Who Is Comfortable Living In Moscow

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

The conference "Comfortable City" brought together many important topics for the city: the development of former industrial zones, the construction of new ground transport stations, the program for the development of Moscow parks and many others. The general goal was formulated by the chief architect of the capital, Sergei Kuznetsov: “Regardless of whether we are talking about a former industrial zone, a renovation area or any other residential area of Moscow, it should not differ significantly in terms of functions, set of services and quality of the environment from the center”.

Comfort is a delicate matter. No matter how much you make improvements in the city, there will always be disgruntled residents who often do not know what they want. Therefore, their needs must be studied, and perhaps programmed. The conference was preceded by a study “Formation of a comfortable urban environment during the renovation of industrial areas, railways and natural areas”, conducted by RTDA (Research Territory Development Architecture), a former subsidiary of INTECO B. R. T. RUS. Also called the first session, which was moderated by Elena Popova, head of urban planning studies at RTDA. It was discussed at the session that the emergence of new MCC stations, the improvement of parks and almost any innovation are perceived by the natives with hostility, although it increases the capitalization of their housing by 10-15%. Residents are primarily afraid of noise, other people's cars in the yards, crowds of people. Andrey Gnezdilov, JSB Ostozhenka, suggested that people's dissatisfaction is caused by the fact that new facilities reduce the permeability of the area, and therefore, this issue must be thought out first. Architects and other professionals shared their experiences. Natalia Sidorova, architect and partner of DNK ag, spoke about the reconstruction of industrial zones. The architects of DNK ag are the authors of a somewhat exemplary reconstruction of the buildings of the Rassvet plant, DAWN LOFT * Studio was included in the WAF shortlist, and in the spring-summer of 2019, DNK ag partners taught a course at MARSH on the reconstruction of industrial zones. Natalia Sidorova noted that “it is necessary to work with the former industrial territories at different planning levels: this is the macro-scale of urban planning infrastructure and the micro-scale of specific buildings and courtyards”. The session was also attended by Timur Bashkaev, head of ABTB, Sergey Desyatov, CEO of Artplay and others.

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1/5 1st session "Formation of a comfortable urban environment during the renovation of industrial areas, railways and natural areas" © "Comfortable city"
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2/5 Andrey Gnezdilov, Ostozhenka bureau. © "Comfortable city"
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3/5 1st session "Formation of a comfortable urban environment during the renovation of industrial areas, railways and natural areas." © "Comfortable city"
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4/5 Moderator Elena Popova, RTDA © "Comfortable city"
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5/5 Natalia Sidorova, DNK ag. © "Comfortable city"

The second session "Psychological comfort in the city" was completely devoted to psychology, and it seemed to me that even architects learned something new for themselves. In fact, scientific developments in the psychology of architecture were carried out back in the 1980s at VNIITAG, in particular by Grigory Zabelshansky. But in the post-Soviet era, this direction in Russian science has died out. The session was moderated by Dina Drize, creative director and chief architect of RTDA, and the previous moderator, Elena Popova, acted as a speaker. She announced the signs of mental health identified by the World Health Organization. It is a sense of the unity of soul and body; ability to self-criticism; proportionality of reaction and stimulus; socially acceptable behavior; planning and implementation of plans. As it turned out, the metropolis is dangerous for mental health. The main negative factors: noise, disturbance of chrono-biorhythms, dizziness, phobias and depression, social stress, the need to climb the career ladder. Then Elena Popova gave examples of the psychological impact of architecture on a person. This is Owl's classification of visual impact: a solid glass facade has a neutral, homogeneous visual field; a typical panel house - an aggressive visual field; the classic facade (the facade in the neo-Russian style was shown) - a surface that is comfortable for the eyes. Comfort depends on the presence of different scales that the eye needs to cover, in this sense, the facade of traditional architecture is closest to nature (although it is possible to create a rich surface in modernism, the speaker did not consider this option). In the city, for psychological comfort, a person needs safety, peace and relaxation, personal space, satisfaction of curiosity and passion for ordering. Translated into architecture, these are buildings with rich detailing of facades, a diverse environment that one wants to master, buildings of different heights with different scales, a variety of living formats.

