On September 24, the Moscow Architectural Institute hosted an open lecture by Valery Nefedov, Professor of the Department of Urban Planning at St. Archi.ru talked with Professor Nefedov about modern methods of working with coastal areas.
Archi.ru:
What principles are guided by the authorities and designers in different countries of the world when working with the urban environment?
Valery Nefedov:
- Today, the main trend in the development of urban space is the creation of the most "loyal" environment for a person. Large-scale research, new technologies and creative methods for solving the problems of certain urban areas that need a qualitative transformation are hidden under the capacious concept of “comprehensive humanization”. Each project, implemented at the initiative of the city authorities or developers, is tested by time and tested by the townspeople themselves. The criteria are the popularity of new public spaces among city residents and the commercial efficiency of the infrastructure.
And what is the role of the river in urban environmental design?
– Special attention is paid to the embankments as a unique and especially attractive place for the townspeople all over the world. Water has a magnetic attraction, a person is drawn to it. Any body of water and especially a river is the concentration of the "spirit of the place", the soul of the city, its poetic nerve. And therefore, even minimal positive changes near its shores affect the perception of the quality of the urban environment. Human contact with the river in a city can take a variety of forms and vary in the degree of urbanization from a solid embankment packed in granite to pastoral banks in park areas. It is necessary to look for individual solutions that exactly correspond to a specific place and tasks.
What is the specificity of working with embankments, its peculiarities or difficulties?
– Arranging the embankment is a task for a number of specialists. In addition to the participation of landscape designers in such projects, who are responsible for the formation of the most balanced landscape, harmoniously combining natural elements and artificial landscaping, to create a comfortable and multifunctional embankment requires the involvement of specialists from related fields - architects, lighting designers, engineers, whose coordinated work depends on how much the embankment will turn out to be popular and functionally rich.
Particular attention should be paid to the transport component in projects of city embankments. The embankment is the intersection of many streams - pedestrian, automobile, and the main task of the designer is to separate and structure them. Of all the "participants" in the city, it is the person who should be brought closest to the water. At the same time, it is important to remember about the unhindered transit of pedestrians, and about the comfort of people resting near the water.
In world practice, there are various ways of arranging multi-threaded spaces. For example, you can follow the path of horizontal zoning, distributing flows in accordance with the priority: vacationers - as close to the water as possible, and cars - farthest. Or solve the problem with vertical zoning, which allows you to separate functions at different levels. For example, in Madrid, during the reconstruction of the embankment, the public transport system was completely revised, the flow of cars was reduced and removed to a lower level.
And in Shanghai, during the reconstruction of the Yangtze River embankments, a huge complex was built, inside which cafes and shops were located, and a walking area was arranged on the roof.
In Europe, 2-tier embankments have long been used: the upper tier is intended for transport, and the lower tier, lowered to the water, is recreational, for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as for placing summer cafes, galleries and similar infrastructure. A variety of temporary or permanent structures such as pontoons or bridges can serve as another resource for activating public life on the embankments.
We now need to study the best examples of embankment development, but not copy them. European cities have been moving towards current solutions for several decades, consistently solving transport and infrastructure problems, and only at the final stage developing landscape projects.
Why do cities go for implementation? so ambitious x and expensive x project ov ?
– First, the river is one of the symbols of the city. If the municipal authorities are interested in the city attracting people, so that its image is interesting, then it is important to pay attention to what frames the river in the city, because this will directly affect the image. The city must admit the river, interact with it, this is the only way to create not only a really comfortable modern environment, but also a qualitatively different visual appearance of the city. Buildings located near the water must be open to the river, interact with it. The species and visual capabilities of the water space allow to accentuate the architectural solution and give the building the status of a "landmark". A perfect example is Copenhagen's new opera house or the Sydney Opera House.
