Press / Petersburg
Director General of the Urbanica Institute Anton Finogenov, in a conversation with The Village, dispels the myth that St. Petersburg is a European city. 9/10 of the city on the Neva is difficult to distinguish from Chelyabinsk, and all because of the faceless and uncomfortable sleeping areas. According to the expert, “now we need to go a difficult and slow way”: gently reconstruct microdistricts (de-compact, change their visual appearance), adapt the “gray belt” to the new life, develop public transport and impose restrictions on motorists.
Art historian and architectural critic Maria Elkina told the newspaper "Moy District" about the failure of the St. Petersburg General Plan, which does not save even an unprecedented number of amendments. There are two main problems: "there is no unifying idea behind it, a formulated concept of development" and "it does not give any intelligible idea of how the city will look and function." A qualitatively new document is needed, which recognizes that the city has colossal problems and proposes ways to solve them.
Also, "My District" writes about the need for St. Petersburg in an official document, which will list possible materials, proportions, relevant architectural elements and other characteristics of the building on the scale of a street or quarter. Such a regulation will contribute to the emergence of high-quality architecture and, finally, relieve the northern capital of the fear of modernity. Our portal wrote about one of these projects, which were created within the framework of strict restrictions, however, not related to the regulations. The result received a far from unambiguous assessment.
Lev Berezkin from St. Petersburg Vedomosti talks about the concerns of experts gathered at the international conference "St. Petersburg Tomorrow: Instruments for Positive Change." In their opinion, the main urban planning mistakes in recent years are "the lack of streets within huge microdistricts and the absence of public urban spaces." 90% of Petersburgers live in "dormitory" areas, so these territories need transformations no less than the center, and it is necessary to lay in the general plan other principles of mass housing construction.
What to read?
The portal of the Moscow Archcouncil tells about the book published by the Art. Lebedev Studio: “The Language of Templates. Cities. Building. Construction "Christopher Alexander. The chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, recommends it as "one of the most fundamental works in the analysis of the comfort of the living environment." “From the general to the particular, all elements of the environment in which we live are analyzed. From such elements - templates or patterns - you can build absolutely any situation: from a planetary scale to a room for an individual."
Strelka Press will soon publish Scott McQuire's Media City, who won the prestigious 2009 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Award. The book explores how screens, photographs, security cameras and smartphones define and shape the space of a modern city.
The editor-in-chief of the revived Big City magazine, Konstantin Gaase, told Colta.ru about what the publication will be like. According to him, they will write about transport in Moscow and other megacities of the planet, about the transformation of the city as a result of major political events, about what is happening in the capital's City Hall and the construction complex “plus good, interesting science - some kind of economic reports, stories about architecture, stories about Moscow everyday practices”.
Berlogos magazine publishes an interview with Eduard Kubensky, who talks about his book "Urban Dreams" and shares his ideas for the transformation of Yekaterinburg.
Parks
The resource "In Moscow" provides details about the Zaryadye park: it is planned to open it in the fall of 2017. Recall that, according to the project of the New York bureau Diller Scofidio + Renfro, landscapes of the main climatic zones of Russia will be created in it: the tundra, the middle strip with birches, the steppe zone with forbs, and so on.
I would like to hope that after Moscow good parks will appear in other cities. In the Moscow region, for a start, they compiled a rating of parks, in Novosibirsk they want to involve 60 active citizens in the transformation of green zones, and in Simferopol there are grandiose plans to completely revive all city gardens.
Also worth mentioning are two interesting materials from the UrbanUrban portal. The first is an interview with the head of the Berlin architectural bureau Studio Schwitalla, Max Schwitalla. He and his team are looking for inspiration to transform the transportation system in nature, in natural processes. The result is fantastically attractive ideas: for example, an information transport system that will plan the fastest route for you and the most energy efficient for the city; a universal vehicle that can interact with different types of infrastructure: subway rails, tram tracks, asphalt, and so on. It is interesting that companies like Audi and BMW are now investing in such projects - they are aware that by 2030 they will almost stop buying new cars in Europe, and they are already preparing for this challenge. Such foresight would be for the compilers of the General Plan of St. Petersburg!..
The second material is the story of how the life of the University Village in Kazan changed after the Universiade. Resident Anna Lobanova talks about the pros and cons of the student hostel that has formed here.
Blogs
Ilya Varlamov talks in detail about the reconstruction project of Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg and explains what is wrong with this project: it creates another "bottleneck", a tiled void instead of a public space, inconvenient underground passages. Fortunately, there is an alternative project from the Beautiful Petersburg movement. The experts he invited took into account the transport, trade and historical-cultural aspects, and the result was a much more convincing and attractive picture.
The blogger also presented a project to transform the Karamyshevskaya embankment in Moscow, which was developed by the Local Planners company. From a frightening cluttered place, the embankment is turning into a beautiful green area that any neighborhood will envy.
In addition, City Projects continue the series of Vuchik's adventures in Russia: this time the urbanist visited Tver. The blog published sentimental videos, when watching which you want to immediately fix all the trams and no longer subject Vuchik to such tests.
A lecture by the leading designer of the Art. Lebedev Studio, Iskander Mukhamadeev, "Typography in an urban environment" has been published in the community of Russian architects in LiveJournal. In his speech, he explains what the design code of Moscow is, how to work with signs correctly, and why you shouldn't cover the windows of the first floors with advertising. In the blog of Alexander Lozhkin, you can get acquainted with the presentation of the study "Parks and Public Spaces of Novosibirsk" prepared by ITMO University (DUE), IG "Pedestrian Traffic" and the Novositizen project.
Blog moscow_i_ya writes about the pedestrian zone that has recently opened in Moscow: from Gagarin Square to Europe Square. The author was unable to find the beginning of this zone and in general it will have special features, except for the tiles and the expansion of the sidewalks in certain places. The landscaped area is only a few fragments: about one and a half kilometers out of the declared six and a half.
Finally, there are images from the Young Town Planners community, which clearly explain how one tram can replace 200 cars, as well as Maria Elkina's impressions of her participation in the round table “Architecture in the Mirror of the Media” and Grigory Revzin's dream about the brand book of Tatarstan.
