Somehow last summer in the blogs of "popular urbanists" - Alexander Shumsky and Ilya Varlamov - there were proposals for the reconstruction of Moscow streets Maroseyka-Pokrovka with planned "pedestrianization" like Bolshaya Dmitrovka. And the other day, an official project of the forthcoming redevelopment of streets, which is very similar to them, fell into the hands of an initiative group of urban protection residents and became the subject of another war "for the preservation of the historical appearance." The RUPA community found the excuse against reducing car lanes, widening sidewalks and planting trees more than strange, but the precedent itself is interesting: this time urbanists argued whether the improvement projects lobbied by the city hall in the spirit of "new urbanism" could really pose a threat. Elena Gonzalez speaks out against the forcible “making happy” of Muscovites with such projects in the comments: “I am not at all satisfied with the companionship in the redrawing of the city, which I have been observing for the last year…. In general, it would be good to understand that in Moscow there is a very different nature of development and not to apply a single matrix everywhere. " The critic suggests, for a start, to preserve, maintain and develop what is already there, for example, the traditional greenery in the yards.
Yaroslav Kovalchuk, on the other hand, believes that “the city rights defenders have written complete nonsense”: in any case, the ban on chaotic parking will only benefit the capacity of the streets, the architect is sure, since the width of the carriageway will become constant.
But Alexander Antonov writes that it is generally difficult to evaluate such projects without knowing the city's politics until the end: “Are residents returning to the center of Moscow or not? After all, there are no residents there now. There are offices. If so, what kind of residents are they? Do they pay taxes on expensive land on a general basis or "according to social justice" … ".
Community members also disagreed about such a prominent feature of the new urban policy as the activities of foreign consultants. So, more than three hundred comments were collected by Dmitry Narinsky's simple question to his colleagues about how they assess the unusually popular now Jan Gale. “Why is it that the Danish“plumber”is loved by the authorities more than domestic planners,” Narinsky asks, is it because his activity is “a smokescreen of the whole town, and Jan Gail himself will never understand anything in the life of our cities?” “There is absolutely nothing to blame him for, except that, for reasons that are not too clear for me, he is not worried about being completely incomprehensible,” Daniyar Yusupov writes in the comments. However, the architect adds, the liveabe cities model he exported is quite vulnerable in the sense that it is built on Northern European anthropometrics, which is not applicable everywhere. “No Jan Gale can add destructiveness to what is happening today,” agrees Alexander Antonov. - “We have a number of external conditions and attitudes that are destroying the very“unadapted”model /… /. The reluctance of the author of the concept to adapt it to our extremely specific conditions makes Gale's activity more and more a passer-by to sell the gramophone trumpet to the natives,”concludes the architect.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Belov reflects on the results of recent Moscow competitions - for the entrance group of the Ukraine Hotel and the reconstruction of Triumfalnaya Square. According to the architect, these results demonstrate a new, already post-modernist state of the workshop, when a modern architect no longer even gives out “awkward and sloppyly constructed attempts to build something in historical styles” for the task of “completing finished works of a certain style direction”, but simply hangs in front of "Ukraine" "inviting ribbons", and on Triumfalnaya - lay out "other people's vertical ornamental solutions." "Everyone is fighting for" new forms, "Belov sneers," but they no longer understand how to add a harmonious visor to the old form."
However, the importance of the ability to work in the field of "stylization and eclecticism", which Mikhail Belov wrote about in previous posts, has met with sharp criticism. The architect Dmitry Khmelnitsky entered into an active controversy with the author of the blog, in whose opinion stylization is "architecture of the third grade." "The general professional level of the community depends on the place that the eclecticism takes in it," Khmelnytsky writes. - In non-stylized architecture, the main creative task is precisely the spatial embodiment of a function. What (function!) Is the subject of creativity. " Mikhail Belov, however, remains faithful to tradition and responds to criticism in the following way: “Functionalism is utilitarian. During operation, the functions change very often. That weakens the "slogans and banners" of this project ideology and sometimes makes it aggressive."
Meanwhile, in addition to Moscow, the authorities of the Moscow region were suddenly concerned about the appearance of cities: according to the governor Andrei Vorobyov, municipalities are now tasked with ensuring the presence of a chief architect in each city. Among the architects themselves, the idea was skeptical. “+1 official with a set of tools and terms that make it possible to slow down and complicate the process of approving a project based solely on his own lubokness and taste,” Andrey Nikitin, for example, comments on the news. Moreover, until now, issues of urban planning were decided by officials who make populist decisions to please their rating, Andrei Nikiforov recalls. Ideally, the chief architect is not just an official who "signs, approves the land, the appearance of kiosks and entrance groups," adds Alexander Antonov, but also a person who deals with serious strategic issues, which requires him to have a certain authority. “Few of the main ones enjoy authority in their cities, and even those from the bison cohort will soon retire. And one cannot expect to find at least 10 such authoritative people in the region,”the architect doubts.
In the blogs of city rights defenders at this time, they continue to discuss the fate of the constructivist monuments of the Moscow Region Korolyov: after the demolition of the Building Bureau, activists fear for the state of the remaining parts of the Bolshevsk Labor Commune - dormitories, a kindergarten, a department store, a kitchen factory and other buildings designed by architects A. Langman and L. Cherikover … Well, the students of the Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering approached the problem of heritage creatively and against the implementation of the so-called construction project. The shooters (in the project of the Institute "Legiprogor" on the site of the river port, high-rise buildings are supposed to cover the historical panorama of the city) made a series of posters in the best Soviet traditions.
