Roof Point is a platform created a little over a year ago by the young workshops of T + T Architects and K. S. Buro for professional but informal discussions. As the architects themselves say, this is a place "where the rules of corporate culture do not apply, there is no dress code and hierarchy." In other words, opponents come here without ties and speak out as bluntly as they can. The founders decided to summarize the results of the first year of this media space with a discussion entitled "Moscow's Competitive Policy", the participants of which discussed the pros and cons of the practice of holding architectural competitions that has become so popular today.
The choice of the agenda hardly surprised anyone: contests are perhaps the most "promoted" architectural theme of the outgoing 2013. At the suggestion of the chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, everyone seems to know about their advantages: they help to find the most optimal project for the city and site, improve the quality of architecture in general, and bring a spark of healthy competition to the professional community. However, the system of regular tenders is only being tested today, and certain failures and shortcomings in it are inevitable and natural. The participants in the discussion - architects, "specialized" journalists, developers and representatives of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction, tried to identify the existing pain points.
The head of T + T Architects and the co-host of the discussion, Sergei Trukhanov, immediately put the question bluntly: if the contests are so necessary and beautiful, then why do they give so little to the city itself, which is holding them? And gave as an example
competition for the new building of the NCCA: there are no complaints about the competition itself, but it is planned to build a new museum on the outskirts of a huge shopping center, and the architect is sincerely perplexed: why is there a museum there and what will its appearance in the shopping center's loading area give the city? The main “defendant” (as, incidentally, on most of the other sensitive issues voiced during the discussion) was Evgenia Murinets, deputy head of the Department of the Architectural Council of the Moscow Committee for Architecture. She explained that the site on Khodynskoye Pole was a compromise that ended a series of long and difficult searches: the original site was too cramped for the large-scale NCCA complex, and there were not so many places in the city that were relatively close to the center and, at the same time, not built up super densely. … Yes, the proximity to the mall will probably complicate the life of the museum, but there will be a park on the other side of it, Evgenia Murinets recalled, and the park, for the project of which an international competition is being held now, and, according to the ICA's calculations, the final of this competition will take place after on how the winning project of the NCCA will be selected. In other words, the concept of the park will be developed taking into account the museum, and the integrated development of this "natural and cultural cluster" should compensate for the proximity to the shopping center.
"And why was not a competition announced for the selection of the site itself for the museum?" - was followed by quite a logical question. "And who should have taken part in such a competition?" - asked a counter question Evgenia Murinets. And she explained that investors who own various sites in the city are not at all interested in building a large-scale cultural center, so when trying to negotiate with them, inevitable bargaining began, which led the MCA into a completely understandable dead end. Interestingly, the officials even considered the possibility of building a new museum on the site of the Tsarev Garden complex, but they failed to come to an agreement with the local investor.
The mention of the Tsarev Sad complex shook the audience. For today it is, perhaps,
a competition with the most paradoxical result: three projects won at once, which today are “combined” into one."Does it even make sense to hold a competition for the best project if it will change radically anyway?" - Sergei Trukhanov doubts. “In fact, the jury becomes a co-author of the project,” confirmed Natalya Sidorova from the DNA architectural group, noting that the Moscow Architectural Council often takes on a similar role, summing up the results of more local competitions. To this Evgenia Murinets only threw up her hands: consultations with professional experts about the future of a particular site can take different forms, and this is in any case better than nothing. As for the Tsarev Sad complex, this competition was initially held on the condition that LLC "MAO - Sreda", which was engaged in its appearance earlier, will in any case retain the function of a general designer.
Perhaps the main problem of the emerging competitive practice in Moscow is the absence of any regulations. Today, there is not even a mandatory procedure for preliminary approval of TK, although it would seem that it is obvious to everyone that even the most ideally organized competition will not save the situation if its participants received an indistinct or incorrectly calculated TK. That is why, by the way, developers are increasingly holding some abstract competitions on the concept of the development of the site "as a whole". Evgenia Murinets was asked quite a natural question: “Does the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture support such competitions? After all, in theory, this is also better than nothing? " Murinets replied: no. “Because, by and large, this is not a competition, but a scheme for determining TEPs,” she explained with utmost honesty the position of the ICA. In other words, the investor collects a bank of ideas in order to sit down and think about what can be built on the site and, most importantly, to what extent. This was exactly the competition for Berezhkovskaya embankment - the customer wanted to figure out whether it was possible to build a “city within a city” in the former industrial zone, and at the same time it did not even occur to him to first calculate the transport and functional needs of the area. Well, in general, the result of the competition is appropriate: the winning team ("Project Meganom") as a result does not deal with the site - after some thought, the customer turned to the authors of a more "drawn" concept.
During the discussion, the participants invented the wording: "The competition is the legitimization of the developer's intentions, an attempt to make them public." Evgenia Murinets explained that the ICA is trying in every possible way to translate these intentions into a practical and, most importantly, beneficial for the city plane: in particular, support is provided to competitions that are preceded by serious analytics, and the main argument in favor of holding competitions is to simplify the procedure for agreeing using projects.
The topic of the jury was also hotly debated. How and who forms it? And is it necessary to limit the number of customer representatives so that the result of the competition suits not only the developer, but also the city? Evgenia Murinets voiced the position of the ICA: representatives of the customer should be no more than a third of the entire jury. Elena Mandryko, Development Director of CJSC Rublevo-Arkhangelskoye, confirmed that this is even a bit too much: for example, out of 14 jury members
the competition for the International Financial Center was only 2 representatives of Sberbank, and "more is hardly needed." And Elena Kosorenkova, advisor to the Chief Architect of the Moscow Region, suggested that the customer should not “jury” himself at all, delegating the right to select and evaluate projects to a certified expert.
The outcome of the discussion was summed up by architect Yuliy Borisov, one of the directors of the UNK project bureau, which has become very famous over the past year precisely due to participation and victories in competitions. According to him, from an economic point of view, participation in competitions is a “guaranteed minus”, but from a professional point of view it is an absolute plus. And the point is not even PR, as he was immediately prompted from the audience, but that the competition is an ideal opportunity for training architects. That is why UNK project tries to participate in competitions as often as possible, and, as practice shows, it is not in vain.
