Light rearrangement

Moscow authorities are developing new urban lighting standards

Despite the obvious workload of the city committee for architecture and urban planning with construction projects themselves, the head of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture, Alexander Kuzmin, is not averse to developing regulations for the lighting design of city-wide space, and most importantly, monitoring compliance with new style solutions. At least, judging by Mr. Kuzmin’s speech yesterday at the regular meeting of the Moscow government in support of the concept of a unified light-color environment of the city presented by the Department of Fuel and Energy, it is he who claims to be the chief lighting engineer. “They don’t wear it like that anywhere anymore,” Mr. Kuzmin complained in tailor’s slang about outdated methods of illuminating historical buildings. In his opinion, from now on any construction projects and planning of urban areas must include a “light component.”

It is obvious that the metropolitan metropolis is not distinguished by the harmony of architectural lighting and illuminated advertising. As the document’s developers note, often utilitarian lighting, advertising and lighting using yellow sodium lamps “clogs” architectural monuments and disrupts the life of citizens. Thus, according to the head of the fuel and energy department, Evgeniy Sklyarov, human fatigue even from passive perception of “visual chaos,” not to mention drivers who constantly strain their attention, amounts to up to 25% of the total fatigue of the day. In addition, lighting solutions, in pursuit of commercial interest, are often used to the detriment of the aesthetic perception of historical buildings. For example, the dynamic color advertising of the Mosenergo building on Raushskaya Embankment, according to the developers, disrupts the usual panorama viewed from the southern part of Red Square, and the “light-color chaos of shop windows, advertising and architectural lighting” is observed in the perspectives of Tverskaya Street and New Arbat.

“But we know how to work with architectural ensembles, reflections in water, we can demonstrate panoramas of the city using illumination, create festive lighting,” Mr. Kuzmin assured his colleagues of the Moskomarkhitektura’s readiness to work with illumination. --Residential areas should be illuminated from above and along the ground so that citizens feel safe. You will be surprised, but even industrial facilities - successfully illuminated cooling towers and power lines - create an absolutely fantastic visual effect.” According to him, the committee has already prepared a bill on the artistic design of the city, which is undergoing preliminary approvals in the Moscow City Duma, and the presented document is a necessary “component of its implementation.”

The concept provides, in particular, for the improvement and creation of more than 150 light panoramas of the evening appearance of both the historical center of the capital (within the boundaries of Kamer-Kollezhsky Val) and the peripheral zone of the city (from the outer side of the Third Transport Ring to the city boundaries, including the Moscow Ring Road). In total, according to the city’s fuel and energy department, about 60% of objects of special significance need architectural lighting. Along radial and ring highways and at the entrances to the city, at least 300 objects stand out from the light-color environment, and approximately 100 buildings on the embankments of the Moskva River outside the center and city-wide reservoirs do not have architectural lighting. The document provides for the widespread replacement of sodium lamps in utilitarian lighting installations with white light sources (LEDs). At the same time, in general, the concept, as the developers assured, will not go beyond the traditional funding of illumination of city buildings from the budget (about 50 million rubles per year). But both officials and deputies consider the development of regulations for a unified light environment to be a priority, which will oblige business entities to take into account a unified light space when developing building lighting. “We plan to have special color and light passports for each building, which will indicate the preferred method of illuminating a particular object,” noted Alexander Kuzmin. Stepan Orlov, Chairman of the Commission on Urban Affairs and Housing Policy of the Moscow City Duma, agreed that when building and developing the lighting design of storefronts, for example, a new store, owners must take into account city standards and lighting colors. “But the system for issuing permits for lighting of buildings and structures in the city must be transparent, efficient and non-corrupt,” he warned architects against abuse. In general, according to the Moscow authorities, the concept adopted yesterday even deserves the development of a separate city target program.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO