In the summer of 2016, the administration of Nizhny Novgorod held a competition for concepts for the reconstruction of the Nizhne-Volzhskaya embankment - more precisely, two 700-meter sections on both sides of the river station behind the Kanavinsky bridge, at the confluence of the Oka with the Volga. Technically speaking, we are talking about a section of the coast not even of the Volga, but of the Oka. This western part of the Nizhne-Volzhskaya embankment should have been dealt with for a long time, since for almost ten years it has been hiding behind a blue fence, which has become a toponym among the townspeople. Even a public initiative of the same name was formed. The construction site was once carried out behind the fence and stopped long ago. At first, the developer promised that it would be a low, fully glazed pavilion - a tourist complex, then it turned out that a three-storey shopping center, then the inspection commission found that work was being carried out on the quay wall, which began to collapse from this; then a series of years of lawsuits dragged on, and as a result, the territory was given to the city.
It is impossible to simply dismantle the fence - behind it is, albeit a failed one, but still a construction site with the remains of reinforced concrete structures. In addition, the quay wall requires restoration work, and the embankment itself needs serious reconstruction. Meanwhile, behind the blue fence - one of the most picturesque sections of the city - is a view of the Strelka, from which not everything has been cloudless lately.
So, in the summer of 2016, a competition was held. Out of 14 projects, the townspeople chose 6 through Internet voting. After that, in October of the same year, the city administration held a competition for contractors, or a tender, in which the "Architectural and Construction Workshop" Volga Region Center "won, which, according to media reports, was the only one participant in the competition. Then the winning company attracted to the design of the embankment improvement the architectural bureau, previously included in the six winners of the "popular vote" of the competition - Sergey Timofeev's PTMA. At the end of March, the project was approved by the city council.
The goal of the authors of the project, by their own admission, was to give the section of the embankment on the sides of the river station a significance adequate to its role as a “water gate” of the city. One of the means is the unity of the geometric pattern, laconic lines, as well as the use of large elements, such as 4 semicircular observation platforms, rhythmically located along the sides of the station. Three of them close the perspectives of city streets, one surrounds the Weeping Willow restaurant. It is planned to place cafes in the cylindrical base of the sites, overlooking the middle level of the embankment, and on the sites themselves, to install giant, 13 m high, lanterns,
combined with ventilation shafts. The ring-shaped tops of the lanterns, as well as the cylinders of the observation platforms, resonate with the semi-rotundas at the ends of the river station building, trying to form an integral ensemble with it. However, the appearance of the lanterns somewhat frightened the Nizhny Novgorod City Council and the authors were advised to solve them in the spirit of classics or modernity, which in itself is alarming.
On the sides of the River Station, the slopes are designed in the form of large staircases with flower beds; large flights of stairs are arranged between the observation decks. At the ends of the territory under consideration, the architects placed: from the side of the Kanavinsky Bridge, an amphitheater for outdoor performances, and from the opposite, east, they proposed to adapt the contour of the flood pier for a skate park.
The embankment is also clearly zoned vertically: in the upper, "small town" tier there is a bicycle path accompanied by a narrow (3.5 m) pedestrian sidewalk - all viewing platforms are strung on this axis. Here, on both sides of the river station, the existing parking lots have been preserved, which is good news. The middle and lower tier are given over to spacious promenades, and nothing is planned to be built in the lower, 15 m wide river level for security reasons - only to strengthen the wall.
The City Council approved the project, however, the governor Shantsev doubted the need for a skate park, which, one must think, means that there will be no skate course. The amphitheater also raised doubts among experts, as the audience will be looking at the contre-jour stage at sunset hours.
The project, for which a relatively large amount of 400 million rubles has been allocated, is planned to be implemented during 2017.
More about the project.
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