Dolphusikha told Chachua about the dear Koenigsberg, to which Chachua nodded his nose and passionately said: “But how! I remember … General Chernyakhovsky … Five days they broke with cannons …"
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Doomed city
The international competition for the development of the concept of architectural and urban development of the territories of the historical center of Kaliningrad "Korolevskaya Gora and its Surroundings" ended on September 18 with the victory of the project proposed by St. Petersburgers: Nikita Yavein's Studio 44 and the Institute of Territorial Development, which developed a transport scheme in the project.
The center of Kaliningrad is a significant place, talks about its renewal or restoration have been going on for a long time, and the competition held should become one of the important parts of this ongoing and confusing history of the interaction of Soviet, Russian and historical Prussian identity in the post-war period. First of all: many people know, but still it must be said that during the war, the capital of Prussia, Königsberg, was almost completely destroyed, first by the brutal bombing of British aircraft in August 1944, then during the assault by Soviet troops. After the war, the ruins of the Royal Castle were investigated a little, and then blown up (!) In 1969 at the direction of the secretary of the regional committee. The old buildings in the center have been destroyed, cut by the Trestle Bridge and look like a park in places, in places like a vacant lot dominated by the unfinished but funny House of Soviets of the 1970s, next to the ruins of the castle; Of the notable old buildings, the cathedral with Kant's grave in it has been preserved on the tree-covered island of Kneiphof, Île de la Cité of Königsberg. For ten years, if not more, the city has been debating whether to restore the castle, build up the island and, in general, what to do with the center, which now looks more like a moderately well-groomed Soviet outskirts than a historic city. [Three other projects that took second and two third places can be seen here].
The answer that Nikita Yavein gave to these and many other questions, predictably, did not suit everyone, and yet many experts responded with interest about certain decisions of this project.
In addition to the transport scheme (the governor liked it), according to which the center ceases to be a transit one, overpasses are dismantled, bypass roads are built, and sections of former major highways in the center are made pedestrian boulevards, the authors proposed a whole fan of ideological solutions-approaches that are different for each fragment of the city center. It is important to say here that in the Middle Ages, the center was formed from several cities, which merged and became the districts of Königsberg only in 1724. So, the architects proposed for each of these city-districts its own development scenario ranging from the regeneration of the old city according to the strictest regulations to large volumes with glass facades, thus traversing between a clean remake and historical stylization (neither one nor the other is not here) - and the inevitable uniformity of any of the possible, even the most colorful modern areas.
Personally, the most recent and interesting element of the project seems to me to be the concept of the development of the Altstadt district, which the authors quite rightly made the key, starting point for the growth of the city center. Other similar projects are unknown to me, there are similar ones, but the same in meaning - no.
The Altstadt district, located on the northern bank of the Pregolya River and approximately equal in area to the Kneiphof Island, is now occupied by a large green park with linden trees and the Moskovsky Prospekt highway. The architects are turning the track into a new park-boulevard, and on the territory of today's square, they propose to excavate the foundations of destroyed houses covered with earth, but preserved there. The streets are dug up to the pre-war level, and the courtyards - attention - to the level of the deepest basement. What is formed inside small, with an area of 100 to 400 m2 courtyards, I would call a retro-city with an archaeological bias: a space at the level of the excavation, and the architects suggest decorating the facades of houses with ceramics of non-museum value found in the removed cultural layer. The existing trees are also preserved: areas of greenery fortified by retaining walls will rise above the “new medieval” city.
The houses are planned to be built on the plinth of excavated foundations, growing them to the volume allowed by the strict restrictions established in the proposed regulations - approximately to the level of the lost city and with a series of peaked roofs: the architects determined the slope to be strictly 45 degrees. The plots are divided very fractionally: along the boundaries of the houses. All new buildings on old foundations should be built from natural materials, without metal and plastic, with wooden frames, plaster, brick or stone facades and no more than forty percent of the glazing.
Illustrating the concept, the visualizers, in the words of Nikita Yavein, "raised" the silhouettes within all the restrictions they set - and got a charming picture of a retro city with a cozy atmosphere of miniature spaces, cafes, shops (by the way, the scheme of the district's functioning was proposed from the Middle Ages: housing on the upper floors, cafes and shops downstairs, it is assumed that the owners could live above their shops). Without any restoration of the building, the photographs turned out to be a very dense, dense image of a retro city, a city-museum, in a word, the most perfect Venice - one should, however, remember that the houses built will be somewhat different, other architects and customers will work with them. within the regulations. You can ask about the feasibility, the cost of this project and even about the value of the square that hides the foundations of Altstadt, but if we are talking about the restoration - or re-creation of an urban center, which would be related to the historical, but not on the principle of Warsaw, rebuilt in old forms, - then this decision looks like a new step, even from the point of view of the increment of ideas, since it develops the actual topic of restoration in a key that is adequate to the principles of modern archeology and restoration. Retro version according to the rules of our time.
