Chief architect of the capital Sergey Kuznetsov: Moscow is inconvenient to use

The main architect of the capital - about the zones of comfort, the Luzhkovsky heritage, the need to study and the influence of Muscovites on the development of the city

The main architect of the capital - about the zones of comfort, the Luzhkovsky heritage, the need to study and the influence of Muscovites on the development of the city

Because the new mayor has come, or because the new class who felt his strength wants a different habitat, but something completely changed in the atmosphere does not allow the native city more, as a stranger. Muscovites became seriously interested in the development of Moscow. In this sense, the appointment to the post of chief architect of the capital of the ambitious and pro-Western thinking 35-year-old Sergei Kuznetsov was an justified move from the new Moscow government. Because he will have to engage in not so much facades (although they, too) as the organization of urban spaces and people inhabiting them. About his, sometimes controversial, vision of this process, Sergei Kuznetsov tells the correspondent of Novaya Gazeta.

- Today's Moscow is a ball of urban problems. Which one do you think the most acute?

- Forced movement of a large number of people. Even if the transport worked brilliantly, people who go from the outskirts to the center and vice versa every day - the problem itself. Unlike Europe, in Moscow there is neither a tradition nor economic prerequisites to live, to work and have fun in the same place.

It is clear that we need to build roads, a metro, so that people who cannot refuse such trips - but they will still remain - did it in comfort and spent less time on the road. But the main solution to the problem I see in the demotivation of people to movements. That is, you need to make sure that they like to live, have fun and work at the most close distance. A person lives in the North-East District, ideally he should implement all his regular needs there. For a trip to the Bolshoi Theater or to the Pushkin Museum, he will still be forced to get out to the center, but this should not be a daily necessity.

- Everyone wants the city to be not only “permeable”, but also good .

- Another big Moscow problem, in my opinion, is a lack of comfort zones, places where people feel good. Today, for many people, the comfort zone is limited to their own apartment, at best, the place of work and the machine. That is, places in a city where they would like to spend time, unfortunately, is very very very. There are some pleasant restaurants for them, shops, shopping complexes, but the city itself is not such an obvious place of comfort. This happens for various reasons-due to the inorganization of parking, due to the fact that you can’t walk around the city. A very small number of the first floors of houses is given to public places where it is good and pleasant to spend time. The percentage of local places of work, public places of “walking distance” today is not comparable with the needs of the city.

In a convenient city, different functions of space should be evenly distributed in areas, streets, squares. The combination of different types of places allows you to create comfort.

The new organization of space could change a lot. The culture of food outside the house creates jobs, expands the tax base, but it is formed when it is convenient for people to do this. If you can go to a restaurant only in the city center, and then you have to go to the house for two hours, of course, this is inconvenient and is unlikely to become a daily ritual for a person.

- You are talking about the low quality of the organization of the Moscow space. But after all, the quality of architecture, urban design here is also mainly behind the line of good and evil.

- This problem is not basic, although very acute. The fact that Moscow, with all its budgets and investments, did not become the center of world modern architecture, and some of the recently built turned into its shame, of course, egregious disgrace.

Beautiful architecture is a powerful stimulus for tourism, because the faceless and banal city is not interesting to anyone. A city in which there are masterpieces of world architecture are proud of its inhabitants. Therefore, if we want Muscovites to admire their city, we will have to learn to build well. This is a separate and very important task that needs to be engaged in architects working in the city. But there is a no edge of cosmetic works - signs, backlight, outer advertising.

- What are the possibilities in the reorganization of urban space in Moscow, because the city is quite densely built up? How are you going to create a comfortable public space inside the “old Moscow” or is it more likely about new territories where you can not repeat errors?

- Of course, most of the city is built up and built, unfortunately, so that it is inconvenient to use. But I still believe that if we accept the right development strategy, there are opportunities to make Moscow much more friendly. Now we are developing a general plan that will determine the directions of the development of the city. It is based on the understanding that the microdistrict is not just a place where a person spends the night, and then leaves from there to work. The man lives there. And in life, in addition to sleep, there are, for example, social needs - in work, communication, rest that would be good to satisfy closer to the place of residence. We want the city not to be divided by functions, as it was in the traditional Soviet urban planning - there is a living zone, here is a business one - so that, like in a pie, all the ingredients are mixed. Under such an organization of space, we would rebuild both transport and the environmental concept of the city. A person does not have to go to Gorky Park or Sokolniki, if he has well -equipped green zones under his side.

