Sergey Kuznetsov, chief architect of Moscow
Today, looking at Tverskaya and Leningradsky Prospekt, the buildings of which are considered the quintessence of the totalitarian architecture of the Stalinist era, it is difficult to believe that at one time it was a real experimental testing ground. Here, new architectural approaches, advanced industrial housing construction technologies and hitherto unprecedented engineering solutions were tested - from the rails along which entire buildings moved inside together with residents, and ending at that time the world's largest underground collector.
The road to a brighter future …
The restructuring of Moscow in the 1930s-1940s is famous for the fact that, although not all plans were fully implemented, the projects that were carried out formed a textbook image of the capital of the Stalinist era: architecturally monumental avenues and metro stations, granite embankments, high-rise building. The architects were set the goal of emotionally influencing the viewer and in all ways to demonstrate the greatness of the ideas of socialism.
To match the task in the 1930s, the system of metropolitan design organizations was also transformed - specifically for the city planning, the Architectural and Planning Administration under the Mossovet (APU) was created. Appointed in 1932, the chief architect of the APU, Vladimir Semyonov, the first chief architect of Moscow, was convinced that the principle of "demonstrating greatness" required an increased role for architects in planning projects. Including - through the creation of "individual workshops" in which major architects would act as the main architects of the most significant streets, parks and squares.
As a result, when in 1933 the APU was disbanded into ten architectural and planning workshops, each of which was responsible for a particular main street, they were led, as Semenov wanted, by the masters of Soviet architecture. At the same time, two main directions were considered: Gorky Street - Proletarsky District and the Palace of Soviets - Sokolniki perpendicular to it. The design of the first of them was assigned to Sergei Chernyshev (workshop No. 1), who later replaced Vladimir Semyonov as the chief architect of the capital. Under his leadership, the reconstruction of Gorky Street - the current Tverskaya Street - and its continuation in the form of Leningradsky Prospect demonstrated not only the greatness of the new ideology, but its aspiration for the future, when a lofty idea turns out to be the engine of scientific and technological progress and a stimulus for the development of all related industrial sectors.
… lies through the ensemble
The first and main merit of Chernyshev as the head of the project for the reconstruction of Gorky Street was that he considered it much more broadly - as a project for the comprehensive development of an entire urban area. In his autobiography, Chernyshev wrote: "After the Great October Revolution, when the problem of designing a separate house was naturally associated with the problem of planning the entire block, highway, district, the whole city - my attention is attracted by issues of urban planning, the architectural ensemble of the city, urban planning problems." He called Gorky Street "the highway of proletarian culture" and, in order to create a single style ensemble on it, the construction of the highway after expansion by 3.5 times - from 16.5 to 59.5 meters - was entrusted to one architect, Arkady Mordvinov. “Without falling into exaggeration, we have the right to say that the last century has not known examples of urban ensemble construction of such a scale,” they wrote in the press.comparing the new Gorky Street with Rossi Street in Leningrad (currently - Architect Rossi Street in St. Petersburg). “The street ensemble is one of the first experiments in the development of an entire block on the basis of a single concept.”
At the same time, Gorky Street itself was considered by Chernyshev's project as a “purely urban type” highway. Its design should be built largely on the study of purely architectural moments. The use of sculpture, painting, landscaping will enhance the expressiveness of the highway. Although the architectural ensembles in different parts of the highway will be heterogeneous, the volumetric-spatial solution of the highway as a whole should provide a single ensemble-complex,”wrote the architect. While Leningradsky Prospekt on the section from the railway station to the Okruzhnaya railway line "allows for a freer combination of volumetric forms and a richer inclusion of green areas and spacious sports grounds in the architectural ensemble."
Quarterly settlement
However, the "ensemble" meant not just the creation of a street front that was uniform in style, but also the inclusion in it and, consequently, the total reconstruction of all adjacent quarters - in accordance with the requirements of the time. This is how contemporaries describe their previous state: “The front part of the three quarters adjacent to Gorky Street was split into more than 14 private estates. The old buildings of these estates were characterized by many dead-end courtyards (22 courtyards). The broken borders of the properties were cut by retaining walls, and the residential buildings themselves were covered by public services to varying degrees. Here we met houses with Dutch or central heating, houses with gas supply and houses without running water. One house did not even have restrooms, and the courtyards were so crowded that in the event of a fire it would be difficult to localize it …”. And this case was by no means unique: the vast majority of old Moscow two- and three-story blocks were characterized in a similar way.
