The project of the Upa River embankment near the Tula Kremlin was announced in July 2017, and now, a year later, it has been implemented. The embankment was solemnly opened on the city day, September 8, in the presence of the Governor Alexei Dyumin, who was actively promoting the project. We talked about the project in some detail, now we are considering what happened.
This plot has many layers, which is typical for landscaping projects in general and Wowhaus developments in particular. In addition, the co-director of the bureau, Oleg Shapiro, emphasizes: the architects worked with the project at all levels, from macro-tasks, such as a master plan and a transport scheme, to micro-solutions of individual elements. So I want to consider it layer by layer, from found fundamental solutions to pleasant details.
The territory under consideration is on two sides of the strictly rectangular and low Tula Kremlin: northwestern and northeastern. Until recently, they were perfect backyards, since the territory between the river and the Kremlin for most of the 20th century belonged to the Tula Arms Factory, located here, next to it, on an island that resembles the Parisian Cite in its location, but the center of the city, which was really there. was, at the beginning of the XVI century. moved to the southern bank of the Upa, and since then it has become a tradition that a city developed within the framework of fortifications south of the river in Tula, and to the north, along Tulitsa, starting from the mouth, factories were built that created ponds on its bed for metallurgical work. The main arms factory was built by Peter I on the island, where it is still located.
- in the 19th century, the embankment was called Kazan, ponds and a boat station were built on the Upa River. The plant closed the station and drained the ponds in 1906;
- During the Second World War, a railway passed along the banks of the Upa River, supplying the power plant with coal. After the war, it was dismantled;
- decisions on the arrangement of the public garden on Kazanskaya embankment, Metallistov and Sovetskaya streets were made in 1948 and 1956, but were not implemented.
In a word, back in 2017, the Tula Kremlin could be bypassed by car from three sides, and from the fourth, a factory fence approached it. The main plots of the project of the architects Wowhaus, implemented at the initiative of the regional governor, were two things: first, the plant transferred the territory of the oxbow of the Upa River to the city, moving the fence to the island; the silted river bed was cleaned and reinforced with wooden piles. The second, Metallistov Street, which starts from the Zarechensky Bridge and leads to the corner Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, was made pedestrian, as was the Krestovozdvizhenskaya Square between the tower and the massive building of Sberbank, which previously served as a turning circle.
The square became the last "point" of the new walking route around the Kremlin: from here you can get both to the quietest historical part of the city, where there are quite a few 18th century houses that evoke a sense of blissful peace - to the busy, maybe even a little too much, middle of Sovetskaya Street. The square has become a hinge between two worlds, a busy, busy and calm semi-museum. The latter still has to undergo considerable reconstruction, and the core of the museum part of the center should be a new pedestrian street Metallistov, consisting almost entirely of 19th century mansions: at the moment, most of the facades have been restored here, a couple of restaurants have been opened, signs inform about the past and the planned future. Soon, according to plans, the houses and their yards should turn into a museum quarter, where a considerable share will be occupied by the expositions of the RVIO, which is now supported by a rather energetic museum in the Tula Kremlin.
as part of the museum quarter on Metallistov Street, branches are planned:
museum-reserve "Kulikovo field", Tula State Museum of Weapons, Museum of History and Local Lore, art museum, Museum-Estate of L. N. Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana", Museum and headquarters of the Central Cossack army
But back to the implemented part, the improvement project itself. This is a large project, the length of the entire route, forming in plan a figure similar to a unit with a long nose-street and a stick-embankment - a little more than one and a half kilometers, an area of 21 hectares (for comparison, the length of the square on the Crimean embankment in Moscow, the reference work of Wowhaus in the same genre - half as much, somewhere around 850 m).
the length of the wooden embankment along the Upa River in Tula - 670 m
length of walkways - 270 m
established 385 lighting poles
built 19 pavilions and pavilions
exported more 40,000 m3 silt from r. Upy
exported more 70,000 m3 debris and soil
more than 1000 piles larch
paved over 41,000 m2 of sidewalks from tiles
more than 30,000 m cable
The route, on the one hand, is filled with basic, "network" elements - such as cylindrical stalls-firewood stands with food, built of white beams or pavilions-cafes with a similar actual lattice structure of wooden walls, but with stepped pitched roofs - these repeating the elements support the design code and allow the walker to navigate, it quickly becomes clear that there is food. Note that all the booths for the opening day, which is also the day of the city, were rented and operated. Another repeating element is benches made of wooden slats, curved and straight, without a back and with a back, often turning their backs from those walking along the paths towards contemplation - first of all, the river. A similar technique was used by Wowhaus in
park Krasnogvardeiskie prudy, here it is also present, although less intense.
