New Urbanism, Or The Return Of The Traditional City

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

A boom in beautification around the world, and now in Russian cities, which has led to the repetition, like a mantra, of expressions: pedestrian accessibility, block layouts, public ground floors, mixed functions, walking areas and bike paths, design code, courtyards without cars; the boom in the arrangement of the good, which has transformed Moscow and St. Petersburg so that they have become more beautiful than Paris - this is actually what it is, New Urbanism. But the organizers do not know about this or do not like to remember.

So New Urbanism, which is in many ways a well-forgotten old city, was born in the late 1970s as an attempt to cure two diseases of the century. The first disease is the sprawling American suburbs: housing along the roads without shops and schools within walking distance: the second is the radiant city of Le Corbusier, embodied in microdistricts of panel-based mass development. By the 1970s, the crisis in these areas in the United States and Europe became obvious, panel houses began to be dismantled everywhere (the explosion of the Prutt-Igoe district in St. Louis; dismantling of panel houses in Germany, England, etc.). They demolished where they could afford it economically. In Russia, they could not, therefore, these houses still stand here, and now they are reproduced, but three to four times higher.

Ideologists. Documents. Monuments

The parents of New Urbanism are American urban planners, the married couple Andre Duany and Plate Zyberk. In 1979 they designed Seaside in Florida, then Celebration there. In Celebration, commissioned by Walt Disney, buildings have been designed by classics (Robert Stern), modernists (Stephen Hall) and postmodernists (Michael Graves). That is, the new urbanists prescribed a certain layout, street profile, landscaping, environmental principles, but they did not regulate the style. In 1991, Duany, Ziberk and several other architects formalized their views in the Ahwanee principles. Duany and Zyberk have designed dozens of cities and built many. In 2009 they were awarded the Richard Driehaus Prize (analogous to the Nobel Prize in traditional architecture). The principles sound very familiar. In short, this is the compactness of the city, pedestrian accessibility, mixed use (the principle of connecting many functions in a small settlement, in contrast to the modernist principle of zoning, that is, dividing districts into administrative, residential, cultural), the presence of public space and green and lighted pedestrian and bicycle paths etc. Finally, a few environmental "points": waste minimization, water conservation, and so on. The very name “New Urbanism” took root in 1993, when the Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) was created.

Another ideologist of New Urbanism is Prince Charles of Wales. In 1984, he formulated 10 principles in his book A Vision of Britain. They are about the same as those of Duany and Zyberk, but with a significant difference: only local vernacular or classics are allowed.

The urban planner and architect who embodied the principles of Charles, as they are close to his own program, is Leon Crieux. In 1988, he made a project for the city of Poundbury, consisting of four villages, each with its own market square, and one common square with a church and town hall. Construction began in 1993. Now the city is thriving, the fourth phase will be completed in 2025. Impressions of the residents of Poundbury, the cost of houses and other details here. Kriye built many traditional cities, and outlined his vision of the topic in the book “Architecture. Choice or Fate”, published in 1996, as well as in other books, lectures and speeches. Krie is an exceptionally bright speaker!

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  1/3 Poundbury. Queen Mother Square. Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects © Nick Carter

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  2/3 Poundbury. Queen Mother Square. Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects © Nick Carter

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  3/3 Poundbury. Queen Mother Square. Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects © Nick Carter

François Spoeri built Port Grimaud in France back in the late 1960s in the style of historic Mediterranean architecture. Today Port Grimaud is called the Venice of France and is protected as an architectural monument.

Pier Carlo Bontempi built the Val d'Europ near Paris with the oval square of Tuscany. At first glance, this is a familiar and beloved European city. At first, you can take it for historical, especially since the oval square is similar to the historical square of the Amphitheater in Lucca. And then it gradually comes to you. Faultlessness of drawing, proportions, materials. There is a feeling that nothing can be changed without spoiling it. Bontemi listens to old architecture. And the viewer is encouraged to listen carefully. Knows her literally from the inside. His office is housed in an old Italian building, which means that the architects are provided with a daily bodily experience of a classic space. But his own architecture turns out to be new. There is no repetition. More details here.

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  1/5 Tuscany Square in Val d'Europ near Paris. Arch. Pier Carlo Bontempi © Pier Carlo Bontempi

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  2/5 Tuscany Square in Val d'Europ near Paris. Arch. Pier Carlo Bontempi © Pier Carlo Bontempi

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  3/5 Tuscany Square in Val d'Europ near Paris. Arch. Pier Carlo Bontempi © Pier Carlo Bontempi

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  4/5 Square of Tuscany in Val d'Europ near Paris. Arch. Pier Carlo Bontempi © Pier Carlo Bontempi

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  5/5 Square of Tuscany in Val d'Europ near Paris. Arch. Pier Carlo Bontempi © Pier Carlo Bontempi

In Frankfurt am Main, the central quarter, Dom-Roemer, was rebuilt in pre-war forms in 2018.

