Zoya Vasilievna Kharitonova was one of a group of students who at the end of the 1950s worked at the Moscow Architectural Institute on a diploma on the urban planning concept of the city of Krytovo, Krasnodar Territory. The city was viewed as an example, and the group later became known as the NER Group, or the New Settlement Element, a project that became legendary in many ways, somewhat visionary for the history of Soviet urban planning.
In 1966, the authors of the NER - Alexei Gutnov, Ilya Lezhava, Andrei Baburov, Stanislav Sadovsky, Zoya Kharitonova and sociologist Georgy Dumenton - published the book A New Element of Settlement: On the Way to a New City.
“Back in 1975, when no one uttered such words as“comfortable environment, infrastructure, yard spaces”, Zoya Vasilievna was the author of the project of a residential complex in Sokolniki, where she provided everything that future residents, their children and grandchildren need for convenience and comfort: family cafes, shops, a dairy kitchen, a post office, a hairdresser,”says the website of the Union of Moscow Architects. Since 1973, Zoya Vasilievna worked at the General Planning Institute, in the early 1980s she was engaged in the project of the Old Arbat as a pedestrian street.
You can get acquainted with the stories of Zoya Vasilievna and her life and works in a recent interview with Strelka Mag and in the article Yandex. Zen.
Bright memory.