Indeed, what does it take to re-grow a destroyed city center? - Find its roots. The roots of houses are their foundations, and here the dialogue of modern architecture and heritage is conducted on some completely new foundations. Not an antithesis and not a reflection, but splicing and interaction, restoration without forgery. This plot is the root for the cultivation of the entire city center as a whole. And if, say, a project is decided to be implemented without it, then it will lose its inner harmony and logic; the project is designed in such a way that it should grow from start to finish, and not be a donor of “several interesting proposals” (which, as always, is already being discussed).
Considering successively other parts of the project, we immediately find an antithesis: the island of Kneiphof, the restoration of the pre-war buildings of which was most talked about in the city, the architects proposed not to build up at all, but to turn it into an archaeological park. Paths in place of streets, likely fragments of landscape reconstructions from clipped bushes, and a bright flower lawn around the cathedral.
Koenigsberg, among other things, was famous for the riddle about seven bridges: how to pass all of them without going through one twice (the answer is no way, this was proved in 1736 by Leonard Euler, who founded
graph theory and the science of topology). One of the seven bridges was far from the center, and several more were destroyed, two of the old bridges remained. The architects are rebuilding seven bridges in the center, instead of the seventh, they are building a new one in emphatically modern forms and call it after Euler. Two bridges replace the demountable flyover.
The theme of restoration without copying is developed by the East Vorstadt embankment, the river bank to the south of the island: here, according to the regulations, a long row of houses with sharp roofs is built; in the lower floors of the houses, a covered gallery is formed along the river. The authors preserve the “big cranes” of the river port located to the west of the embankment, which have become a landmark, and the development of the former port territory is limited by spots of historical warehouses (speichers). However, the regulations are still very strict: the slope of the roofs is prescribed, in Vorstadt 45 °, in Lastadii (west of the island) 55 °, the height of houses to the roof is from 15 to 18 meters, in the first floors - public functions.
Further, the binding to the locality gradually becomes more and more symbolic. The Lomse area to the east of the island uses building principles borrowed from the old quarters of the Königsberg periphery. Consisting of residential complexes with spacious courtyards and interrupted in places by the landscape, this development is larger and less dense than in the "jewelry" Altstadt, but still it does not go too far into the framework of the historical scale.
To the east and west of Altstadt, Korolevskaya Gora and the House of Soviets, buildings are already becoming noticeably larger, although they are still projected within the boundaries of historical quarters according to the principle of “new urbanism”: one former quarter - one house. This is already a completely modern building - glass, high-rise, it will coexist with Soviet panel houses surrounding the center, none of which is being demolished. Modernity and historical silhouettes contrast with each other on the west bank: here, behind a row of peaked roofs of the embankment, an amusement park, a long roller coaster and a Ferris wheel were placed.
The culmination of the plot of the old-new is the Royal Mountain (by the way, this is the translation of the word Königs-berg from German). It was proposed to excavate the basement of the castle, similar to the Altstadt, to explore, but to create in it not a city, but a museum, covering the remains of the walls with a glass roof. This is the main archaeological attraction, supported by the foundations of eight more buildings, which the authors proposed to uncover and museumify throughout the center: two foundations in Altshadt, three on an island, two more destroyed churches and a synagogue in Lomza are being excavated closer to the boundaries of the territory under consideration.
In the courtyard of the former castle, a new theater building is located, theoretically motivated by the fact that the castle, although not in the courtyard, once had its own theater. Facades made of translucent tubes of tinted glass will have to look different when illuminated from the inside, outside and at different times of the day.
The theater, the castle museum and the House of Soviets are drowned in a mass of public, business and shopping and entertainment complex cut through by courtyards, atriums and loggias of various shapes, which is designed, among other things, to turn the mountain into a mountain again.
