High-rise construction usually evokes bipolar emotions - some people like it very much, but some don't. But here, as with the lifestyle in general, it depends on personal taste and choice. Discussion experts “Silhouette of the city. What can high-rise Moscow look like in a hundred years?”Organized by Kleinewelt Architekten, of course, they did not analyze the topic in terms of good or bad, but rather dispel myths and draw pictures of the future Moscow.
Altitude = personality
Probably the most common myth regarding high-rise buildings in the city - looking at them as a way to profit - a developer thus squeezes out of a small plot, "sticking" a narrow one-hundred-meter building on it, a maximum of square meters. In fact, compared to mid-rise buildings, it is expensive to build high-rise buildings, and with each floor after a certain level, the cost increases. From this, at least two conclusions can be drawn: the first is that high-rise buildings are not class "economy". And the second is that they are being built not with the aim of saving money, but for a specific consumer and specific urban planning conditions.
The high cost of construction, first of all, is associated with a complex technology - in the construction of high-rise buildings you need experience and special admission. It only seems that designing a high-rise is simple: draw a floor, and then copy-paste for another forty floors. Georgy Trofimov, partner of Kleinewelt Architekten, recalled that each upper floor, as a rule, has a different structure. In addition, the engineering filling itself is complicated and expensive. It is impossible to make, for example, ventilation built into the floor covering in economy class, as Capital Group does in its skyscrapers. The prime cost is high, and even tied to the exchange rate, since the "filling" is mainly imported, noted Oksana Diveeva, the company's sales director.
The second thing to say about the cost is that high-rise buildings belong to the segment of expensive housing. It is known that the higher the apartment in a high-rise, the more expensive, because it is at the height that the engineering complexity increases, and at the same time stunning views are revealed. High-rise buildings are being built for a consumer who is ready to invest, and therefore counts on an individual high-quality project.
Despite the well-known typification of the very structure of skyscrapers, tied to technology, a building above a hundred meters is always an urban sculpture, something very individual. According to Oksana Diveeva, this is always a huge responsibility for an architect, especially if a skyscraper is built outside the Moscow City group, since it radically changes the city skyline. The limitations in the shaping of high-rise objects are clear: skyscrapers have a technologically very small set of expressive means, the main of which is the silhouette. And, nevertheless, each skyscraper needs to be made outstanding in its own way. Typical skyscrapers definitely do not exist and will not be - to build something like P44T [a series of typical houses, developed by MNIITEP, was used from 1997 to 2016; characterized by red brick cladding and a ground floor made of rustic cement - approx. ed.] above twenty floors - this is unrealistic and at a loss, assured the general director of the company "Glavstroy" Andrei Vasiliev.
High altitude lifestyle
The second myth about skyscrapers is that they are a kind of "under-housing", mostly apartments, rented apartments for bachelors or office workers, but certainly not for family life. Because the windows do not open in them, and there is often no courtyard area.
This trend really existed. But today's market offers to revise the format, deploying it towards a full-fledged family lifestyle. For example, Capital Group already offers high-rise buildings for families to live comfortably and even launches an advertisement about children who grow up at a bird's-eye view of the city. They now have windows opening, and they also have all the services necessary for a full life. These are roof terraces, courtyards, workspaces, and parks with kindergartens. In the projects of MR Group, for example, each complex provides for "lounges", public living rooms and community spaces - for communication between mothers and children, everything so that a person, without leaving his perimeter, can get maximum comfort, said the company's product director Vadim Ivanov …
Moscow skyline
Moscow skyline has several options for the future. The first is the path of New York or London, cities with high-density and different-height buildings. The chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, calls this path the most reasonable and promising - to introduce such a grading of the territory and the corresponding standards for height: “You need to build high-rise buildings where there are prerequisites for high-density development - that is, the transport situation, the cost of real estate and the cost of land allow. The city is not a homogeneous environment and cannot be equal in height. At the same time, it is important that the quality of the spaces is equally high everywhere."