I give examples of traditional cities offhand, there are dozens of them around the world. The beauty and classical structure of traditional cities are combined with the latest technology. The exemplary Pounbury is crammed with all sorts of innovative energy-saving things: electric buses, a plant for processing agricultural products into gas to heat half of the houses in the city, passive houses certified by BREEAM. Plus, the traditional houses themselves, which in Poundbell are built of brick and stone, live three hundred years or longer, that is, by definition, they are environmentally friendly, because the demolition of a building is the most harmful to nature.

New urbanists in Russia

In the 1990s, everything was just beginning in post-Soviet Russia, but then Russian architects raised New Urbanism to new heights. Our craftsmen not only built cities, but solved artistic tasks of a serious scale, since in the local conditions the cities inevitably had to become denser and higher, but the New Urbanism virus, thanks to their projects, spread throughout Russia.

Mikhail Filippov felt where the city was heading back in 1984, in his prophetic project "Style of 2001". In a series of his watercolors, the panel microdistrict gradually turned into a traditional Russian European city (more likely Moscow than St. Petersburg). Later, he embodied this aesthetics, first in the architectural ensembles of the "Italian Quarter" and "Marshal" in Moscow, and then in Gorki-gorod in Sochi.

Maxim Atayants, together with the developer-professor Alexander Dolgin, for the first time created classic cities in the format of mass housing, which have become an alternative to Corbusian microdistricts (which continue to grow in Russia today due to renovation and the Housing and Urban Environment state program). Atayants designed ten different classical cities (from 3 thousand to 50 thousand inhabitants) in the Moscow region and built five of them. The "City of Embankments" was conceived in 2008 and started in 2010 in construction. In the "City of Embankments" apartment of 30 sq.m. at the start of sales it cost 1.8 million rubles - less than in a panel house of a similar location. Until now, this record has not been broken. A city with a lake, canal, embankments, boulevard, rotunda, propylaea, aqueduct, apartments in the bridge, buildings from 3 to 8 floors, stucco decoration and wooden cornices, courtyards without cars, public ground floors - became the first large settlement of this kind. kind.

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  1/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  2/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  3/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  4/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  5/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  6/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  7/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  8/8 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

Why the renovation, which has now begun in Moscow and other Russian cities, does not follow this path, is a mystery to me personally. Returning to New Urbanism, its principles are in the City of Embankments, Opalikha-2 and Opalkha-3, the Solar System, Pyatnitsky quarters, etc. are present, but beyond that there are classical architectural ensembles.

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  1/5 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  2/5 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  3/5 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  4/5 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. Parking. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

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  5/5 RC "City of Embankments" near Moscow. School. Arch. Maxim Atayants © Maxim Atayants

Mikhail Filippov and Maxim Atayants built Gorki-Gorod in Sochi: Filippov - the lower part of the city at around 540 m,

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  1/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  2/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Anatoly Belov

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  3/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  4/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  5/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  6/6 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 540 m. Arch. Mikhail Filippov © photo by Lara Kopylova

and Atayants - the upper part, respectively, at an elevation of 960 m.

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  1/4 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 960 m. Arch. Maxim Atayants © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  2/4 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 960 m. Arch. Maxim Atayants © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  3/4 Gorki-Gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 960 m. Arch. Maxim Atayants © photo by Lara Kopylova

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  4/4 Gorki-gorod in Sochi at an elevation of 960 m. Arch. Maxim Atayants © photo by Lara Kopylova

It served as a media city during the 2014 Sochi Olympics and later became a popular ski and eco-resort and year-round destination. Now Gorki-Gorod is flourishing and is a landmark of the new Sochi.

Mikhail Belov, albeit on a smaller scale, paid tribute to the ideas of New Urbanism by building near Moscow the Monolith settlement with a central square, a school and a church, which is actively developing.

Ilya Utkin built a residential complex "Maecenat" in Moscow, designed the "Tsarev Garden" quarter (which is partially implemented according to his project) and classical facades for the quarter on Sofiyskaya Embankment opposite the Kremlin.

Recently, a young architect Stepan Lipgart built the Renaissance residential complex in St. Petersburg - a huge quarter, in fact, a whole city, in the style of romantic Leningrad Art Deco. The contrast with the panel environment is colossal.

The beauty of a traditional city is a self-evident truth. All of these architects are deliberately building a traditional city, not even really looking back at New Urbanism, in accordance with the local context. And since the classical culture in our country has always been strong, their works are larger, deeper, more passionate, more interesting than those of their Western colleagues.