As already mentioned, the project preserves all existing, including all Soviet, buildings (however, all other finalists did the same), and, as we can see, creates many different options for the urban environment, moving from conservation and regeneration to modern construction. forming new connections and meanings, first of all - logical transitions from the revived parts of the historical city to the surrounding modern ones, which fits well into the author's title of the project "Topology of Continuity". Everything unfolds progressively and consistently: from the excavated foundations, a retro city grows, next to an archaeological park and a museum, then quarters with strict regulations based on historical prototypes, and practically here - glass towers, the whole connection of which with history consists in their reliance on the contours of the old parcels, and a porous community center, where, like flowers in a sponge, the theater and the tower of the House of Soviets are stuck. You might think that after the bombing and after the center was overgrown with Soviet wasteland, grain was dug up in it, and it, sprouting in the post-war city, gave different processes: from almost Venetian charming neighborhoods to modern glass-metal. ***
We talked about the project with Nikita Yavein. | back up |
Archi.ru:
I would like to ask you a few questions about the development concept of Koenigsberg …
Nikita Yavein:
- Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad. What is the main thing for you in this project?
- The task was rather difficult and uncertain, it was required to return a certain spirit, life to the center of the city, which now is a strange, difficult to define place: I would not even call it Soviet.
We started from the idea that cities are able to "grow" through new layers. For example, the city of Dessau, completely destroyed during the war and then built up with five-story buildings - surprisingly, all zones of the city: the artistic quarter, even the red-light district, were reborn there in their former places with a 100% change in population.
So, here we tried to recreate the historical structure of the city center without any stylization. They offered some kind of basis for the revival of his life - of course, not exactly the one that was there, this is impossible, and it is not necessary. The main principle is to "germinate" the centuries-old history of the city and through it to recreate a certain, first of all, romantic, image of the city, perhaps even more romantic than it actually was before.
And what was he like?
- You read Hoffmann, he considered Koenigsberg a terrible city. Prussian military clique, officials … Such a city draped in a uniform, half of the population in it were military; in old photographs it feels good.
The city in our pictures turned out to be "more medieval" than many medieval European cities. It is important that this image is different, not old and not new, without an attempt to literally recreate it - rather, it is a bridge from the old Koenigsberg to the new Kaliningrad. I would say that we tried, through dry regulation, to arrive at a very romantic image.
We did not follow some of the principles proposed by the organizers - in particular, we refused to develop the Kneiphof Island. We proposed excavating the Altstadt area, not destroyed, but buried under the ground, where the remains of houses were preserved, and the courtyards - to the mark of the deepest basement, there would be such special, deepened spaces - and to build new houses on the remains of the foundations according to very strict regulations. Here we have stipulated everything, not only the height and dimensions, but also the slope of the pitched roofs, the percentage of glazing and, which is very important, natural materials, including wooden window frames, so that there is no modern plastic at all. This is a small area, in fact, this is where such a medieval spirit arose. It is assumed that different people will build, so now it is difficult to predict how exactly everything will look in the end. Most likely, in nature it will be more diverse than it is now in the pictures - pictures are volumes "lifted" by the visualizer from the foundations within the framework of our regulations. Everyone will build in their own way.
Will the developers be given these miniature plots, which make up the blocks of individual houses, right now?
- Probably yes, this way you can achieve more diversity than giving away a whole block, the excess immediately begins there, but actually I don't see a problem in the fact that someone will build up several plots at once.
Did you regulate the absence of pseudo-historical decor?
- Basically, we only regulated finishing materials. Style recommendations were written only for Altstadt: do not resort to imitation of historical styles in the architecture of new buildings; use colors and tones different from the historical ones in the colors of new walls.
Can you name any analogies for your proposed reconstruction of a fragment of the city on the old foundations?
- As a city, I don’t know of such analogies, but there are many individual houses, this is a common practice, I talk about this in my lectures …
Doesn't the analogy with the project of rebuilding Dovmont's town in Pskov on the old foundations of churches in Pskov sound frightening?
- I think there is nothing in common with Dovmont town. There is a miniature territory, the remains of the most valuable temples that we would have lost during the reconstruction, and then, how to recreate the houses around, they were wooden, should they be built? We have a completely different situation, here is a whole city with a residential function, ordinary civil buildings. In addition, I repeat, we are not recreating anything, we are digging up archeology, studying, and then building new houses on the old foundations according to strict regulations.
In other districts, in the territory of medieval towns surrounding the royal castle, we propose different regulations. In Lomza, the layout is preserved, but the height increases, a new "city" appears next to the Royal Castle, high-rise and with a large percentage of glazing, but based on the old layout. The castle remains an archaeological zone, it is pointless to recreate it, we cover the remains of the walls with a glass roof, preserve and museumize the archaeological zone around the perimeter, and build a theater in the courtyard. There is a continuity of function: there was a concert hall in the castle, but there is also an antithesis, the courtyard was an empty space, and we are building it up, creating a new "mountain" in the middle of the castle, the volume of which will become part of the "wings" that form a view of the Pregolya River. We make King's Mountain a mountain, in a word.