Then architects Andrey Asadov, AB ASADOV, and Vladimir Plotkin, TPO "Reserve", spoke and showed their projects, which appeared in the light of psychological comfort. Andrey Asadov called his presentation “My City”, as if uniting the names of the programs of recent years “My Street” and “My District”. He spoke about the project on the site of the old airport in Saratov. This is a dense six-storey building with public functions in the lower tier, terraces on the first and last floors, and a boulevard is laid along the former runway as a memory of the place. In general, the result is a varied and comfortable environment. It was more difficult to achieve comfort in the project on Berezhkovskaya Embankment, sandwiched between the Third Transport Ring and the Kiev Railway. The problem is solved by a reservoir in the center of the quarter and multi-storey buildings. Finally, in the project of a quarter in Kaliningrad, the difficulties of the relief (the need to make drainage canals) were turned into dignity by arranging embankments - a psychological bonus for future residents.

Vladimir Plotkin, before showing the projects, lamented that customers are not ready to pay attention to psychological aspects, to think about rhythm, colors and composition, they are more interested in square meters and expediency. As an example of ideal diversity, the architect gave the example of a “living city” - New York, in which such different environments as Chinatown, Tribeca, Soho and the Central Park area coexist. Vladimir Plotkin showed how to achieve diversity in the design of new districts using the example of four blocks for Tsaritsyno and five blocks for Rublevo-Arkhangelskoye, which were designed by TPO Reserve, as well as several blocks in the gray belt of St. Petersburg. In all cases, large park zones are planned between the quarters, and the quarters in Rublevo-Arkhangelskoye are focused on different lifestyles: family, business, and creative.

The highlight of the conference was the questionnaire offered to the public with the question: "Which of the following gives you maximum comfort?" Five items had to be ranked in order of importance. This is 1) a private area, the absence of outsiders; 2) the possibility of living in a "dream home" regardless of location; 3) the proximity of parks, squares; 4) convenience of orientation and navigation of pedestrian traffic in the city; 5) a variety of interesting streets with intricate facades and many different establishments. The results of the survey, average for the audience, were announced at the second session. The first place was taken by greens. At one time, KB Strelka conducted a study of Periphery, and the residents of Moscow, in which there is a lot of greenery, especially in dormitory areas, compared to other megacities, when asked what they lacked, they unanimously answered: greenery. Apparently, this is such a fad of the national mentality or an indicator of great stress from the city, and only nature can save from it. The second point, which I put in the first place, is the variety of architecture with intricate facades and many establishments. It seems to combine different things - visual and functional, but both of them correspond to our basic psychological need - curiosity. And parks are a need for relaxation. Ease of orientation came in third place - this is the need for planning. The dwelling of dreams was the fourth - this is the desire for personalization, and the private territory was in the fifth - this is safety. Commenting on this choice, Igor Zadorin, head of the Zircon research group, noted that the architectural item took a high second place, which shows the professional deformation of the audience. This survey also demonstrates the deficit rating: you want what is missing, and what is already there (security, personalization) recedes into the background.

The third session "Towards a new format of the urban environment" was devoted to the search for identity for city districts, including peripheral ones (urbanist Peter Kudryavtsev, partner of Citymakers bureau), as well as tools for assessing the investment potential of different city districts (Alexey Novikov, President of Habidatum) … The moderator of the session, director of the Institute for the General Plan of Moscow, Tatyana Guk, in her presentation compared Moscow with other megacities. And here is the result: we have less density, although it is not small; our streets are wider, because insolation norms are stricter; we have more greenery and, finally (!), the same number of parking lots. Moscow is on a par with European capitals in terms of comfort, it remains to tighten the periphery.

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1/6 3rd session "Towards a new format of the urban environment: from documentation to implementation" © "Comfortable city"
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4/6 3rd session "Towards a new format of the urban environment: from documentation to implementation" © "Comfortable city"
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5/6 3rd session "On the way to a new format of the urban environment: from documentation to implementation" © "Comfortable city"