Translated material
MOSCOW, WHICH DOESN'T EXIST AT ALL
MOSCOW OBSERVER
Twenty years ago, Moscow was clearly divided into old and new. The old one was a stronghold of the struggle against the Soviet regime. In the gas tanks of bulldozers demolishing temples and mansions, the intellectuals poured sugar, sitting in the kitchen, singing about the Old Arbat, and ...
Twenty years ago, Moscow was clearly divided into old and new. The old one was a stronghold of the struggle against the Soviet regime. The intellectuals poured sugar into the gas tanks of bulldozers demolishing churches and mansions, sitting in the kitchen, singing about the Old Arbat, and VOOPIK pounded historical names and dates on bureaucratic tables.
Today's Muscovites are apolitical, non-religious, they do not break their hats to the authorities, but prefer to admire the "environment". And the environment is life, which cannot be imagined either without new buildings or without the townsfolk who create the atmosphere, style, and individuality of a Moscow corner. Such a life is not a struggle, but a pleasure that requires serenity, stability, leisure. Weekend walks at Moskultproga, the website The Moscow That Doesn't Exist, the almanac Bolshoy Stolniy Zhurnal—all these projects communicate vividly and interestedly with Moscow—many-sided and many-headed. Not old, but rather outgoing. Without age, but with a whole Chinese pulse palette - fast, slow, deep, viscous rhythms. Choose and live, turn into health, as the mentioned projects do.
Picked up the "BSZh" - and ... go ahead, walk along Ostozhenka with Rustam Rakhmatullin. I opened the guidebook "Moscow that does not exist", released by the participants of the project of the same name" - and ... plunged into memories. And he returned back to the BSZh, the heading "100-personal magazine", where the memoirs of famous Muscovites were published. You go on a Moscow cultural walk, and you find yourself ... in a performance with poetry, music, lively conversations with the "natives" - and again in the "BSZh", to articles about Moscow courtyards, cinema, fashion.
The words “restoration” and “protected object” have almost disappeared from the language of Moscow restorers. Instead of them, “reconstruction” and “object of protection” are heard more and more. Such an object can be a platband, acoustics, or even a “red line”. Moscow has become a landscape consisting of "views" and "angles" - an object of "foreign", surprised contemplation. No wonder foreign organizations for the protection of architectural heritage (MAPS) became interested in the capital, and when the participants of the "MKN" ended up in a police station for an excursion near the "Warm Trading Rows", the law enforcement officers did not find anything smarter than to reproach the guys for being "not local" .
Instead of Moscow, old and new, instead of “us” and “them,” pleasant people appeared, traveling in pleasant places.
Adrian KRUPCHANSKY (interview to the REGNUM agency): “We want to make a historical, cultural project. We set ourselves the goal of making old Moscow fashionable, making it prestigious to be interested in history... Our audience is very nice people... Of all ages, completely different in financial situation, but these are intelligent, smart people... It's very nice to see such faces.
Sergey NIKITIN (interview with the same agency): “I would be happy to organize a Moscow walk around Luzhkov's Moscow if a person appears who is able to tell about it seriously and correctly from an architectural and cultural point of view. There are ... very successful buildings. Take a walk at least along Bakuninskaya Street, here, near the Electrozavodsky Palace, a neoclassical-style office building and a luxurious garage were recently built ... There are areas in which nothing was demolished, but it became unpleasant to walk there, and now, on the contrary, on Krasnoarmeyskaya, in the Airport area , there is not a single recognized masterpiece, but how good it is there!
Having turned into an art object, Moscow lost its former connection with the customer, began to go wild at auctions and give from the heart.
For example, the "Big Capital Magazine" looks like a chic "gloss" for rich foreigners. Meanwhile, this is a departmental body of the Moscow Heritage Committee. Not an ounce of advertising, and free distribution in the White Chambers on Prechistenka.
The site "Moscow that does not exist" was made by the authors using the money earned in a commercial organization in their free time. After the incident with the Warm Rows, the Moscow Heritage Committee, represented by its new head Valery Shevchuk, invited them to participate in the work of the public council under the department. But this is what Adrian Krupchansky says to this: “We are like Mitki - we don’t want to defeat anyone, respectively, and nothing can be done with us. Do you want to cooperate with us? Great! We are ready". One of the authors of the guide, Alexander Mozhaev, said directly that this is a book about love. And Max Fry in the preface called it a "spiritual séance" with old Moscow. The guide only takes the reader from the Prechistensky Gates to the Arbat Gates, but the guys intend to continue the project.
The most interesting three-volume work by Alexei Komech, an art critic and the most famous and uncompromising defender of Moscow, “Architectural Landscapes of Russia”, the idea of which is continued by all the above-mentioned publications, is unlikely to quickly find its reader: it costs about 5,000 rubles.
A lot of art projects revolve around the new art Moscow. This is the Silver Camera, in love with the capital, and the revived Flea Market on Tishinka, and documentary masterpieces about Moscow on night television, and the exposition in the Pushkin Museum of Moscow Art Nouveau photographs by Katya Golitsyna, and through and through the theatrical anniversary exhibition of architect Mikhail Belov ...
But as soon as Moscow realized itself in a new kind of environment, atmosphere, game, to build another opposition to the monocentric and static Peter, it was in this form that it began to disappear.
Local historians equate the pace of current demolitions with the pace of the thirties: entire blocks, embankments are disappearing, the appearance of boulevards is changing ...
In the total number of victims, the little that can be saved by the forces of the public that has woken up from hibernation is drowning.