- One of the historical successes of Moscow is that, with all the social heterogeneity of the city, we do not have a ghetto - dirty, destroyed and life -threatening slums. Do we have a chance to maintain this advantage and what to do for this?

- It seems to me that the principle of mixed buildings is a chance to prevent dangerous degradation of the city outskirts. The housing stock is breaking, sooner or later some will have to be changed to others. Any chance to build something correct in sleeping neighborhoods will be used. A good restaurant, a children's center, a cinema ... - everything that will add to the area of ​​life must be given. And if some organization wants to continue to build, for example, new volumes of housing, this must be suspended. In the center of the city, you need to build hotels so that the tourists have where to stop. And to continue to build up offices there, the places of trade and entertainment are not worth it, there are so many of them there.

But if the current trend in the development of territories continued, I think we would inevitably come to a fall on the periphery of the cost of housing, its quality. Very poor, overpopulated quarters would have appeared in Moscow, where people rent apartments for a penny. These quarters would become more and more marginal. The composition of the population would change more and more there, increasing stratification. Mixing the functions of space, making it more convenient, it seems to me that we will achieve the necessary mixing of people, we get a more homogeneous environment of a good middle class.

- Is this a social mission of architecture?

- The architect occupies the most important social position. The concept of urbanism is wider than urban planning, because it explores what social portrait of the city we will receive, making certain design decisions.

- How will the giant Moscow industrial zones change?

- Now we have work on a large project, ZIL, these are 260 hectares. Here we want to achieve everything in this territory - and entertainment centers, and sports, offices, housing, and social objects, and culture. This territory is located in the midnight zone of the city, all types of buildings are desirable there, but in balance with each other.

In turn, if such territories will develop correctly, they will create gravitational zones around themselves in an existing urban development. Residents of adjacent microdistricts will understand that if they had to go to the center before, now they can find such services near the house. And new, well -developed territories will become local centers.

There is a clear dependence in Moscow: the farther from the center you work or live, the worse you have real estate, worse services. The closer to the center, the more opportunities. The situation negatively affects the real estate market - because builders and developers compete not for the quality and beauty of the houses, but for a place in the city. As soon as you got the right to be built in the right place, you do not care what the object being built will be. Whatever you build, competitors, due to the limited offer, you do not have. And if we create equal conditions for comfort on the periphery and in the center, we will have to take care of competitive advantages. If there is no difference between building in Butovo or in the center, services, transport, work will be also available, people will not need to remove or buy real estate from you. You cease to be a monopolist on the good. We will have to look for other means of competition. And here we will seriously talk about the quality of architecture. Builders and developers themselves will be interested in it. Good architecture will not have to be imposed by force. They will strive for it themselves, seeing in it a tool for the struggle for the consumer.

- The reign of the previous Moscow mayor led to the fact that the historical center of the city was catastrophically injured.

- Well, I do not agree that the historical center of Moscow is destroyed. Yes, there are a faulty things in Luzhkov’s heritage, but there are not very many of them. The main percentage of irritation from the loss of historical heritage has developed, in my opinion, due to the ugliness of new buildings that appeared on the site of demolished quarters. People, scared of architectural monsters, begin to look for salvation in the struggle for the old. And when a good new building appears, no one recalls where it arose. In such large, long -existing cities as Moscow or St. Petersburg, buildings built at the site of demolitions, there are a lot. The current Isaac's Cathedral is the fourth version of the temple. But no one sighs how wonderful the previous buildings were, because the new one was better every time. And the Winter Palace, the Admiralty also arose not on the wastelands. But their predecessors are not lamented, because the quality of new structures is amazing.

If at the site of the Moscow Hotel they simply built a new building of very good quality, a modern masterpiece, believe me, people have even forgotten such a significant building as the Stalin Moscow. And now they see a bad fake in front of them and regret the lost original. This is a psychologically very important point, so I believe that it is necessary to raise the quality of the new architecture, competently embed it into the context of the old, to make an architectural event out of their neighborhood.

I see more the problem is that new architectural freaks appeared at the site of the old development. Not all demolished buildings were masterpieces. There are really lost pearls - Voentorg, Moscow Hotel ... But the question of what we get in return is much more important to me than the question, what we lose.

- But the Luzhkovsky monsters are already built. It is unlikely that they will demolish the shopping center on Manezhnaya Square or rebuild Voentorg. Are there any ways to somehow brighten up architectural tastelessness?