After the completion of the reconstruction of Gorky Street in 1937-1938, the situation changed dramatically: the preserved valuable buildings were leveled along the new boundaries of the street, the courtyards were reorganized, they got rid of the courtyards-"wells", made intra-quarter and fire passages, shifted communications. All houses now have electricity, gas, sewerage. At the same time, detailed compositional solutions were developed for the areas adjacent to the Leningradskoye highway: Khodynskoye field, the village of Vsekhsvyatskoye, Pokrovsky-Streshnev and Oktyabrsky field. According to the plan of Chernyshev, in these places was created "a system of vast urban areas, free from factories and plants, with wide green streets and large green areas."
And although not all of these ideas were implemented, in subsequent years the developed comprehensive approach to the development of city highways - with the capture of adjacent quarters and districts - actually saved the Moscow center from inevitable degradation.
Companion-itinerant
An important role in the implementation of the plans for the reconstruction of Gorky Street was played by the engineer and specialist in restoration work Emmanuel Handel, who over the years of work on the project became a close friend and comrade-in-arms to Sergei Chernyshev. Since the architect strove to approach the historical development of the site entrusted to him as carefully as possible, in order to preserve the valuable monuments, but at the same time build them according to the new street plan, they had to be … carefully moved. This is exactly what Handel did, who in 1936 headed the whole "Trust for the dismantling and relocation of buildings." The building of the Mossovet (it is currently occupied by the Moscow mayor's office), the Savvinskoye courtyard weighing 23 thousand tons and the first Moscow cinema - now the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre - moved a few meters into the street: it was a complex of three buildings weighing more than 25 thousand tons, and, according to According to Handel, no one in the world did anything like that. Moreover, the move took place directly with the residents inside - so much so that in the middle of the night they might not notice anything. In total, Trest has moved about 70 houses in Moscow.
Technology forge
So, the huge building front of Gorky Street was designed on the basis of a single concept. But this does not exhaust the advantages of concentrating all work in one hand. According to eyewitnesses, it shortened the design time and accelerated the pace of construction. Arkady Mordvinov, the architect of the new houses, “relied on advanced industrial construction techniques. He introduced new prefabricated finishing materials into the everyday life of our housing architecture and contributed to the fastest mastering of their assembly and installation on facades. This became possible only because the architect had already taken into account many of the essential requirements of the industrial construction of buildings in the project”. On the facades, in the best traditions of the Russian classical school, for the first time, an artificial cement facing slab was used on a large scale. In addition, all rods, cornices, pilasters and so on were manufactured by the factory.
Mordvinov's know-how was also the use of such a new material for the Soviet construction industry as terracotta, from which inserts-platbands on the facades were made. “The Moscow region with its huge reserves of colored clays has exceptional opportunities for widespread use of this material. The production technique is easily mastered by the potters of Gzhel,”wrote the magazine“Architecture of the USSR”in 1938.
Finally, it is worth mentioning separately the engineering side of the project, the importance of which for Moscow at that time cannot be underestimated. According to the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev in the early 1930s, the capital was then “a large city, but with a rather backward urban economy: the streets were not well equipped; there was no proper sewerage, water supply and drainage; the pavement, as a rule, was cobbled, and the cobblestone was not everywhere; transport was mainly horse-drawn. Now it’s scary to even remember, but it was just like that”.
So in terms of landscaping, Gorky Street has also become an exemplary project. The sidewalks and the roadway have widened, the relief of the highway has been significantly softened, and the highway itself has received an asphalt-concrete pavement. Under the ground, instead of 22 separate structures serving each of the farms, a single collector was built - a reinforced concrete channel 2.7 m high and 2.4 m wide, in which “power cables, telephone and lighting networks, a network plumbing, heating plant, drain and so on. " In addition, the underground collector was equipped with its own control room, in which a specialist on duty constantly monitored the operation of the structure. “Before the construction of the underground tunnel, as you know, the elimination of any minor accident in the underground economy required the opening of sidewalks and pavements. Now there is no need for this,”V. Stankeev wrote in the“Architecture of the USSR”magazine. And speaking of the reconstruction as a whole, he concluded: "Everything was decisively rebuilt … Old Tverskaya Street finally went into the realm of history, into the realm of legends."
It is difficult to disagree with this: within the framework of one project, problems with transport, communications, landscaping, dilapidated buildings and fire safety were solved; residential areas were rebuilt and improved; historic houses have been preserved and the image of the new main thoroughfare of the Soviet capital has been created. This is possible only if planning and compositional design tasks are concentrated in one hand, as was the case with Sergei Chernyshev. Only then "every quarter, every section of the street, the whole street, the square will be formed as integral ensembles and the city - as an architectural complex, unified in design and implementation."
Bibliography
The whole USSR. Reference guide. M.: Publishing of Trans-advertising NKPS, 1930. S. 57; USSR in numbers. Moscow: Soyuzorguchet, 1934
USSR architecture. Rooms of different years. 1933-1938