Sergei Kuznetsov gave the example of Manhattan - where there are skyscrapers and a fairly dense front along Central Park, and there are low-rise areas like Chelsea and Soho. "This is a good example of urban planning, reasonable and balanced, where the height reacts to the preconditions that exist …" - said Kuznetsov. At the same time, London cannot be called a city with a low urban planning culture or a careless attitude to heritage, the chief architect continued, although in the city center, historical buildings are adjacent to modern skyscrapers.
In general, according to Sergei Kuznetsov, Moscow is most similar to Tokyo, both in terms of population and the principles of urban planning policy, which helped the city overcome the environmental and transport crisis of the 1980s precisely thanks to this dispersed polycentric approach.
Scenario number two for Moscow - the example of Hong Kong - is more of a dystopia. The city, where the average number of storeys is almost entirely one of skyscrapers, looks frightening on our soil and few people like it. However, the chief architect believes that it is impossible. Hong Kong is growing up due to an acute shortage of land, which is simply irrelevant for Moscow.
Finally, the third variant of "high-rise" evolution is its absence or a complete moratorium. Many European cities have fenced themselves off from skyscrapers and do not even try to build their own Cities and Defenses. True, Moscow won't be like this anymore. Despite the center covered with security zones, the capital is still not a small Italian city, in which high-rise construction is impossible in principle. Her character has always hid a craving for bell towers and towers, '' says Sergey Pereslegin, partner of Kleinewelt Architekten. And if St. Petersburg with its flat landscape has confidently pushed the only skyscraper, which conceived to argue with the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, to the periphery, then Moscow will not do this.
First, because it is polycentric - a new high-rise center has begun in the City. But now skyscrapers have begun to sprout in the periphery, around the MCD and MCC, and perhaps in the future they will even form a whole high-rise ring. There are prerequisites for this. Now, for example, in the capital, according to information from RBC Real Estate, about fifty skyscrapers with an altitude of more than one hundred meters are being built.
Secondly, Moscow historically has a relief, it is not flat like a saucer, and has always loved dominants. This is inherent in its morphology, as well as the variegation and diversity of buildings. High-rise construction is underway in Moscow, Nikolay Pereslegin, a partner of Kleinewelt Architekten, is sure. In the era of the avant-garde, the historical trend towards Moscow's "upward movement" was embodied in the projects of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry and the horizontal skyscrapers of Lissitzky, and later was realized in seven Stalinist skyscrapers.
Finally, the urban planning policy has not yet prohibited, but on the contrary, encouraged high-rise construction. We do not know what will happen in a hundred years, but so far there are no prerequisites for freezing the skyline at all.
Sergei Kuznetsov says that it is impossible in principle to stop the development of the city, including vertically, and advises to turn to the topic of urban anthropology - that is, to see what is common in the development of the city and living beings. “Moscow is changing right now - somewhere another floor of a high-rise building is flooding. The economy of construction, real estate transactions is a large segment of the economy of an entire city. Millions of people profit directly or indirectly from this, and the quality of their life depends on the success of this industry every day,”the chief architect recalled.
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We started with the idea that skyscrapers are an ambivalent topic, and nothing bodes well that everyone around them will suddenly fall in love with skyscrapers. And nevertheless, their growth occurs in the natural way of the development of the whole city. Public tension on this issue will also continue, - Sergei Kuznetsov is sure, - and therefore the developers themselves, according to the chief architect, should be more actively involved in the process of promoting and public protection of their high-rise projects. So far, this function is performed by the Moskomarkhitektura itself: “This is an unsportsmanlike approach. From now on, we will pay attention to this and see who worked out the situation, who is ready to communicate with residents, invite good architects, make the project public, put it up for a competition, and generally form a positive mood on it,”the chief architect promised.
None of the participants in the discussion named a specific future of the Moscow skyline, which is understandable. The modern world faces ever new challenges every day, and it is necessary to respond to them, including from an urban planning point of view. However, the scenario of diversification is very likely - that is, the presence of different things in the city. Cities, as living organisms, have the ability to adapt to any conditions, which is confirmed by examples of such patriarchs as Rome or Jerusalem. And there will always be those who, like Evgeny Semyonov, vice president - head of the investment and commercial block of INTECO, prefer to live lower in order to see the greenery from the window, and those who would like to soar over the city, looking out from the window, as from the window of a helicopter.
