The large, album format book "Moscow Metro: Underground Architectural Monument" includes materials from the Museum of Architecture (project graphics, historical photographs, models), as well as articles by historians and art historians. Here you can find not only an overview of the iconic projects of leading Soviet architects, but also research devoted to the problems of restoration, memories of architects, stories about the modern construction of the metro.
The book also contains a special photograph of Alexei Naroditsky - the stations and pavilions that have become the sights of the capital. One of the tasks of the publication is to contribute to the inclusion of the ensemble of the main structures of the Moscow metro in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. You can buy the book on the website of the Kuchkovo Pole publishing house, where it costs 4400 rubles.
Below is the text of one of the articles in the collection. ***
Andrey Taranov
Double Deck Station Projects
architect Ivan Taranov
We have become so accustomed in our life to words that characterize our relationship to the Moscow metro - "underground palaces", the world's best metro, etc. - that in fact we are not even trying to give an objective assessment of this most important mode of transport in our capital.
"Underground palace", a section, another "palace", a section, a destination station, and if this is not an exit to the city, then a painful, long, stuffy passage along the stairs, corridors, again stairs … You quickly forget about "palace" when in the flea market, sometimes trampling on the spot, in the stuffy atmosphere, with your hands numb from your bags, you slowly move along the passages leading to the lobby and to the street or, oh joy!, to the "underground palace" … And all again in a circle. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but getting on the metro at rush hour - and rush hour in Moscow is long - a person experiences sensations close to the ones I just described.
I want to talk about the untapped opportunities to avoid the current situation with transfers between metro stations, about attempts to solve this problem in a timely manner, and recall the architect who has been dealing with the issue of transfer hubs all his life, starting from the late 1930s of the last century. I want to tell you about my father, the architect Ivan Georgievich Taranov.
He was born into the family of a military engineer, and although the whole family lived in Kharkov, his grandfather, by occupation, built various fortifications and forts in Kovno, Borisov, Vilno, etc. Father was born in Zegrze, near Warsaw, in 1906. In 1923 he entered, and in 1928 graduated from the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute with honors and was awarded a six-month business trip to America. But due to a number of circumstances, he did not go anywhere, but began to work with his father on the construction of Donbass. He built workers' settlements: Gorlovka, Yuzovka and others. He designed a theater in Kharkov, built a cinema for 800 seats (together with Ya. G. Likhtenberg) in Zaporozhye. During the war, the cinema was bombed. At the end of 1931, in a group of young Kharkov architects, he was invited on the initiative of the head of the then Metrostroy P. P. Rotert to build a metro to Moscow. The whole country was building the metro, but the Metroproject Institute (Metrogiprotrans) was created for its design, where my father was hired on December 30, 1931. He worked there all his life.
The first station, built by Ivan Taranov in 1935 together with his wife, architect Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Bykova, was the Sokolniki metro station. Mom, being the daughter of a Serpukhov doctor, dreamed of a medical career. As a result of some confusion, the order for education came to VKHUTEMAS, and my mother, grieving, resigned herself to fate, and became an architect. Having married her father, she worked with him all her life, becoming his support and constant co-author at work, in almost all buildings.
The first station of the first stage of the Moscow metro! Father was then 29 years old, and mother - 28. Agree, a rare success for young architects, especially since at that time the right to build an object was presented as a result of a competition, regardless of age and merit. In the same 1935, my father entered the graduate school of the Academy of Architecture, without interrupting his work at the Metroproject. As deputy head of the architectural department (S. M. Kravets was on a long-term business trip), the Pope makes a large number of architectural proposals to help fellow colleagues at most of the projected stations, including the "Library named after Lenin "," Okhotny Ryad "," Airport ", etc. Due to lack of time, he was not the author of these projects, and only designed the passage" Okhotny Ryad "-" Revolution Square ", his first interchange hub, which had a floor slope along the way movement. Unfortunately, many years later, during the reconstruction of the entire transfer hub, the direction of movement of people was changed to the oncoming one, and now passengers have to walk uphill.
