The experimental dormitory of the Moscow Textile Institute, or the famous communal house of architect Ivan Nikolaev, has been undergoing a full-scale regeneration for several years, which is itself an experiment of its own kind. Ekaterina Shorban wrote about the problems and inaccuracies of this reconstruction on Archi.ru; not so long ago, the opposite position (albeit with flaws, but thanks for keeping) - expressed Vladimir Belogolovsky.
Last week, the completion of work in the dormitory was also reported to RIA-Novosti: according to the authors of the project, professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute Vsevolod Kulish and the rector of the institute Dmitry Shvidkovsky, the building appeared in its original form. Sharp controversy around the project of restoration and adaptation of the constructivist monument still does not subside - according to Dmitry Shvidkovsky, because "there are no generally accepted methods of restoration of buildings of this type, so each time we had to choose a solution from several possible options."
We add that the famous "sleeping cabins" in Nikolaev's project - the apotheosis of the most severe regulation of human dormitory - have also been restored, however, in accordance with the spirit of the times, they will only perform a museum function. Meanwhile, having heeded the vigorous ideals of life-building of the 1920s and 1930s, subsequent generations of Soviet architects continued to shape the correct Soviet person through planning. Petr Ivanov writes about this in a rather original way on urbanurban.ru. "Thinking about your own body is delegated to the planning engineer: what form he draws, this will have to be done." For example, "the district planners decided that people had nothing to see anywhere except the elevator hall," but even there, the author of the article continues, "the behavior of the Soviet body is squeezed, wary, frightened." Courtyards also did not have a place for communication, according to Petr Ivanov - “almost everything that is located between the houses is intended for transit. And if so, the appearance of the city is not so important either.
The gaps in the urban environment that have formed since then are gradually being filled. Recently, the authors of a series of popular projects of public spaces in Moscow, the Wowhaus bureau, proposed to the mayor's office to reconstruct another one - Revolution Square. “This place is not in the minds of many people, very often it is a transit zone,” the architects believe, and in an interview with Afisha, they cite successful foreign projects for the regeneration of hopelessly neglected urban areas as an example.
The same "Afisha" yesterday interviewed the director of the project "What Moscow wants" Olga Polishchuk, who told how the "improvement" ideas of residents are implementing similar Internet projects abroad. Urban activism is gradually gaining momentum in Russian cities, as urbanurban.ru asked the members of the PODELNIKI architectural group, who had taken it upon themselves to save the constructivist tower of the Uralmash plant. And tayga.info wrote about the initiative of Novosibirsk social activists to make the famous Akademgorodok an object of cultural heritage; this will help protect not only the unique layout of the Soviet "eco-city", but also the special relationship and lifestyle that have developed between members of the scientific community.
In St. Petersburg, meanwhile, passions are raging around the results of the competition for the project of the "court quarter". After the fact, by the way, it turned out that there would be no housing for judges in it. Maxim Atayants, who won the competition, told RBC that he now intends to turn the embankment from the Malaya Neva into a city garden. An article by Grigory Revzin, who supported the architect, sounded very polemical in the stream of criticism of the project: “Atayants is the only participant in the competition who sharply lowered the height of buildings, opening a view from the Palace Bridge to the Vladimir Cathedral /../. It seems to me that the center of St. Petersburg is such a place that any modernist architecture looks here like a scarecrow among the marble sculptures. " Revzin sent his own criticism to the St. Petersburg architects, who, in his words, “are still fiercely fighting the columns, as if it’s 1954”. Well, another large St. Petersburg project, apparently, will be led by a Moscow architect: Fontanka wrote the day before that the architectural concept for the reconstruction of Apraksin Dvor will most likely be given to Timur Bashkaev, who won the tender against his only rival - Studio 44 by Nikita Yavein. Recall that the previous project of the British architect Chris Wilkinson was rejected by Smolny for a proposal to demolish up to 15% of historical buildings.
