Recently, the results of the competition for the improvement of Borovitskaya Square, or "Nixon's site", aimed at decorating a monument to Prince Vladimir, which is planned to be installed between the Pashkov House and the Kremlin in November, were summed up. The competition initiated by the chief architect of Moscow Sergei Kuznetsov was attended by young, but already well-known in Moscow architectural bureaus, color, one might say, of a new generation, their projects can be seen here. When discussing the competition on the network, the question arose whether the task was set for the designers in a complex enough way and soon a recollection of the projects of the summer school "AFF - The Foundation of the Architectural Future" of 2014, dedicated to the improvement of the central squares of Moscow, including Borovitskaya, came to light. The theme was titled “The Golden Ring of Moscow Squares”. We found this analogy interesting, and we decided to return to that project and consider it now.
So, the project of the students of the school "AF" in 2014, Dmitry Dudakov, Anastasia Ilyicheva, Olga Gorkova under the supervision of the architect Yuri Sheredega was called "Book yard".
The authors suggested digging instead of a hill on Borovitsky Square - an in-depth area, surrounding it with an amphitheater, covered from the weather with an arched visor. The visor is spiral and serves as a ramp for those entering from Mokhovaya Street. On the side of the Borovitskaya metro station, the project proposes an underground pedestrian crossing, which allows access directly from the metro to the lower level of Knizhny Dvor. Another new underground passage, proposed by the authors, was supposed to lead directly to the square in front of Lebyazhy lane, which continued with a green passage to the embankment and Bolshoy Kamenny bridge - the right, western part of the bridge was also proposed to be greened. On Manezhnaya Street, AFF students have also planned a green boulevard, with underground parking instead of above ground - the smartest solution, although underground parking is not honored now (they are expensive to dig). Thus, the green zone “sprouted” from Borovitsky square into the city space.
Commentary from the organizer of the AFF school Vladislav Kunin:
“In Moscow there are two architectural ensembles-silhouette of the city center, known all over the world: a view of the golden-domed Kremlin from the Moskva River from Bolshoy Kamenny and Moskvoretsky bridges and a view of Pashkov's House from Borovitskaya Square. These are the two main business cards of our city. It is possible to break these ensembles only through a broad public discussion and through a scrupulous architectural search. The guys just approached very delicately to the space of the "Nixon Lawn" Borovitskaya Square. We organized the missing pedestrian connections, which are so necessary for this place, supplemented the place with an important function for the city as a “full-fledged information and tourist center”, which in principle does not exist in the center of Moscow, combining it with a tourist book-crossing zone. And the main thing is that the guys were able to feel the essence of the place and did not destroy the spatial ensemble of the square!"
In the northern part, where the Kremlin Museums Depository was once designed, now relocated to Small Trading Rows on Red Square, the project housed an "art space", and on the steps of the amphitheater one could read and exchange books. Above, above the beginning of Mokhovaya Street, there was a console with a summer terrace of a cafe.
After analyzing the environment, the authors included in their project a small navigator for this part of the city, with the designation of museums, architectural and bronze monuments, cafes and other joys of the center. They also outlined a program for the use of the area, drawing a schedule of concerts, meetings, lectures - in a word, we thought out the functions from regular and permanent to one-time and seasonal.