In the late 1930s, the design of the Third Stage began. Parents designed the Novokuznetskaya metro station, their consultant was I. V. Zholtovsky, who considered the station very elegant and harmonious. He highly appreciated the fact that the ceiling, borrowed from the ancient tomb of Valeriev, easily hovered over the station, leaning on supporting pylons, which were interpreted as ascetic marble benches, framed on the sides by graceful volutes. Floor lamps in the middle of the main nave, which freed the ceiling from chandeliers, made the station especially light. Unfortunately, at the end of the war, when the object was handed over, the ceiling and walls were weighed down with unnecessary decor, symbolizing the victory in the war.
Even before the start of the war, in the late 1930s, my father was developing an unaddressed station with a transfer hub, and on March 5, 1940, he proposed the project for discussion. There were no such proposals, uniting the station with an interchange hub, neither in foreign, let alone in domestic practice. The project was unexpected and promised many advantages for this type of transplant. Four track tunnels, two from two lines, united by one common hall, could be used in any direction, depending on the requirements of human traffic when transferring. The communication of the upper and lower tiers was carried out by two groups of short escalators (height 4 m). With the correct determination of the direction of movement of trains, human streams simply did not have the opportunity to interfere with each other. The only reproach was the large diameter of the elliptical parts of the common hall, which was not used at that time, but engineer A. I. Semenov performed calculations for the production of tubing for tunnels of this diameter. In addition, such a station cost one and a half times less than the construction of two conventional stations with a transfer. Among other things, possible architectural solutions of this size provided a lot of advantages for creating the general appearance of the station, its image, not to mention the architectural details. The sophistication of the proposed project was obvious, the compactness spoke for itself. A year has passed in various debates and extensive conclusions. And then the war began.
After the war, my father continued to work on the two-story station. The country was exhausted, but young readers should be reminded that the year 1947 was approaching, in December of which the "leader of the peoples" turned 70 years old. All "progressive" humanity was preparing to celebrate this glorious anniversary with gifts. Their numbers and sizes can be judged by the fact that the Museum of the Revolution was given to the exhibition of gifts. The Metrostroi leadership did not stand aside. At that time, the Kievskaya metro station complex was being designed. Someone had the idea to propose as a gift to the leader the project of a two-tiered station "Kievskaya" with a transfer hub. Such a gift from a team of thousands of metro builders was large-scale and appropriate.
A grandiose model with a folding track wall was ordered, the lamps in the model were burning not only in the chandeliers, but also in the trailers … The case was exceptional, an unprecedented undertaking, and the sight was mesmerizing. I remember well this model both during its manufacture, and when it was ready, and when it was gathering dust for ten years in the corridors of Metrostroy, and everyone passing by tried to break off a piece of it as a souvenir. The fact is that when everything was ready, someone's very "smart" head said: "Do you know that you will be with all of you if you do not have time to hand over this object by the abstract" H "day?" People knew. A big point was put on the idea of a gift to the leader. But the project was completed and somewhere in the archives it is gathering dust to this day.
There were plenty of situations similar to the Kievskaya metro station in subsequent times. Here is an approximate list of similar interchange facilities in 1940:
1. Nogin Square;
2. Taganskaya;
3. Pushkin Square;
4. Kaluga outpost;
5. Pirogovskaya;
6. Krasnopresnenskaya;
7. Savelovsky railway station;
8. Rzhevsky railway station;
9. Dangauerovskaya;
10. Ball bearing;
11. Serpukhov outpost.
And there were many such lists, their content was constantly changing. For almost every case, my father made a version of a two-tier station. The economic benefit was always present, the architectural effect was, but was ignored, and timidity in creating something new always won. Various options were performed with tubing of various diameters, with and without steel columns, with a concrete base ("Nogin Square"), deep and shallow …
During his life, my father built a lot, including more than ten metro stations. Where a transfer was needed, another version of a two-tier station was envisaged. I could not count all the projects of two-story stations proposed by my father for construction in Kharkov, Moscow and other cities. I only had my home archive at my disposal. Surely there is not everything in him, although he always worked at home in the evenings. ***
Andrei Ivanovich Taranov (b. 1941) - architect, son of architects I. G. Taranov and N. A. Bykova. Among the buildings of A. I. Taranov in Moscow: Institute for Problems in Mechanics. A. Yu. Ishlinsky RAS (1974-1982), the Engineering building of the Metropolitan (1979), the medical building of the Filatov hospital (1980), Presnenskie baths (1982), the Moscow State Technological University "STANKIN" (1989-1990), the Kurkino microdistrict (2002 –2003).