The repetitive pavilions and benches, as well as the paving, made of concrete chips, but varied, create a kind of frame on which different plots are superimposed - such a long space must be divided into thematic zones in order to avoid monotony. So, in my opinion, the most interesting of these unique plots is the bridges on the slope of the river. On slender red legs, with red and white railings, they captured the intersection of two main streams: the one that exits the Kremlin through the Water Gate opened within the framework of the project, and the one that moves along the river in both directions. The pedestrian intersection is decorated airy, unobtrusively, but brightly. Walking along the embankment, at first you do not notice that you are already quite high above the slope, and the moment of discovery - oh, we are already on the bridge - is also worth something. Children of different ages run on the left and right below on the grass, and sometimes roll sideways down the slope.
At night, the grids of the footbridges hang with white frames over many spotlights: some of them glow themselves, others form circles of light on the grass, and it seems that you are in some kind of toy elf camp under the walls of a small fortress.
Crosswalks connect this aerial promenade to the ground on one side and the river on the other. In the direction of the river, appendix-balconies leave for admiring the surroundings, they are echoed by two more capital, concrete, bridges, which, however, also lead "nowhere" - to the fence of the plant, which, however, having turned into a gray canvas behind a red lattice, looks quite friendly … It is amazing that you can approach directly to the fence, that is, areas for walking were formed not only from the city, but also from the factory side. The bridges are wide, on them benches and tubs with trees, they are rather bridges-balconies. All together, of course, evokes some associations with the floating bridge in Zaryadye, our most important bridge now "to nowhere", but it is also very different: here we see a less pretentious structure, but much more ramified and lively. It's not scary at all on the footbridges, they are friendly and not too tense in engineering, the balance between the imperceptibility of separation from the ground and the feeling of multi-tiered space only revives feelings without experiencing their scale.
Curiously, the bridges do not brighten up the entire relief, but at some point they descend - to the amphitheater, traditionally an important point of many Wowhaus projects - it seems that it was with their light hand that amphitheatres so proliferated in Russian reality. This one is quite large, located next to the main axis leading from the Water Gate, that is, from the city center, to the bridge over the water. There is a marina below (it reminds of a trading marina that existed here in the 19th century), so sitting down you can watch families sailing in boats, which is quite exciting in itself. A very practical find - in the upper part of the amphitheater there is a high wooden back: for those walking by it is a handrail, for visitors of a neighboring cafe it looks like a bar bar outside, and for those sitting on the top step of the amphitheater this structure is closed from the sun's rays from the south.
I must say that the embankment is very closely connected with the Kremlin, both spatially and symbolically. The Kremlin can be seen from everywhere, it becomes part of the plot of playgrounds, and a teenage playground on a frame of planed, but not cylindrical, with knots, logs, a knowledgeable person can recall the wooden walls, before Catherine II, passed along the lines of Soviet streets and built (by the way) by Vasily III earlier than the stone-brick Kremlin. That is, here associations can arise both with a night camp under the walls and with the old wooden walls of the city - but they are all very playful, to which the low height of the Kremlin walls has - and very good, therefore, from serious reconstructions with cabbage soup in the beard, perhaps, has been driving her teeth for a long time, but like this, without unnecessary pathos, Russian antiquity is rarely served here, but it is this method that makes it friendly and non-hostile.
The Tula Kremlin has now fully become the center of relaxed, multicultural recreation - generally speaking, due to the fact that the fortress was built by the Italians, it is very clearly arranged: a rectangle, four corners, four gates. Now that all the entrances and exits have been restored, here you can really walk in any direction, there are many options: play ping-pong, ride boats, climb rope paths (not to mention the multifunctional sports box at the far right edge, hold concerts, and in two places: in the amphitheater, originally proposed by Wowhaus, and on the stage slightly to the left and closer to the walls, proposed during the design process by the mayor's office and the townspeople (it turns out two scenes, one at the bottom, with a "water" background, the other at the top, traditional, but there is more There is a historical chronology of the embankment on the wooden wall separating the embankment from the still underreconstructed outskirts of Metallistov Street.
Another way of comprehending the neighborhood of an architectural monument, which successfully matched the favorite style of architects, is color. The Kremlin is red and white, about a third of the walls and towers are built of white stone, the rest of brick. The landscaping elements are also red and white, only both colors are bright. The "red thread" is formed by the legs of the walkways, red round tubs and bright cylindrical lanterns, and the white one is the painted wood of the stalls and the grating of the walkways. Here you can recall that the red leitmotif has already been tested by Wowhaus recently in Krasnogvareyskie ponds and claims to be a signature author's technique. We have already spoken about wood, you can also see a reminder of the old Kremlin in it, but at the same time, wood is a typical material for modern landscaping, it can remind you of old wooden walls, as has already been said. Black is added to the three colors, which is associated with metal, which is normal for a city of gunsmiths, but note that black - as if in principle not cast iron, which is found on other streets - but stylish, wooden, and shaded with white.