The traditional city seeps through neighborhoods, landscaping and materials

As for the quarters, courtyards without cars, public ground floors and other landscaping, they were used by new urbanists in the West, and Filippov and Atayants in Russia in projects of the 2000s, since 2011 they were raised on the banner by the head of the Moscow Department of Culture, Sergei Kapkov, and then Mayor Sobyanin, with the active participation of Strelka KB experts. The chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, developed his activities in the same vein: for some time the idea of quarters was in use, as the architectural biennale was called, competition projects for the Moscow renovation of 2018 also promoted this idea. By order of the Dom. RF corporation, Strelka KB developed the Principles of Territorial Development in five books; held an international architectural competition for three building models: low-rise - for rural areas, where houses with pitched roofs are recommended, mid-rise - blocks of no higher than 6 floors, and the central one - a block of buildings of different heights with a dominant tower. Here, the division of facades, the location of public squares, front gardens, parking lots have already been thought out. In general, the city in these Principles looks humane and dignified. There is only one "but" - neoclassicism and neo-art-deco did not get here again.

And the city does not work without them. Another example, when New Urbanism does not work without style, is the Skolkovo Innograd. His plan of five villages is made by AREP according to the rules of New Urbanism, and the architecture is all modernist, and there is nothing to do with the historic city or the classic houses of Harvard professors there.

The strategy of Sergei Tchoban, outlined in his joint book with Vladimir Sedov “30:70. Architecture as a Balance of Power”is closer to the essence of a traditional city, because the facades in it have finally become the subject of close scrutiny. Sergei Tchoban wondered why people do not like post-war brutal modernist buildings and came to the conclusion that articulation and detailing of facades are the most important parameters for a city. The essence of his strategy is that sculptural, iconic buildings can be made in any style, the main thing is that their number does not exceed 30 percent in the city. And background buildings should have detailed surfaces, deep chiaroscuro, traditional structure with cornices for the eye to catch on to. The rest of the principles outlined in the book are close to New Urbanism. Sergei Tchoban is not a supporter of order architecture; Art Deco is closer to him. In his projects, for example, such a large-scale one as VTB Arena Park, Sergei Tchoban embodied the principles outlined in the book. Together with the modernist author Vladimir Plotkin, they created an example of a building with richly detailed, nobly aging surfaces, at the same time corresponding to the scale of the wide traffic flows of Leningradsky Prospekt.

Urban improvement is New Urbanism minus traditional architecture. The landscaping has clung to the ground and will not rise to the facades in any way. The city's layouts have almost become traditional, but the face of the street is still rough and utilitarian. Primitive towers and boxes are being built everywhere. In the words of Vladimir Veidle, perhaps these utilitarian buildings do not offend artistic taste, but this does not mean that they feed it.

Recently, bricks have begun to be used even for renovation towers. Brick is a durable material, sometimes man-made, creating a pattern and relief on the facade, even with the most primitive masonry. That is, New Urbanism lifted its head from the ground and climbs up. Little by little, little by little, from the back door, he begins to influence the facades.

It also penetrates through the facade structure. Masters such as Sergei Tchoban tried to apply the principles of historical urban architecture to mass modernist buildings. In the residential complex "Microgorod in the forest" 14-storey buildings are a front of short, 20-30 meters long facades - different in color and materials, drawn by different architects. A similar method was applied by the architects of DNK ag in Rassvet LOFT Studio - several historic houses with pitched roofs within one brick-loft facade. In the project for the Dom.rf competition, this technique is also often encountered. The Citizen Studio Archbureau won the 1st Youth Biennale in Kazan with an ideal quarter, applying the same historical principle of alternating different facades within a 250 m long façade front (like the quarters of Kutuzovsky Prospekt, but without a warrant). As you can see, the technique that Quinlan Terry used in London's Riverside in 2003, and Filippov in the Italian Quarter in 2003, also penetrated modernism. The structure that inspired the architects is the historic city.

So, the layout, street profile, landscaping, brick surfaces are already there; the historical structure of the facade is slowly leaking out, it remains to add an order or at least anthropomorphism in order for the city to be humane at the pedestrian level and a little higher.

Of course, the ideal of the city is Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, but large ensembles of Soviet neoclassicism, which clearly have not exhausted their potential, are also interesting. They look very romantic in the landscape of the city and nature. Moreover, the craftsmen of the 1930-1950s knew how to work with the composition of a high-rise building, they seemed to be building a city from several registers. That is, traditional buildings at the level of five to six floors are a register perceived by a person, and there can be more utilitarian floors higher, but they should be moved deeper from the red line, not overhanging or crushing. Not that I thought such a two-register city is ideal. But when I talk about Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, they start talking to me about the economy. Well, if you really need to build high, then there is a two-register system. Compared to the monsters of today's mass construction, this is a way out.

The beauty of a traditional city is a self-evident truth. There are people in Russia who can design a traditional city; there are also examples of cities built. It remains to develop books of exemplary buildings, like those that were created under Catherine II, Alexander I and Nicholas I, or like typical projects of the 1950s (these areas are still loved by the townspeople). From which it would be clear how streets, squares, houses should look like. Train young architects in the regions. If in the national project "Housing and Urban Environment", according to which they plan to build 600,000,000 m2, at least half of the projects were related to the traditional city, public funds would have been spent well, and from our era the descendants would have received more than disposable houses. after 30 years, requiring demolition, and monuments of urban planning.