City Hall on the dome

The capital's authorities are hastily revising the architectural projects of Yuri Luzhkov

Acting Mayor of Moscow Vladimir Resin, whom no one seriously considered as a real successor to Yuri Luzhkov just a week ago, is increasingly establishing himself in his new position. Yesterday, Mr. Resin held the first meeting of the public urban planning council under the mayor of Moscow after the resignation of Mr. Luzhkov, at which he continued to shock the public, who were not accustomed to a real dialogue with officials. Only two days passed after the proposal to move the monument to Peter I, and the acting mayor not only once again confirmed his intention to abandon the project of the depository of the Moscow Kremlin museums on Borovitsky Hill, which was criticized by the public, but also announced the freezing of the construction of the atrium (dome ceiling) in the Provision warehouses. Although the attitude of experts towards this project was not always negative.

Judging by the decisions that were made yesterday during a discussion between capital officials and representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia, the old team of Moscow managers led by Mr. Resin, left without their patron, intends to seriously part with the usual style of making urban planning decisions - in any case, for the period of "anarchy". As art critic Alexei Klimenko, a member of the Public Council under the Chief Architect of Moscow, who was present at yesterday’s meeting, told Vremya Novostey, “officials and the public came to the final conclusion to put an end to the old depository project and choose a new one by announcing a competition.”

At the same time, the acting mayor tried to present the verdict as pathetically as possible. Mr. Resin called the old depository project a “monster” and a “provincial sanatorium.” The acting mayor fully agreed with the critics and stated that the new project should be significantly smaller in volume and fit organically into Borovitskaya Square.

Vladimir Resin did not forget to repent. “At this point, if there is a sensible project, it seems to me that we will solve the problem, and the public will be happy. And the project that we released earlier is our mistake,” emphasized the head of the capital’s construction complex. Let us recall that the old depository project was harshly criticized by the public, representatives of the Arkhnadzor movement even wrote a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev about this, and a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Marat Gelman, addressed the Prosecutor General’s Office.

However, the rejection of the architectural heritage of Yuri Luzhkov did not end with criticism of the depository project. The resonance that his proposals to move the monument to Peter I and to suspend the construction of the depository was not enough for Mr. Resin. Another architectural project that Yuri Luzhkov personally supported and which his former subordinates refused to approve yesterday was the construction of an atrium on the territory of the architectural monument “Provision Warehouses” on Zubovsky Boulevard. This project involved the construction of a glass roof, which was supposed to unite three existing buildings of the Museum of the History of Moscow and one new one. “The atrium is not needed, but the underground space can be used by placing toilets, wardrobes, and utilities here,” noted the acting chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin.

Mr. Kuzmin also proposed building an additional exit from the Park Kultury metro station directly to the museum building, which will be located in the Provision Warehouses. A city-wide parking lot will be built nearby, under the Garden Ring. According to a member of the Public Chamber, architect Vyacheslav Glazychev, if the decision to freeze construction on Borovitsky Hill was dictated by common sense, then the refusal to implement the project in the Provision Warehouses was emphatically populist. “The project itself is quite decent, so I think that this solution is temporary,” Mr. Glazychev noted in an interview with a Vremya Novostey correspondent.

Vyacheslav KOZLOV