And secondly, water is resourceful. The territory of the embankments, coastal spaces, as if created in order to accommodate functions that in the future will return investments to the city day after day. These can be outdoor cafes and eateries, beaches and water pools, sports fields or rental services. In addition to this service infrastructure, recreation areas, cultural spaces, business districts and residential areas can be successfully located along the coast. The embankment easily becomes a favorite place for young people, and then it becomes a space for installations and informal activities. When Vienna realized that it was useless to fight the graffiti artists, they were allocated sections of the lower embankment of the Danube Canal, and their work there became a new attraction in Vienna.
Can you give an example of non-standard work with a river in Russian practice ?
– When in 2009 in St. Petersburg there was a competition for a residential area on the Malaya Neva, Studio 44 in its design proposal placed the houses perpendicular to the water. This project did not win, because it contradicted the traditional solution of the St. Petersburg embankments, but it was thanks to this plan that the river began to interact with the city, and green piers and backwaters could replace deaf courtyards.
However, you consider the role of the "water facade" of the city to be overestimated. Why then historically it has received a lot of attention ?
– There are a thousand times fewer people who look at the city from the river than those who look from the land. But the main question is neither in those nor in others, but in those who live near the water. How do they feel? Yes, in Soviet times there were convinced experts who spoke about the beauty of the city's panorama with the silhouettes of towers and spiers, which will open in front of ships entering the port. But who really cares about it? Today we proceed from the ultimate happiness of life, not from the postcard beauty of the panorama.
– Reconstruction of the Crimean embankment in Moscow became one them of the most "high-profile" projects of the last his year and. How do you like this project and its implementation? I ?
– Unfortunately, I was on the Crimean embankment for only 20 minutes, but everything I saw there seemed to me to be successful. I have not noticed any big cons. Yes, the wave of the gallery turned out to be a little monotonous, but the work of dendrologists, the quality of the created atmosphere is beyond praise. And, most importantly, there is not a trace of monumentalism! It's a cool, well-structured environment built with simple tools. To take the first radical step, a portion of the risk is important. In conversations, I often heard indignation that it was built in violation of norms, without approvals, and in general on networks. Yes, this is a problem, but sometimes in order to create something worthy in Russia, it is necessary to violate something, because our norms are written in such a way that nothing new simply will not pass. And it turns out that the Crimean embankment, being a product of violation of the regulatory framework, at the same time inspires a lot of hope, and there is no other place like this in Moscow today. I got great pleasure from walking along it and I am ready to give this project ten points out of ten.
– At the very beginning of the reconstruction of the Crimean embankment, there was a lot of criticism about the termination of the road traffic, almost forgot about it now. Is it possible to make all the embankments pedestrianized? - at least in the historical center ?
– Will not work. This is a fantasy, the realization of which will not end well. There are two options. The first is to narrow the carriageway at least twice and create a coastal strip with space for pedestrians and cyclists, and only then for a car. The second is the deepening of the roadway and the overlap of a part of the embankment with a green platform, through which people from the surrounding environment can freely get to the water. There are many technical schemes for this solution, some of them were used in the competitive projects of the park in Zaryadye.
What would you say to the teams that reached the final of the competition for the development of territories along the Moskva River?
– I believe that the wisdom of the teams will be enough to correctly divide the flows, to work not only with the territory directly adjacent to the water. I have especially high hopes for the Dutch, Spanish and Chinese. Of course, I would like our teams, Meganom and Ostozhenka, to perform at the highest level, but we cannot ignore the fact that a number of foreign teams already have extensive experience working with embankments and know exactly how to solve these problems.
The modern city needs new places, new meanings. Each generation needs places of worship in the city, and it is the embankments that can become them: through alternative art, through the creation of environmental objects that are non-aggressive due to their temporality, they create a space that attracts attention. Embankments play a large role in creating the identity codes of the city. Water is a place where you want to celebrate a holiday, where you want to bring your joy. And the main task of the architects and the teams participating in the competition is to propose a scenario of this space in which every citizen of the city wants to play a major role.
