It was opened by President Putin, who on December 20, 2012, in a conversation with Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, proposed making a park on the site of the dismantled Rossiya Hotel, which means that he is in some way a patron of the construction site. Although it is known that the idea belonged to Vyacheslav Glazychev [upd.: According to Petram Kudryavtsev, the idea of the park belonged to the Friends of Zaryadye community, although they discussed it with Glazychev; however, according to Irina Irbitskaya, it was Glazychev who managed to convince the president not to build anything in Zaryadye and to lay out a park there]. But in the presidential patronage, the status of the event grows almost until the Olympics in Sochi. Park "Zaryadye" should become a new symbol of Russia: there is a reason to hear in the word "Zaryadye" a version of a charger, reboot and modernization; and Sobyanin called it "the center for the dissemination of modern principles of improvement." That is, it is also the standard of urbanism for all Russian cities. And urbanism is our "everything" at the moment, the point of positiveness.
On the evening of September 9, the chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, conducted a tour of the park for the press and guests, and then a lecture was held at the amphitheater near the Philharmonic with the participation of the project team: Sergei Kuznetsov, Charles Renfro, Mary Margaret Jones from Hardgreaves Associates, Petra Kudryavtseva from City makers, engineers from Mosinzhproekt, director of Zaryadye park Pavel Trekhleb, and head of the Moscow Department of Culture Alexander Kibovsky. The evening ended with a festive fireworks display.
Zaryadye Park is a landscape full of adventures in the city center. With a difficult relief - a height difference of 27 m - which, bizarrely, but organically descends to the river. The park consists of four climatic zones reflecting the nature of Russia: the middle zone with birches, steppes, tundra and swamps. Each has the corresponding plants. Thanks to the pixel paving, the boundaries between it and the soil are soft: a new trend in landscaping !. Inside the park, like hobbits' minks, museums and attractions are hidden. One of the buildings houses the Ice Cave with a cold installation by Alexei Kozyr and Alexander Ponomarev and a contrastingly warm Zapovednoye Embassy with a spiral of thermophilic plants intended for educational programs for children in biotechnology and space. In the Media Center there are films-attractions "Time Machine" and "Flight over Moscow". There is also an underground museum of the history of Zaryadye, an information center “Kupol” with an installation from QR codes that won a prize at the Venice Biennale, as well as a cafe and a restaurant built into the hill closer to the river. All of this was a huge success with the public and is intended to make the park fillable in winter. Parametric forms of pavilions are quite appropriate when they are literally part of the landscape, dug into the ground. It is also a very energy efficient solution. In addition, the "invisible" architecture made it possible to open the perspective of the Zaryadye churches, which have been restored and included in the park without borders and barriers, and were previously closed by the Rossiya hotel.
But the main attractions in Zaryadye Park are architectural rather than educational. This is the Soaring Bridge, the world's longest 70-meter concrete cantilever overhanging the river, offering fantastic new views of Moscow and the Kremlin. The bridge can carry much more weight than the number of people that can fit on it. Glass railings add adrenaline to the visitors hanging between sky and water. It was especially cool to be on the bridge at the time of the fireworks, in the epicenter of the volleys that were fired from the boats, and the stars of the fireworks fell right on your head.
"Glass Cortex" - the roof over the Philharmonic with an open amphitheater and stage - is another attraction of Zaryadye. The canopy, which follows the contours of the artificial landscape, consists of 2,618 glass-filled steel triangles, contains solar panels, ventilation and water spraying devices. An open space with a microclimate is formed under it on the roof of the Philharmonic, the heat from the Philharmonic will warm people and plants even in winter. On the hill under which the Philharmonic Hall is hidden, there is an amphitheater for 1600 people, and the Small Amphitheater adjoins the hill from the south (where the lecture was held). The Philharmonic building by Vladimir Plotkin and TPO "Reserve" are planned to open in 2018.
Underground Archaeological Museum (authors Yuri Avvakumov and Georgy Solopov [have nothing to do with the implemented version of the project Avvakumov and Solopov, recently, on September 17, 2017, Yuri Avvakumov published
on its website the essence of the conflict: "In December 2016, the Department of Culture of the city of Moscow, using a hidden hardware resource, transferred an order for the design to a design team associated with the Historical Museum." According to Avvakumov, “the project, while retaining the architectural and planning solution, was considerably roughened in details”]), dedicated to the history of Zaryadye, organized around a fragment of the Kitaygorodskaya wall of the 16th century. It is located as if inside the mountain and leads under the road to a low embankment with a cafe and a descent to the water.
Architecture between attraction and ecology
The fact that the park was built in Moscow not by anyone, but by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio - experimenters, the authors of the building - "Clouds" on Lake Neuchatel (Expo 2002), probing the boundaries of architecture as a material art, dematerializing it to the point of extinction, is amazing … Because the wildest dreams were smashed against our realities. The park, as Charles Renfro, partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, told me after the lecture, has been implemented with dignity. And it continues the high line of urban spaces created by this bureau, set by the High Line Park in New York (2011).
In 2000, architecture was dominated by the idea of an attraction building, but in the next decade, after the financial crisis of 2008, ecological ideology and urbanism prevailed. In Zaryadye Park, ecology and the city - the most vivid ideas uniting the world today - have combined with an attraction. Because Zaryadye is, of course, not just nature, but a park for entertainment and knowledge, and it is stuffed with modern technologies to maintain nature in proper condition.
The cultural component in the park, thanks to the Philharmonic, is also quite strong. Finally, the role of Zaryadye as a key link in the museum's pedestrian route around the Kremlin can hardly be overestimated. Alexander Kibovsky spoke about this at the end of the lecture. Now that the gates of the Spasskaya Tower are open, you can enter the Kremlin through the Kutafya Tower, cross it right through, go through the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil's, from there to Zaryadye Park, then to the new Tretyakov Gallery, and so on. This tourist route should include CHP-2 Renzo Piano, the museum quarter of the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin, Manege, Polytechnic Museum, Tretyakov Gallery. All this leads to the fact that Moscow is rapidly gaining the energy of a world metropolis, acquiring urban friendliness, becoming a city for people.