Press / What Moscow Wants
Grigory Revzin, specially for the Kommersant Publishing House, studied the project of the Strelka Institute of Media, Design and Architecture “What Moscow Wants”. The project is a collection of citizens' ideas about what the city lacks. To the author's surprise, the ideas turned out to be not only intelligible and sensible, but also proving that the Moscow government is doing exactly what the citizens are interested in (green and / or public spaces, bike paths, courtyards, public transport, and even paid parking lots). Even if we assume the moderation of citizens' proposals, the question arises: how did the government know that people need these things? Grigory Revzin comes to a paradoxical conclusion: "Russian cities imitate Moscow, Moscow imitates European capitals, and their urban planning policy is directly determined by how they vote." What is not on the agenda in Europe, we do not have that, although it should have been.
Even our press review can illustrate this idea. Only on the topic of the development of cycling infrastructure in the last week there were four newsworthy: in Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and St. Petersburg. Karima Nigmatulina's long interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta is also replete with references to European trends, foreign capitals and Jan Gale. The latter, by the way, also appears in Kazan, and his colleague Vukan Vuchik came to Moscow again.
Returning to Strelka: The Village began publishing a series of graduate works by students of this institute, dedicated to the everyday life of Muscovites. The first is devoted to cars: diplomas, as always, reveal a familiar topic from unusual angles: the relationship between the defense system of Moscow and automobiles, the Moscow Ring Road as a separate city, autopsychoanalysis, the Moscow garage "Shanghai" and illegal taxi.
What Moscow has
Alexey Shchukin on the pages of Expert Online explains why the building by Zaha Hadid on Sharikopodshipnikovskaya Street in Moscow did not work out as a wow object. Despite the fact that the Dominion Tower is much more interesting than most of the offices in the capital, in comparison with the fresh buildings of Zaha, "the building loses so much that it causes a persistent feeling of substitution." The explanation is simple: the project is old, its protracted implementation coincided with a sharp turning point in Hadid's work - "the transition from deconstructivism to parametricism."
RBC timed to the opening after the reconstruction of Pyatnitskaya Street, Pokrovka and Maroseyka an article on the organization of pedestrian zones in the capital. The main problem that the newspaper reveals is the lack of a coherent development strategy for such streets: "having arranged the sidewalks, the mayor's office, apparently, considers its main mission fulfilled, and then the pedestrian zones develop by gravity."
"Gazeta.ru" writes about the implementation of another innovation: the replacement of signs with "corresponding to the new rules and architectural and artistic concepts." The portal of the Moscow Architectural Council also reports that the architectural and artistic concepts of the external appearance of 43 streets, highways and territories of the city of Moscow have been approved. You can get acquainted with them by following the link. Deputy Head of the Main Architectural and Planning Department of the Moskomarkhitektura Yuri Kedyaev told the portal about the main activity of his department - the development of standards and design documentation for landscaping.
What happens outside of Moscow
While Moscow is trying to modernize panel houses and make them more friendly and comfortable, everything has already worked out in the Moscow region: architectural critic Larisa Kopylova tells Kommersant readers about residential complexes that, despite the experimental nature of their projects, have remained in a low price range. We are talking about the "City of Embankments", "Microtown in the Forest", "Country Quarter" and some others. According to the chairman of the board of directors of the Urban Group, Alexander Dolgin, it is possible to create a good economy-class architecture in the Moscow region due to cheaper land, a permitting system, utilities and connections, as well as due to the availability of building plots of sufficient size.
The magazine "Berlogos" wrote about the architectural gifts for the 300th anniversary of Yekaterinburg: the municipality plans to open an interesting cultural center named after Pavel Bazhov, designed by the PTARH workshop. A four-storey building in the form of a crystal with a carved stone flower is supposed to be erected close to the writer's memorial house-museum. The city is also waiting for the reconstruction of several buildings of the Novo-Tikhvinsky nunnery and the renovation of the complex of the former hotel "Russia".
In Novosibirsk, on the site of the Severny airport, a new district will emerge, the likes of which do not exist in the city. Three new metro stations will open on the extension of Krasny Prospekt, and Zhukovsky Street will merge with the runway.
The magazine "Interview Russia" publishes an article by Yuri Palmin about how the local authorities invited eminent architects to the small Austrian town of Krumbach, who built unusual bus stops there, which became a new attraction.
Blogs
Ilya Varlamov in his blog points out the shortcomings that he found after the reconstruction of Pokrovka and Maroseyka, but which, probably, were not shown to Sergei Sobyanin at the time of the delivery of the work. Serious: problems with the drainage system, narrow sidewalks and parking pockets in some places, curbs instead of a barrier-free environment. Of the funny: long lanterns, cut off entrances and lawns, which were hastily laid for the arrival of the mayor. In general, the blogger assesses the work done positively: “they did everything with dignity and much better than they did before”.
Arkady Gershman wrote about the high-speed tram in Volgograd, which allows you to move relatively quickly through this unusual city 80 km long, as well as about the Chinese tram, on the entire route of which there are no contact networks - it is recharged at stops. This solution avoids additional visual noise. Readers also liked the lawn between the rails.
Sergei Oreshkin publishes two unsuccessful projects of Sergei Tsytsin in St. Petersburg in Live Journal - a hotel complex on Glinka Street, which, among other things, spoils the view of St. into the skyline of the city.
Vladimir Paperny posted beautiful photographs of VDNKh on his Facebook page, and Sergey Estrin shares his impressions of the imperial architecture of Vienna.
