokes such a modern decision, that is, an urban plot, or the endowment of new functions, or a specific author's skill. " And simply urban planning innovations are not an argument, adds Anisimov, from the point of view of liturgical changes there are no changes. “I have no internal need to search for new forms, and the old ones are fine with me,” concludes the author of the blog.
Meanwhile, in Perm once again put an end to a loud and interesting project: the building of the Art Gallery of the architect Peter Zumthor, which was recently promoted by the local authorities, is now called unrealizable. The gallery itself was offered to move into the building of the River Station, where the Museum of Modern Art now houses. Note that the local architects of the Swiss Zumthor were immediately greeted coldly, and now they write in blogs that they “warned”: “If such a“project”on a slope 20 meters from the railway was proposed by a Perm architect, it would simply be trampled and ground into powder! - remarks, for example, Igor Lugovoi.
Pessimism was added by the news of the project of a residential microdistrict in Bakharevka discussed in the RUPA community, where the progressive provisions of the Perm master plan crashed against the harsh reality of city norms. According to Daniyar Yusupov, “affordable housing,” fully complying with the standards, turned into “industrial-scale slum production.” Moreover, according to Valery Nefedov, “this is visibly worse than the building the day before yesterday - at that time they sometimes looked for the identity of the building and the“spirit of the place”. To build such a thing is to sign that education is all useless."
Alexander Rappaport looks more broadly at such manifestations of architectural unprofessionalism. In his opinion, the profession has been in crisis for more than a decade, but recently its level has dropped to a critical point, disguised only by "fantastic architectural monsters and individual brilliant examples in the work of some outstanding architects." Today, Rappaport is sure, the time of professional cynics everywhere sacrificing architectural culture for their own success.
Well, since the boundaries of professionalism today turn out to be rather blurred, it is not surprising that non-professional city activists readily enter the architectural field. Here Ilya Varlamov once again shares in his blog a new urban planning idea - following the European example, to turn some Moscow streets into tram and pedestrian streets. And at the same time, a number of Moscow wastelands - into vegetable gardens, encouraging the movement of "guerrilla gardeners", mastering construction dumps in such a useful way.
However, the architects who took up the Europeanization of the metropolitan spaces also found their critics in the blogs. For example, Mikhail Belov is rather skeptical about the reconstruction of the Crimean embankment near the Muzeon Park, which was completed the day before. While the authors of the project - the Wowhaus bureau - accept congratulations on the opening of the updated embankment on their Facebook page, Belov writes in his blog that the "Plague-like waves" of the paths and the roof of the vernissage will not withstand our climate, will turn into dangerous ice slides and "14 classic snow bags". - “And the grandiose idea of“Russian Europeanism”crashed about the“Russian way of life”and the quality of functional design,” concludes Mikhail Belov. True, while winter has not tested the strength of the new structures, most Muscovites are very happy with the transformations, and one after another they publish joyful photo reports from the embankment, repeating that now it is "almost Europe" here.
