The Institute of the General Plan of Moscow spoke at Arch Moscow with two global, interconnected subjects. The task of the exhibition stand, as we have already said, was to show "… that renovation and renewal of a city is not just an independent phenomenon, but a natural continuation of the idea of industrial housing construction."
Renovation is a big, if not gigantic, topic. Now it is actively developing in Moscow, in addition, over the past year or two, there has been an active discussion of the prospects for renovation on a national scale, so that we are probably waiting for the renewal of all or almost all cities.
Therefore, the second topic, initiated by the General Planning Institute, is a discussion "Design code of urban planning objects: order vs visual noise" - one way or another, it can be considered a continuation and development of the declared theme of renovation. Moreover, the discussion moderator Vitaly Lutz, head of the Prospective Projects Department of the General Planning Institute, began the conversation by outlining the scope of the topic as the broadest possible, relating to the entire urban space as a whole: “… gradcode. The topic goes deep, seeps in, we see how relevant it is. " Further discussion showed that the city's design code remains a relevant topic and opens up new dimensions for itself.
Ease of regulation
The story of Artem Nikitin from Novaya Zemlya developed the idea: the message became a call for a "strategic approach in the field of regulation and identification of the characteristic features of the architectural appearance of cities." An integral part of the strategy proposed by Novaya Zemlya is the convenience of perception of the regulations by all who are obliged to comply with them and implement them in reality.
Artem Nikitin
Leading architect of the direction of digital solutions in urban planning at Novaya Zemlya
Artem Nikitin demonstrated developments for the Moscow region, Irkutsk and Derbent. Their goal is not only to set limits, but also to offer a user-friendly interface for enforcing them. Nowadays, recommendations for the design of an urban environment often look like a giant bureaucratic document that is difficult to read, - emphasizes Artem Nikitin - “Novaya Zemlya” turns them into a human-readable application with modern usability.
Both the appendix and the table shown by Nikitin contain all the components of the urban environment available for use: lighting, street furniture, information structures, and so on. The audience for Novaya Zemlya's developments is divided into three categories: first of all, they are municipal workers, then designers of the urban environment, and, finally, residents. The latter is especially important for Derbent, a city dominated by low-rise buildings: a resident or owner of a shop can easily find all the recommendations and restrictions prescribed to him by the new design code, and directly from the application send his version for approval by authorities.
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zooming 1/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 2/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 3/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 4/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 5/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 6/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 7/12 Urban planning regulations: design code. Outdoor furniture catalog for designers © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 8/12 Urban planning regulations: design code. Road design catalog for designers © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 9/12 Urban planning regulations: design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 10/12 Urban planning regulations: design code. New interface for residents. © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 11/12 Urban planning regulations: design code. Derbent, current situation © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
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zooming 12/12 Urban planning regulations: design code. Derbent, street improvement project in accordance with the design code © Novaya Zemlya / presentation
The presented systems are still in the approbation mode - although designers are already implementing and using one of the presented interfaces in Derbent - the situation described itself looks extremely tempting: indeed, the more accessible the rules, the easier it is to follow them.
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Freedom and meanings
Elena Chuguevskaya
General Director of the Institute "Giprogor"
In contrast to the story of Artem Nikitin, who, as we saw above, presented programs for small cities such as Derbent or Khotkovo, Elena Chuguevskaya, director of the institute, which celebrated its 90th anniversary last year, immediately spoke about large cities and raised the problem of diversity and the degree of flexibility of decisions that should be enshrined in regulations. “We have a big discussion at the institute - how to relate to the existing development? To fix everything rigidly or to give freedom to "metabolic" changes in the environment? How do I set the delta of variability when planning hard constraints? After all, it is not always enough to select an item from the catalog - “you cannot hard-code everything into a certain catalog”.
At the same time, the director of Giprogor noted: “Our masters in the thirties, forties, fifties, when preparing general plans, graphically drew the central part at least. The city was created as a space. It must be returned."
Thus, Elena Chuguevskaya called for a balance of freedom and restrictions, insisting at the same time on the need to think over important parts of the city as holistic architectural projects, going from the general to the particular, not dwelling on sets of permissible elements, which in themselves do not ensure the integrity of the solution. In conclusion, the director of "Giprogor" stressed the importance of preserving the meanings and images "of which any city consists", and which can be represented somewhere by historical details, and somewhere by the specifics of planning.
