At the beginning of the first post-New Year press review - again about urbanism. The fashion trend is overgrown with new myths, moving further and further away from complex interdisciplinary knowledge. Egor Putilov on the Colta.ru portal writes about popular urbanism as a new "trap for young people", whose oppositional sentiments are skillfully directed by the authorities into the "theory of small matters." Behind painted street artists in the courtyards of high-rise buildings in Yekaterinburg and the salvation of Kaliningrad paving stones, the author saw an acute political struggle for power. We find a professional opinion on this topic in Sergey Skuratov's interview to the business-gazeta.ru portal. The architect believes that Russian cities do not have enough urban specialists to overcome the urban planning crisis, but their work is often replaced by "PR": Skuratov is sure that quick and easy decisions can be dangerous here, since "the city requires continuity and a very high concentration of experience." That would really benefit the city - it is the decentralization of management of the architectural process, says Sergei Skuratov, the replacement of arch councils with "a system of really working regulations and competitions."
The Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper at this time publishes fragments of a recent discussion about the future of Triumfalnaya Square, and the Afisha magazine publishes expert opinions on the hastily prepared competition. The proposals are varied - from narrowing the area with the restoration of buildings demolished during the Soviet era, voiced by Grigory Revzin, to stretching along Tverskaya with the overlap of the exit to it from the Garden Ring, which was proposed by Sergei Tchoban. However, the tight deadline for implementation casts doubt on all these ideas, because they want to hand over the square by the City Day. In this case, Nikolai Shumakov adds, a temporary, "improvement" solution will be issued - a complex urban planning project cannot be completed within such a period.
The most recognizable urban expert in Moscow, Jan Gail, meanwhile, gave an interview to the portal art1.ru. It turns out that Gale does not like modernists at all and even the genius of Le Corbusier, according to him, improperly experimented on a person, not based on "any fact or research." This is because architecture is not only about buildings, says Jan Gail; for this he also dislikes architectural education, which teaches architects that "the world is a form, while the form itself is not architecture yet, it is at best a sculpture."
Meanwhile, irn.ru writes that the most important project within the framework of the program for the conversion of industrial zones in the capital - the reconstruction of ZIL - has been put up for auction by the city. ZIL became the first large-scale industrial zone for which the city authorities prepared a planning project - urbanurban.ru writes in more detail about it. The architects pin their hopes on this project for a qualitatively new approach to organizing the urban environment; however, the demolition in May 2013 of the oldest Foundry on the territory of the plant is still convincing of the opposite. Natalia Dushkina writes about other demolitions of the outgoing year on the Arkhnadzor website. The expert draws a disappointing conclusion - the Soviet legacy is still “extremely politicized, not understood and disliked,” and its defense remains the lot of a marginal handful of activists. Dushkina also mentions the sensational story of the Stroyburo house in Korolev: Novye Izvestia reports that on the eve of the ruins of the constructivist monument, they finally received an official protection status. Now its defenders are concerned about the fate of the avant-garde frescoes discovered in the house, which ended up under the rubble. Well, in the "Arkhnadzor", meanwhile, recorded a new collapse, this time on Tverskoy Boulevard, on the identified monument - the estate of Plakhovo, Ostashevsky, L. S. Polyakov.
Alarming news about the fate of the All-Russian Exhibition Center was brought by Kommersant on Friday: the newspaper writes that Rosatom will build its nuclear energy museum on the main alley behind the Cosmos pavilion. Initially, for these purposes, they were going to restore the pavilion "Atomic Energy" built in 1954, the newspaper adds, but either property problems or too much restoration work prevented it.
