The presentation took place yesterday in the white hall of the mayor's office on Tverskaya, five creative teams were awarded for five constructed buildings. Each team will receive 1 million rubles. Everything is timed to coincide with the day of the architect, July 1. Previously, the mayor also awarded architects, but as part of a prize for literature and art; in 2017, the architectural and urban planning award was "separated", or rather, established, according to a press release, and now it has been solemnly awarded.
It is not clear how to describe the event - formal, albeit short. The mayor spoke of the importance of the aesthetics of buildings “… so that the environment is modern, comfortable and lasts for many years,” he mentioned the renovation with the hope that its objects would decorate the city, but he spoke more about kindergartens and social and cultural facilities that should decorate the area, and “not be gray spot ". He emphasized that the prize is being awarded for the first time: “the first prize in the field of architecture and urban planning, created especially for you [architects and urban planners, - approx. ed] ". The architects received flowers, took pictures and thanked them. In principle, it would be interesting to track who thanked whom and what they talked about. Narine Tyutcheva began with gratitude to the team of authors, “without which the project would not exist,” Alexander Tsimailo finished with renovation, a large project that would be good to do well. In addition to the awardees, there were: Sergei Kuznetsov, who was sitting next to Mikhail Posokhin, Kudryavtsevs Alexander Petrovich and Peter Alexandrovich, Yuri Grigoryan. After the award ceremony, glasses of champagne were brought out and the architects crowded around the mayor for an informal conversation. Then a girl of the color of rose ashes came up to me and warned me not to write about the content of the conversation. We will not. The conversation was innocent and benevolent; everyone was smiling.
The composition of the awarded projects completely coincides with the results of the fifth prize of the Moscow Archives Council, all of them are listed
here *, they were named in December 2017, choosing from five out of twenty-seven nominee projects. I dare to suggest that at the same time the Moscow Mayor's Prize was established, in other words, it not only spun off from the Literature and Art Prize, but, in a sense, was the result of the Moscow Arch Council Prize reaching a new level, or the merger of the two prizes, since the laureates were determined exactly there.
One way or another, the mayor's award is a new step and a great success of the chief architect of the city, Sergei Kuznetsov. Architects (and city planners) were awarded at the level of the mayor's office, summoned to the mayor personally, who spent half an hour with them at the award ceremony and another half hour in an informal conversation. For a profession that has long been complaining that “they don’t hear it” - at any level, neither at the legislative, nor at the governmental level, nor at the level of customers, a profession that is often put as if after the builders - although the latter, according to logic of things, fulfill the will of architects - this is a great breakthrough and success, for which Sergey Kuznetsov should be congratulated. I suppose that this success was preceded by another - when Sergei Sobyanin personally visited the Arch Moscow exhibition in the Central House of Artists, although not a single post-Soviet mayor had previously visited. Moscow architects were noticed, awarded, drank champagne with them, and talked about life. Not a bad start to regaining profession status, if that's a start.
Leaving the mayor's office, I decided to see what kind of tapestries there were in the corridor on the first floor: it turned out on each, and there were eight of them - Matvey Fedorovich Kazakov.
* I do not know why, but the project of the shopping center in Otradnoye Blank architects, awarded with the prize of the Arch Council, was not among the awarded.