One of the brightest spots of the new embankment of Upa was the facades of the buildings (the existing, we will remind, the plant) on the other side. When, announcing the project, the architects talked about refurbishing the facades, it seemed that they were talking about something formally necessary. But the resulting alternation of colors is not only festive: red, light gray, - it also supports associations with constructivism, the art of the time of industrialization, leaving room for the "palace and castle" notes of eclecticism. Somehow, we are not at all worried about the fact that we cannot get to the island - the plant began to play, presented itself to the public colorfully, and the fence was not at all dull, the red lattice makes it related to the embankment, and besides, it is raised high, almost to the ridge of the slope. To plant the slope thicker with willows - but there, according to the rules of the restricted area, nothing but grass can grow.
As for the rest, the zones of the square-embankment are constantly changing the genre and structure: starting from sports on the eastern edge, to the "frivolous" sport-ping-pong, to the teenage playground-"prison", to the playground-bagel, similar to the bagel of the Bauman Park and City farm at VDNKh; and so on, with a break for the lilac garden and for geoplastics, as on the Crimean embankment (the swing and the box with chains are the city's initiative, they were not included in the project). It is noticeable that as architects accumulate experience and groups of techniques, relying on earlier developments, but also complementing their composition - here they came up with bridges and balconies.
The vegetation is planned to be planted within the next year, until the spring of 2019. The lilac garden at the Water Gate has already been planted, however, the bushes are very small, much smaller than, for example, lindens and maples in Moscow on Sadovoye - here the lilacs have to grow, which may be and well, they will take root better. Now, in addition to young lilacs and birches, there is mainly a short-cut lawn - in the future, it is planned to plant field herbs and flowers in the flower beds, which are still relatively monotonous.
more than 58,000 m2 lawns and flower beds
planted over 20,000 trees and shrubs
by the spring of 2019 it is planned to land
more 500 trees
11,000 shrubs
2 170 m2 of flower beds from perennials, onion and cereals, on the river bank
The bosquets, conceived in the western part, are still extremely low, and they will also be updated. The landscape gardening part of landscaping projects as a whole is usually the most fragile. In Moscow, it happened more than once that once planted fashionable vegetation lived for about a year, and then, with the change of contract, it either wore out or gave way to "municipal happiness" in the form of fragrant tobacco and velvet. Let's hope that this will not happen in Tula, and by next summer the embankment will be "jagged" and will acquire a completely finished look. By the way, the landscaping of Metallistov Street still looks quite complete and is a pedestrian boulevard, where linden trees with trunks covered with pebbles form a relatively narrow - 3.5 meters - promenade in the center and almost twice as wide (~ 5.5 m) spaces on the sides, from the side of houses. Special vehicles can easily pass along the edges, while the middle of the street is obviously reserved for pedestrians.
Tula, like many other regional centers around Moscow, is a city in which different layers of its development are quite obvious: for example, the "private sector" here begins almost immediately outside the boundaries of the former walls - Soviet streets, being diluted with Soviet buildings and Stalin's avenues … Fragments of the historical city are well read, and modernist inclusions, like, for example, the building of the former executive committee, now the city administration. There are noticeable spots of "Luzhkov's" postmodernism and pretentious reading of the history of the city of gunsmiths - a museum of weapons in the form of a giant helmet (built in 2011) meets a person entering from Moscow, and it is rather difficult to define one's attitude to it: on the one hand, the symbolism is understandable, on the other, not too much is it? The museum was built in 2011, in 2014 the cathedral was restored, the bell tower was rebuilt, and the patriotic museum of the Russian Military Society was opened in the Kremlin. In recent years, a new wave of renovation has touched Tula: two multifunctional clusters have appeared: Iskra in and around the building of the former diocesan school, there is a wonderful quiet place and excellent restaurants, and Oktava, on the territory of a working microphone factory, is a machine tool museum with multimedia expositions., a large, permanently functioning lecture hall, coworking, inhabited courtyard, etc. as well as Likerka loft and Typography place. The new Upa embankment definitely belongs to this circle of innovations - post-industrial, designed, in particular, to attract people to the city not only by pride in the arms trade, but also by the diversity of the environment and opportunities.
Tula television report:
* civitas ludens - literally translated as "playing city", contains a reference to the treatise of I. Heizinga Homo ludens