In an effort to achieve the necessary degree of flexibility, in "Giprogor" the building is considered, dividing into four morphotypes: 1) the redevelopment zone; 2) stabilization zone (historical buildings); 3) development zone (new construction); 4) conservation area. The project of the system of public spaces for Sevastopol developed by the institute was named as a practical example.
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The devil is in the details
Erken Kagarov
Art director of the studio Artemy Lebedev
Erken Kagarov's report was devoted directly to the elements of the urban environment, what is usually associated with the design code of urban space: benches, trash cans, lamps, advertising - their design and compatibility, as well as examples of improving the appearance of signage, undertaken by Lebedev's studio in conjunction with Moskomarkhitektura … It is known that the MCA has been fighting for a long time for visual purity and uniformity, in particular, signage, and Erken Kagarov gave several examples of how these tasks were implemented in the was-now format.
No less intense was the part of the report in which Erken Kagarov criticized the existing practices of advertising placement - in particular, on the facades of museums - as well as the shapes of urns and benches, which sometimes do not correspond to each other, since they are dealt with by different departments. “Everything that falls into the hands of housing and communal services becomes green,” Erken Kagarov summed up the facts, emphasizing that a neutral color, gray or black, looks much more advantageous, since it suits any season and is not striking.
Erken Kagarov suggested some more useful recipes for city MAFs. In particular, according to him, black narrow lampposts with a relief have an anti-vandal surface, since it is inconvenient to draw on the relief, and the markers are usually black, and black drawing on black is almost invisible.
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zooming 1/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Height adjustable fonts. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 2/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Fonts adjustable in height and color. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 3/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Placing posters: wrong and correct. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 4/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Designs for street flower beds: unsuccessful and successful © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 5/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Green urn, discordant with the surroundings © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 6/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. The urn is gray, inscribed in the environment. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 7/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. An example of a flashy green and neutral black fence. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 8/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Comparison of lampposts in terms of protection against vandalism. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 9/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Switchboard booths as information counters. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 10/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Various objects of the urban environment. © Art. Lebedev Studio
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zooming 11/11 Design code. Unused opportunities. Harmonized objects of the urban environment. © Art. Lebedev Studio
Perhaps the creation of some kind of general department, for example, the Urban Environment, which would deal with all the elements at once, could solve some of the problems, - Vitaly Lutz summed up the report of Erken Kagarov.
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Moscow: design code of individual territories
Sergey Glubokin
Deputy Head of the Office of the Architectural Council of the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of the city of Moscow
Sergey Glubokin remembered the design (or city) codes of European cities, in particular London, where, in addition to MAFs, signboards and advertising structures, a number of other aspects are regulated, up to the appearance of buildings. Expressing doubts that this is possible in a heterogeneous Moscow, Glubokin cited, however, ZILART as an example of a holistic reconstruction of the territory with a single code, which, as you know, was developed by Yuri Grigoryan. In ZILART, not only signs are regulated, but also the material of the facades, the percentage of glazing, improvement - which, however, does not limit the creative will of the architects.
Sergei Glubokin also mentioned the design code of city polyclinics, recently developed by the MCA: “even if the bureau cannot design a high-quality facility, it will not do a bad thing within the framework of such a code”. Another example is the design code of the Alabushevo industrial zone in Zelenograd, developed by AB ATRIUM together with the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction.
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Design for the freeway
Vitaly Lutz
Head of the Advanced Projects Department of the General Planning Institute
Vitaly Lutz dedicated his own presentation “Design code for transport infrastructure” to roads, namely to a new motorway - the 15 km South-East Expressway, which is being built in Moscow. Lutz named the Western High-Speed Diameter, which was opened several years ago, as a successful model, and singled out two major goals in the design of highways: the humanization of a rigid, frankly speaking, structure and the creation of a recognizable image.
Vitaly Lutz proposed a set of elements from which the design of the road is constructed: supports, lighting masts, overpass ends, roofing (vault), noise protection screens. Then the speaker presented the projects of the chord design. The first was created together with Timur Bashkaev's bureau and is a longitudinal wave.
