Press / Cities
This week, Bolshoi Gorod is trying to figure out how to transform small and medium-sized cities in Russia from “staging areas” into places where you want to live and work. Now most of these cities are economically unstable and live on federal budget funds. The way out for them is a new type of main activity, and it can be not only tourism and service industry. So far, small cities are following the simplest path - to become part of an agglomeration and serve large centers, receiving some economic confidence in return for identity (Expert-online wrote about new agglomerations in the Urals). According to the author of the article, passionate leaders who are able to unite different specialists, officials and local residents to solve common problems can reverse the current situation. Nikola-Lenivets is cited as a successful example. Another initiative to help is the program “A City Comfortable for People with Any Income,” which involves the residents themselves in the process of changing the city. Irina Irbitskaya told the UrbanUrban portal about the program in detail.
Project Russia magazine publishes a special supplement, which reflects the evolution of the planning project for the Olympic cluster in the Imeretinskaya Lowland, starting with a sketch by the American company HOK Sport and ending with Vladimir Korotaev's proposal for a “post-Olympic” use of infrastructure.
RBC wrote about the new buildings in Moscow, the construction of which will be completed by 2015. More than a hundred residential buildings, several iconic business centers, hotels, social facilities, as well as new metro stations, highways and road junctions will appear in the capital. Sergey Kuznetsov spoke on M24 about the future embankment on the territory of the ZIL plant and the construction of new bridges, and Yulia Burdova from Buromoscow announced the details of the Triumfalnaya Square renovation.
Petersburg has finished accepting amendments to the General Plan from the townspeople. "My District" talks about the main proposals: to add cycling infrastructure, to replace areas of business development with recreational areas, to create more green areas, to make additional trips to the ring road. The defender of the Okhtinsky Cape Pavel Shapchits submitted more than 300 applications for the design of intra-quarter squares and green areas. But such fervor and active position still cannot overcome bureaucratic inertia: officials have already lost part of all the proposed amendments. Now the Legislative Assembly will consider the amendments in zero and three more readings. It also became known that the authorities of St. Petersburg have finally abandoned the project of ex-governor Valentina Matvienko - the construction of Alla Pugacheva's Song Theater on Vasilyevsky Island worth more than $ 400 million: Kommersant reports.
Skyscrapers
Kommersant has prepared a series of articles about skyscrapers, which are "an integral part of the look of any large city and a prerequisite for modern development." The author gives different opinions about the peculiarities of Moscow high-rise dominants and moves from history to a modern example - a project of a multifunctional complex on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow. Another text is dedicated to the iconic skyscrapers of the USA, Asia and Europe.
Gazeta.ru writes about modern technologies that are used in the construction of skyscrapers and make it possible to erect towers up to 1 km high. At the same time, more and more often Russian projects are included in the world ratings of the best skyscrapers. The most anticipated now is the 462 m high Lakhta Center in St. Petersburg, which may become one of the tallest buildings in Europe. It is being built according to world standards - the project includes renewable energy sources, environmentally friendly materials, reduced CO2 emissions, reduced impact on the ground during construction, and more.
Monuments
Afisha-Gorod publishes a response to an interview with Alexander Senatorov, which sparked a wide discussion. Former representative of the House of Narkomfin Foundation and editor-in-chief of Moscow Heritage Yana Mirontseva explained that the building is undergoing renovation, not restoration. From her words, it seems that Senatorov really was "sick" at home: an exhibition was organized dedicated to the building and the Russian architectural avant-garde in general, specialists were invited to cooperate, there were plans to republish Moisei Ginzburg's book "Housing". But then something changed, and an ambitious project, in which a lot of energy and money was invested, now "boils down to giving out apartments to rich people."
Also "Afisha-Gorod" publishes the entire first chapter of the new guidebook "Architecture of Moscow during the NEP and the First Five-Year Plan", which is a guide to 12 famous buildings, without which it is impossible to imagine the center of Moscow. The selection includes the house of the People's Commissariat for Finance.
The Reedus portal touches on another controversial problem: the massive and widespread restoration of temples. The author of the material talks about the latest plans to return the title of "golden-headed" to the capital and the "frivolities" associated with this process in relation to the disappeared buildings.
"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" publishes a large material dedicated to the famous "House with a Lion", found in the Saratov wilderness and gradually turning into a major attraction.
Blogs
On the website of the MARCH architecture school, you can get acquainted with the diploma project of one of its first graduates, Valeria Samovich, who was highly appreciated by examiners from London Metropolitan University. The project was created in the studio of Evgeny Assa "Pereryadye" and consists of three parts: a portfolio, research and a diary, which records the process of work and collects additional materials. These documents provide a good understanding of the school's educational process.
Criticism of Zaha Hadid's projects is already heard from our latitudes. Yuri Bolotov, who now maintains an architectural blog on The Village resource, talks about his impressions of the Dominion Tower office center, which is being erected on Sharikopodshipnikovskaya Street in Moscow according to the project of Zakha's bureau. He calls the building "a very boring Hadid for the poor", "an expensive and fine thing from the collection before last", "greetings from the mid-2000s." However, it is not Hadid's fault: the project was really developed ten years ago, construction began only in 2008, then it was made cheaper and improved. Commentators believe that before getting upset, you still need to wait until the end of construction.
Alexander Shumsky proposes to consider options for the reconstruction of Myasnitskaya Street: Lebedev's Studio has prepared sketches of the improvement, and the portal "Traffic. Net" has thought out a new organization of traffic and urban space in general. The author believes that the street is very suitable for a pedestrian format, but it is an important transport artery to enter the eastern part of the center. Therefore, the challenge for the modernizers was to improve the lives of pedestrians without significantly affecting traffic. The proposed solutions include narrowing lanes, widening sidewalks and parking pockets with widening at crossings.
"Lenta-Dom" tells about the relatives of the "seven sisters" - the famous Moscow skyscrapers. Buildings in the spirit of the Stalinist Empire were built at about the same time in Warsaw, Kiev, Riga, Chelyabinsk, Prague, Bucharest and Sofia.