- The sum of actions at the construction site is always a demolition. Someday this will happen with the Luzhkovsky heritage. This is not to say that tomorrow everything built under Luzhkov will be demolished. Moreover, for some time in Moscow they will continue to build poorly. So far, we have very few qualified architects and builders. If we achieve that there will be more of them, that we will massively build, I will consider this to be the greatest conquest. But for starters, we will be more attentive to monitor what appears in Moscow. We will most improve the quality of architecture. Each environment we have a discussion of projects, a department for working with architects who will engage in their education is created, to promote world experience. We bought a huge library in architecture, and we use it. This is a lot of work, it has just begun, but I hope that in a few years we will see its results at Moscow construction sites.

-Different cities decided in different ways a contradiction: how to preserve the historical heritage and still give the city the opportunity to develop, be modern. How does the path of Moscow see?

- All valuable in the architectural heritage of the city, of course, must be preserved and the more, the better. The historical quarter in the city is a valuable thing, but we must understand that Moscow was arranged by a manor type. Behind the facades of historical buildings, farm buildings, sheds, outbuildings are hidden. Something in the depths of the yards can be demolished.

But if the development forms the face of the quarter, it makes sense to protect it, even if it is not recognized as an architectural monument. The city is alive and interesting to its cultural layers, the opportunity to plunge into history. But even in Rome and Venice, new construction is underway. This is also normal. The question is where, what and how they build.

- There is a hope that there will no longer be such total demolitions that the Arbat, Ostozhenka, Yakimanka will no longer, that the new leadership has a more thoughtful attitude towards the city?

- This is not only hope. A change in attitude to the historical environment is already happening. True, there are inertial processes launched even under the previous leadership, the obligations that appeared before the arrival of our team, which is difficult to stop because the money has already been involved. For example, there are huge unfinished ruins on Dolgorukovskaya. It is clear that the only way to deal with them is to finally finish them. But, I hope, the decisions of the historical heritage made by us will be balanced and thoughtful.

-Will people now have more right to influence the development process in the microdistrict, or will they still learn about the decisions adopted behind closed doors when excavators have already entered the courtyard? How will the new government work with the townspeople?

- Our townspeople and so enormously affect the development of the city. In a rare European capital, their influence is as much as in Moscow. Our institution of public hearing is an effective tool for the influence of citizens on Moscow construction. But you have to be realistic. Firstly, Moscow is still being built. There are objects that are important for the whole city, which, despite the protests, need to be implemented. You have to go to unpopular measures, otherwise the city will cease to develop. It is impossible for the sake of residents of one house not to build a highway needed by the whole city. And if experts say that in this place a new metro station is needed, we will build it, despite the protests.

- Another painful topic is the green zones of Moscow, the boundaries of which were quite unceremoniously violated. What will be done to protect them? Or, on the contrary, should they be more boldly mastered?

- The problem is not in construction in green areas. And the fact that in Moscow there are many territories passing according to documents, like green zones, in fact are not. This is a landfill, wasteland, car parking. In any case, the townspeople cannot use it as a green zone. And I am for the real green zones to be actually available to the townspeople, and year -round. This implies the construction of a number of facilities in these territories. If the territory is recorded in plan as a green zone, and no one goes there, it cannot enjoy this greenery - what's good about it? Understand correctly, I'm not for cutting everything out and configuring capital structures in the middle of the park. But there was a neglected green zone - Gorky Park. There something was built, converted-and it became good. The example is still rare, but there will be more. And if for this you have to carefully be embedded in the green array, then there is nothing wrong.

- It is amazing that in Moscow there are so few modern masterpieces, there is practically no interesting architecture of the new millennium. How to make world -class buildings appear in the city?

- I believe in the practice of attracting strong architects - both Russian and foreign, through contests or by direct order. Apparently, the initiality of schools should initially be initially, because it is the Western - and in the east of the Japanese - the architectural school today sets the tone. To tighten your school, it is good to learn from world stars. Not just style, but technology. Unfortunately, we do not know how the house is arranged - how the house is arranged, what materials can be used there, how the house breathes, how engineering systems should be linked to the appearance. All this has long been an alphabet in the West, but we know it badly. Which of the Russian architects now works in the West? Almost no one. And this is indicative. This means that there is no world demand for our product, that it is only for domestic consumption.