In this project, the stage space is transformed into a public one, with a cafe and ping-pong tables. There are also minimalist, natural, and completely unexpected options, with patterns: all three were made in collaboration with the architectural company "Progress" by Petr Anurin.
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zooming 1/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Modern and historical examples of transport infrastructure with a design code © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow / fragment of the presentation
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zooming 2/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow / fragment of the presentation
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zooming 3/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Project of the South-East Expressway © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow Together with ABTB
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zooming 4/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Project of the South-East Expressway © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow Together with ABTB
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zooming 5/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Project of the South-East Expressway © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow in cooperation with the Bureau "Progress"
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zooming 6/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Project of the South-East Expressway © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow in cooperation with the Bureau "Progress"
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zooming 7/7 Design code of transport infrastructure objects. Project of the South-East Expressway © Institute of the General Plan of Moscow in cooperation with the Bureau "Progress"
This is a completely new approach to the design of overpasses and the spaces under them - the latter are still used now, but more often for car washes and storage of municipal equipment, that is, extensively. It would be useful to include them in active city life; in fact, like the revitalization of industrial zones, the development of extra-staggered spaces complements the urban fabric with new fragments, seeking resources inside, and not outside, the city's boundaries.
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Small town fence
Nikita Asadov
Architect, partner of AB ASADOV
Nikita Asadov made a witty presentation “Design code and what to wear it with”, likening architecture to clothes, and design code to dress code. He shared his experience of working in small towns and spoke about the all-Russian painful topic of fences and plastic windows, which, alas, replace valuable historical woodwork in private houses.
How to implement new ideas? Nikita Asadov believes that with examples - and shows examples of "what is good, what is bad" - slides prepared by the architects of the bureau for Zaraysk. For example, a picket fence or a wooden gate in the spirit of the old city is good, a corrugated fence is bad.
In the "Dry Cleaning" section, Asadov presented the regulations for facade elements for Sevastopol: canopies, awnings, window blocks that are allowed in one place or another. It is enough to add a specific house to the regulations, and it will give out acceptable options. If we are talking about new construction, the algorithm is easier to create - here Nikita Asadov showed a project proposed by ASADOV for a pilot renovation project.
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zooming 1/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Recommendations for Zaraysk © AB ASADOV
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zooming 2/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Recommendations for Zaraysk © AB ASADOV
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zooming 3/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Taganrog, the current situation. © AB ASADOV
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zooming 4/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Taganrog, urban environment project © AB ASADOV
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zooming 5/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Sevastopol. Regulations for canopies, awnings and window blocks © AB ASADOV
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zooming 6/6 Design code and what to wear it with. Algorithm for new development © AB ASADOV
In the final discussion, Artem Nikitin once again emphasized the value of an intelligible explanation as opposed to a 500-page document. Erken Kagarov recalled that Art. Lebedev Studio also worked on the design code for Zaraysk - and it was there that the authors found it possible to support the idea of a solid wooden fence in the city. At the same time, in European cities, Kagarov stressed, different design codes are being developed for different regions based on the specifics of the area: “this is normal, it makes the city interesting and diverse”.
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Summarizing the discussion, we can say that it showed that the design code is an extensible concept: at one pole there is standardization and regulation of the most common, basic elements of urban space from a flower garden to a bench and a trash can - and on the other, full-fledged architectural concepts that consider part of the urban fabric as a complete work of art. In both cases, we are talking about regulation of the chaotic, but if the former proposes “school” rules and cares about the ease of their assimilation and implementation, the latter approaches the problem from the standpoint of an architect-author, creator of a new city.
To what extent do the two voiced approaches contradict each other and do they contradict? Perhaps the answer lies in the recognition of the value of diversity. Urban planners of our time, in addition to asserting the need for regulation, value identity, diversity of options and talk about the need to define the "delta" of freedom of expression. This freedom, we admit it, is only capable of creating diversity. Because excessive regulation is fraught with at least boredom.
It turns out that the main virtue of a modern author of an urban planning code is not to cross borders, to leave space for self-expression to residents, especially in small towns. Convincing and explaining, not ordering, and if we are to introduce rules, then so that their observance is convenient. And - no less important - to invite authors, architects, and designers. In this sense, it is significant that the discussion featured not only sets of rules, but also architectural projects of various scales, including those developed jointly with urbanists, but demonstrating individual, author's search for a form.