In mid-September, the Museum of Architecture hosted the first forum of public projects in the field of protecting the cultural heritage of Moscow.
The public saw a new martyrology “Chronicle of the Disappearance of Old Moscow. 1990-2006", numbering 648 dead monuments. The book, with the thoroughness of a forensic expert, brings to the attention of the place, time and nature of the crime committed, placing responsibility on the "owners of the city".
Konstantin Mikhailov's article "Lessons of the Moscow pogrom" reveals the logic and psychology of demolitions - from revolutionary "cleansings" to bourgeois "remakes".
The black and white design does not fit in with the monochrome spiritualism of the MKN, nor with the retro collages of the BSZH. Moscow "played". So much so that the smell of burning is felt in its enchanting atmosphere.
Fedor FOKIN, "Moscow is losing its temper" ("BSZh"):
“Undoubtedly, the political nature of Moscow hinders the development of polycentrism in it. <...> All more or less large-scale Moscow buildings tend to "see" the Kremlin. As long as this initial situation persists, no engineering schemes will help the capital, Moscow will fall into itself, as if into a hole, build new roads and stand in traffic jams ...
We need to build Moscow as a city of cities, which is what it really is. Only in this case the total pressure on the center will be overcome...
The ambitions of new developers will get new addresses. The monuments of the historical zone of Moscow (those that still survived) will have some chance of salvation.
Konstantin MIKHAILOV, "Chronicle":
“In the old days they said: “Scratch a Russian and you will see a Tatar” ... Now it’s the other way around: scratch another “original” Moscow monument, pretending to be old, you will see concrete or fresh brick. Authenticity is out of brackets ... ".
Aleksey KOMECH: “Over the 70 years of Soviet power, we have lost a sense of authenticity, respect for the document. We have enough xerox. And then there was capitalism superimposed on the remnants of communism - and the question of money arose at the forefront. Reconstruction is always more expensive than demolition followed by “reconstruction”… On the periphery, monuments are dying because of poverty, in Moscow because of money.”
Sergey NIKITIN (interview with REGNUM): “It is obvious to us that the tolerant attitude towards the demolition of monument buildings among the majority of Russians is due to the extremely low culture of society. Until respect for antiquity is assimilated from childhood like a multiplication table, we will lose our heritage.
Yulia MEZENTSEVA, co-author of the book “Moscow That Doesn't Exist” (at the Bilingua club on September 7): “While we were writing the book, some of the monuments were demolished. So you yourself will have to make notes “no” in the guidebook.
The forum further clarified the situation and tried to formulate its immediate tasks.
It turns out that in Moscow there is no single list of monuments and the authorities have the right to exclude any building from the register without consulting experts. Public availability of the lists is out of the question: they are hunted by builders and developers.
But the employees of VOOPIK and the Moscow Society for the Preservation of Architectural Heritage (MAPS) managed to collect something. And these lists will be published on the Internet. Maybe this will stop someone?
There is no in Moscow, no matter how wild it may seem, and a city tourist map. But now MAPS has released her doppelgänger. "Moscow under threat" is provided with an epitaph: "On every street in the center of the capital there is a house that will soon disappear." Voentorg is no longer on the map, but there is still the Bolshoi Theater and Detsky Mir…
According to the law, “a set of objects of protection” is subject to restoration. Neither the volume nor the proportions of the building can be preserved, let alone the environment or the urban landscape. The object of protection becomes the object of manipulation, leaving no stone unturned from the monument, and a motive for the most daring reconstructions.
But there would be hope for a talented solution in this, if it were not for the obligation of the investor to give half of the restored areas to the state. And there would be hope for the preservation of the city's appearance if travel agencies patented Moscow's routes and resisted construction revelry.
As a result, instead of “restoration” and “reconstruction”, the purely Moscow word “reconstruction” is increasingly heard. That is, the monuments are cloned. Including quite still alive. For the sole sake of money, buildings that are by no means in disrepair are being “recreated”, but quite strong buildings (as happened with Voentorg and the Moskva Hotel).
For the same reasons, the monument is inflated like a soap bubble - up, down, to the sides, leaving "some resemblance" to the original.
Clean and washed remodeled Moscow, from which the townsfolk are delighted, resembles the physiognomy of a drunk in the morning mirror. Evil tongues recall "a man who looks like the Attorney General" and the television series "Don't Be Born Beautiful."
Security legislation needs serious amendments. They will be discussed at the forum and passed to the deputies.
In search of the owner of the monuments, the forum turned to the Orthodox Church. Is not the appearance of the old city dear to the hierarchs?
Rustam Rakhmatullin invited Moscow restorers to perform the ritual of re-signing the Venice Charter of Restorers. Will everyone decide?
We looked back at the European experience. There, the state helps investors, without claiming any space, develops children's local history programs that allow not only to feel the style of their area, but also to participate in its restoration. And the society protects its cultural values with business plans to adapt the monument to the needs of citizens.
“In the center of Edinburgh, you descend into the basement and find yourself in a multi-storey old city, carefully excavated and preserved. In the center of Barcelona, you can wander underground through the remains of a settlement from the time of the Roman Empire.
Near the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow there is a concrete dungeon of the new Manege, a remodeled roof of the historic Manege, wastelands on the site of the Voentorg and the Moskva Hotel, a remake on the site of the Warm Rows on Ilyinka. Feel, as they say, the difference” (Konstantin Mikhailov, “Chronicle”).
Adrian Krupchansky has a wonderful idea - to make a computer stereo album of Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. If we bring it to the point of absurdity, we will have a unique chance to play "Moscow, which does not exist at all."