Alexey Chadayev. Sum of technology

Sum of technology
Why are water parks collapsing?

Alexey Chadayev

Publication date: February 17, 2004

On May 20 , 1474, the almost completed Assumption Cathedral, planned by Ivan III as the largest in the country, collapsed in the Kremlin. After this, the authors of the project, the Pskov masters Krivtsov and Myshkin, were removed from construction, and the architect Fioravanti, the author of the Assumption Cathedral, which stands in the Kremlin to this day, was summoned to Moscow. The fundamental technological innovations used by Fioravanti are iron ties in masonry, floors only one brick thick (with very thick load-bearing walls), but most importantly, a special plant for the production of light large-sized bricks, made for the construction of the temple. The engineering tasks for the construction of the country's main cathedral required materials and solutions that were not available in the tradition of Russian building culture itself.

On February 14, 2004, 630 years later, the roof of the temple of consumer civilization collapsed in Moscow - Europe's largest water park, Transvaal, built three years earlier. Specialists and ordinary people who have suddenly become engineers argue until they are hoarse about the versions - the collapse of the dome (due to snow or settling moisture), deformation of the foundation , even a terrorist attack . The question is actually political: who is to blame - the Turks who built the building, the Russian architects who designed it, the city hall officials who controlled the construction, or the managers who operate the complex?

We can wait for the conclusions of the commissions, but it is already obvious that the experts’ answer will not suit anyone. Because there were many reasons: somewhere SNiPs and operating rules were violated, somewhere there were design errors, somewhere a certain law came into play according to which it is better not to build entertainment centers on the site of former churches and rural cemeteries; These are all very important factors. But most likely the violations were minor and did not go beyond the limits; design errors are quite typical for the construction bacchanalia of the Luzhkov era, and the bones of the dead are not only under the Transvaal, but also under tens and hundreds of Moscow houses... The main lesson of the collapsed water park, however, should be different.

The problem is that construction culture and, more broadly, engineering culture is a whole complex of written and unwritten traditions, rules, norms, customs and techniques that have developed over a long time. It always has its own horizons of application, a “library of constructive solutions” tailored to those tasks that are solved within the framework of the traditional way of life. That is, engineering culture is very strongly connected with culture as a whole, with typical forms of everyday social life. For example, if there are rivers and cities located on both sides of the rivers, it means that a culture of building bridges is developing. If people have a need in winter to go grocery shopping to some place where there is a wide selection of these products, then the engineering task arises of building a large indoor market; and they are built with those same reinforced concrete domes. If business centers are created in cities, within which land prices are sharply rising, this means there is a demand for the construction of skyscrapers.

At the same time, any going beyond the horizons of traditional problems, solving an atypical problem, building a complex object that has no analogues is a serious, responsible matter, a new step in engineering culture, requiring “science”, all kinds of engineering thought - and not only for the solution itself tasks, but also for the purpose of integrating this new task into the existing “library of solutions”. This was the construction of the Ostankino Tower - a structure that had no analogues, but with a complex of engineering solutions, even innovative ones, this construction is firmly rooted in the Russian engineering tradition and relies on them.

What is a water park in this world? This is an engineering task that has never been attempted in Russia before: an indoor complex of a huge area, implying intense evaporation of water (much more intense than in a traditional pool), and even with a domed roof. In cultural terms, the uniqueness of the task is due to the fact that never before in Russia has there been a need to organize mass winter “advanced” recreation on the water.

To give an idea of ​​the scale of the problem, here is one good example. At one time, sewerage treatment facilities were designed in Norilsk - initially according to a standard design, with concrete floors. When it came to engineering calculations of heating and ventilation, it turned out that in order to comply with the design parameters for the operation of concrete floors, a ventilation system is needed, which costs exactly the same amount in construction as the structures themselves. Moscow, of course, is not Norilsk - the minimum temperature level here is different. But the sewage that has time to cool down in the pipes is by no means heated chlorinated water from the pool.

In this sense, the main crime of the Moscow construction complex in the form in which it developed under Luzhkov is that it does not solve problems “according to science”, but imports ready-made solutions from other “technological cultures”, without bothering to translate them into Russian "engineering language" He builds his “unique objects” exactly as they would be built in Turkey or Korea, making only the inevitable adjustment for climate in the calculations (and even then, it turns out, not always). However, the problem is not limited to climate; There are still a lot of inconsistencies, starting with the design characteristics of the building materials used and ending with the accepted methods of drawing up and reading engineering documentation - what the national technological culture as a whole is made of.

As a result, the Moscow construction complex works wonders, in a matter of months erecting huge buildings with the help of Turks and Moldovans that have neither analogues nor predecessors in the Russian engineering tradition. But the mirages built in half an hour collapse, and not so much even because of design errors, but because of rejection by the environment at the level of compatibility. It's like installing good and modern programs on your computer that are not adapted to your operating system: problems are almost always guaranteed.

Building “wonders of the world” is a sublime, wonderful task. But for a miracle to become a real miracle, and not a mirage for a short moment, it must be built the way the wonders of the world are built: with the best minds and hands, slowly and without records, for many years. If the water park in Yasenevo had been built wisely, it would have been built on stilts, with a light plastic dome, with all the necessary rigidity rings and powerful ventilation - and this dome would not have collapsed even in an earthquake. And it would be possible to take excursions from students of construction universities, showing them a unique technological solution.

But for this you need to be able and want to do miracles. Real miracles, not Mephistophelian tricks for extracting money out of thin air. Such as the Brooklyn Bridge, for example. Built in the traditions of the American building school... by a Russian engineer.

...Aristotle Fioravanti, having come to Russia to rub his nose in with Russian masters, did this. While his assistants were building a special ram to gouge out the remains of the walls from the previous construction site, he went as a tourist along the Golden Ring - to Rostov, Vladimir and Suzdal. To those same masters; study as they have built so far. And therefore, his temple, standing in the center of the Kremlin, not only solved the “engineering problem” of creating a large closed five-domed structure, but also remained to this day the semantic center of the Kremlin ensemble - Russian of Russian churches.