The project for the tourist development of the brand of the Moscow region city of Drezny is the own initiative of the architects Megabudka, a conceptual study without an order, in order to develop recipes for the development of the entire Moscow region and its local patriotism. As an example, the authors chose a deliberately little-known monotown that grew up at the end of the 19th century at the Zimin weaving factory on the eastern outskirts of the Moscow region between Pavlovsky Posad and Orekhovo-Zuev. All that the city has - old factory buildings (1907-1909, architect Vladimir Adamovich), 11 thousand people and an exotic name derived from the Baltic name of the Klyazma tributary of the Drezna river.
So, deliberately choosing a city in which there is only one architectural monument - the wooden mansion of the factory manager Zimin - the authors of the project began by researching possible atypical sights: “… at first glance it is not interesting. But we will prove the opposite! If the method works for such an inconspicuous city, then it will work even more for a city with history and noticeable sights,”they comment on their decision.
They made the periodization of the historical buildings, counted factory buildings, constructivism (rather primitive examples of houses for workers), houses of the 1970s, village houses of the "private sector", and somewhere 2/3 were recognized as interesting, a third - not. There were seven trumpets, and eight monuments. Then comes into force the literary study of local lore, the one that is always so interesting to read: “two kindergartens, Karepinsky and Solovievsky, by the names of the directors. Children teased each other over the fence "Korepa-turnip" and "Nightingale, nightingale, drink a jar of snot." Indeed, where in the capitals you will find such stories, although the frame of the teaser is familiar. “Local values” were chosen from all the lists, they turned out to be a statue of a football player at the stadium, former chicken coops, a painted front door and a hole in the school fence. We made several tourist routes: 45 minutes and 3 hours. We identified problem areas and a low (well, almost none at all) level of tourist services.
There are approximately three steps in the implementation of the program. The first is the development of a program in cooperation with local communities and the study of local values: "launching mechanisms for the reclamation of local identity." In other words, the formation of connections - a community that will engage in both the exploration of the city and the subsequent "reclamation". The second step is the creation of a tourist information center "which, in addition to free services, offered paid services and also brought profit to its owner." Several options are offered here: from the information desk to the center on the ground floor and a separate pavilion, and there are a lot of options for filling it: a cafe, a coworking space, a cinema, a reading room, a lecture hall, a capsule hotel.
The third step is systemic information - a modern mobile application with hotel reservation, route planning and planning is shown.
Note that this is not an architectural project at all, in addition to the information pavilion, there is no talk of construction in it, although it is obvious that under comfortable conditions within the framework of such a program, at least the arrangement of a cafe should begin. Architects emphasize their versatility, working at the intersection of professions, in this case - a multitude: travel agencies, cultural committee, ethnographers, designers, and the profession of festival curators is close here … cities - on the other. It joins a number of projects of extreme Russian tourism, which are still accumulating a critical mass of proposals - not only a similar, but similar project was shown a couple of years ago by Totan Kuzembaev at Arch Moscow: there was a chain of mini-hotels in all the forests. There is a utopianism in these projects (I must say that there is more, there is less), there is also contact with reality - one must think that such projects can be proposed to both local administrations and more administrations, since they, in any case, do not seem to do so now. require too much investment. And they are developing a view of Russian tourism, which is still developing mainly in the log-bath-barbecue method, plus the monastic one. Whether it will be grafted, time will tell.