Park "Zaryadye" opened in September, survived the autumn crash test, then winter, and summer, already almost past, is the first for him. One of the interesting subjects in the park is the embankment of the Moskva River, where a pier is equipped and a cafe works: when you go out to it through the passage, you find yourself very close to the water, almost level, in addition, this place, judging by the behavior of park visitors, is a chamber alternative to the floating bridge as a platform for a selfie. There you seem to be flying over the Kremlin, but here you almost float on water. They crowd on the bridge, come here one at a time, but they definitely come out, even in winter.
An underground passage inherited from the Soviet era and re-equipped, as well as two wide staircases from the sidewalks of the embankment, lead here. A café opened here in July, although people seem to prefer to sit on a bench facing the water and a "sunken" step almost to its level - with sandwiches. The water is fenced off by a glass curb, and like in Venice everywhere, and in Rome or Lyon on the lower embankments - in Moscow, it seems, will not be soon. Well, let's put up with security considerations.
Meanwhile, this lower embankment is the first one to be realized in Moscow after long conversations: the ideas of walks and "communication" with water have been expressed and drawn in different projects many times, but there are still very few implementations. Perhaps after the "Olive Beach" by Wowhaus in Gorky Park, this case is the second, and given that a pier has been built here, it is more solid. The third example was
embankment of RC River Park, which opened in May.
The embankment is a part of the idea from the competitive project of Vladimir Plotkin and TPO "Reserve", included in the DS + R park, transformed by circumstances, but still preserved. We talked about the history of its appearance with Vladimir Plotkin.
Archi.ru:
Was the embankment an important part of your project that won 2nd place in 2014?
Vladimir Plotkin:
The task of connecting the park with the river and water figured in the terms of reference of the competition. We proposed to do this by replacing the narrow underground passage under the carriageway of the embankment with a wide passage - in fact, lowering the park to the water level, allowing it to spatially reach the river. So that greenery flashes from the river through the passageway, which we expanded in the project every 10-15, in different versions up to 30-50 meters, and so that the park smoothly descends to the level of the river, splashes out to the water. It seems to me that we got the second place precisely for this idea, we were offered to adapt it to the winning project, and as a result, we were engaged in a lot of interaction with American colleagues, adapting our idea from the embankment.
Why was it not possible to make a wide passage?
During the design process, in two key places, very expensive communications were discovered that go to this side of the river: one part prevented us from making the ramps we had planned from the sidewalks of the upper embankment, they had to be replaced with stairs on both sides. And the second block of communications was found closer to the transition and did not allow it to be significantly expanded.
I see that the project, although small, was developing with difficulty
Not that word! Many times I had to redo everything, now according to the requirements, then according to the circumstances. The project of the roadway was changed several times, there were ideas to make two lanes in the direction of Kotelniki, not three, move them closer to the park, narrow them … As a result, they only raised a little, which made it possible to raise the ceiling in the cafe quite a bit, by 30 centimeters facing the lower embankment - during the design process, it was possible to build these cafes into the slope.
Will the ships moor?
We have equipped a full-fledged berth, you can moor. But in this place the channel of the Moskva River is the narrowest, so it is not yet known whether river trams will regularly stop here, or only from time to time some other ships.
Was the idea for the archaeological museum yours too?
Not certainly in that way. In the competition project, we assumed that at the beginning of the transition, the remains of the Kitaygorodskaya wall would be found - this is not difficult, after all, it was only dismantled, and not dug, it did not require any special intuition. In our project, it was only planned to expose the remains of the wall: an opening from above, from which one could look, an inspection at the level of the passage … Like at the Kitay-Gorod metro station, only more expanded, of course. This idea was developed and turned into an existing museum.
