Zaryadye tomorrow

In last couple of years Moscow government radically changed its opinion about architecture: there are a lot of competitions with international jury, city live is observed and analyzed by good professionals, people speak more about urban planning etc. All of this is the result of new Moscow’s urban strategy made by new major and his team. So a few days ago we could see the completion of very important part in the development one of the most ambitious and grandiose projects in Moscow and in the world. On the 12 of November the jury declared the winners of Zaryadie park competition.

History and existing situation

This park is going to be built in the territory of demolished Rossiya hotel, right in front of the Red square, Kremlin and Saint Basil’s cathedral and might become the new pearl of the city. Historically this area is very important because it was the place where Moscow was founded. For many years the site development had been changing extremely, now you can find here several churches and other constructions on the higher part near Varvarka Street, section of Kitaygorodskaya wall, another church near the embankment and great archeological heritage under the ground.

However not only the buildings have been changed, the landscape has its own history; there is still a buried branch of Neglinka River and the massive foundation of Rossiya hotel. As a whole the landscape is steadily going lower to the river, the high differentiation is 11 meter.

Zaryadie is ringed in three minor streets that are not burden with traffic and multilane embankment that separates the territory from water. In the Moscow pedestrian rout system the park would have the connecting role for the most of touristic ways going in the center of the city.

Competition

After the great analyses and consulting work made by good specialists they have decided to build the park, philharmonic and hotel in Zaryadye (there would be another competition for this two constructions). After that Strelka institute and NII Genplan did the requirements specification for 6 previously selected teams: Diller Scofidio + Renfro (USA), Gustafson Porter (UK), MVRDV (Holland), Turenscape (China), West 8 (Holland), TPO Reserve (Russia). The specification included the great amount of limitations and rules on one side and gave architects a chance for several interpretations and a chance for making important creative decisions on the other side. Probably because of such requirements project became so various.

Architects task was not simple at all because they had to decide is this park for citizens of for tourists, should it become the new sight or should it be neutral, how to base here 70% of plenty of greenery and fill it with streets, squares, cafes and other recreate zones and so on.

You could find all of the projects on the exhibition “Open city. New Moscow urban planning strategy” in Architecture museum but in this article I would like to comment only projects that are most interesting to me and also are the winners of the competition (more information about this projects you could find on http://www.parkzaryadye.com/ru/).

Diller Scofidio + Renfro – the first place

This project is surely the most innovative in terms of use of technologies in park building. An idea to divide the park on four zones with different climate that would be kept up artificially might be interesting almost for everyone. Ice cave, pavilions in which it is always warm and green grass probably would inspire people the whole year long, but obviously,  they might function not like good public spaces but more like side-show. In such places people like to go one or two times, after this they use it only as the point of attraction for capitals guests. I don’t think that it is bad to build side-shows but it is not necessary to do it near the Kremlin because there are already a lot of things to visit. Another controversial concept is a path design that does not encourage people to walk in special directions. As I understood the idea is to dissolve the path boarders in the grass to put up going on it. However, now it is hard to tell either this concept would be popular or not but it is even more difficult to imagine how it would function in winter, the only way I see for now is cleaning out of snow only main paths and this would make the park to tire. Another part of the park, that I would like to comment, is the entrance zone near the Red square. The nice rendering of Saint Basil’s cathedral covered with little birches staying on the first plan and people going between them actually spoils the project a lot. Firstly this location is very bad for placing such high trees because they will disturb the view to cathedral (even the requirements forbid to place them here), secondly the diagonal path is the main transit way through the park making it full of trees is not intelligent because of the amount of people who will go there.

TPO Reserve – second place

The project of TPO Reserve is probably most considered and finished project. Looking into it you understand that every path is designed properly, each turn and bend functions nice and good. It is possible to say same thing about every part of the project and these are actually a lot (you could find even the lightning scheme for paths and trees, this is the only team that went so far). The landscape covers constructions organically, makes multilevel paths and beautiful accompanies a pond in the middle of park. Another idea, that I like is the embankment design, the connection between it and the park goes under the road, this makes its visitors really close to the water. However, the most questioner is the location of the park on this territory. In park there is nothing special that connects it with Zaryadye, with its significance and its history. It is not possible to find such unique territory in Moscow and in other cities therefore I guess it is necessary to emphasize this and not to build the park that could be built in any other place.

MVRDV + Atrium – third place

Already for a long time both participants of Dutch-Russian consortium are well-known for their unique formal and concept design approach. The result of their cooperation was also very original therefore it worth individual mentioning. The main idea of the project is based on revealing of historical layers by means of special diversity of paths and garden design. Finally due to many intersecting paths which represent the buildings contours and various garden patterns also revealing the historical context we can see complex and interesting picture. Another feature of this project is the multifunctional use of underground space. In contrast to other projects architects managed to place not only parking inside but also different public spaces like cafes, shops and little squares. The disadvantages of this project in my opinion are the leak of interesting landscape, not beautifully designed transit diagonal paths and pulverization of gardens.

Summary

Overall I am very positive of this competition. The development perspectives look quite promising; I hope the government would stay same quality in project realization. So because the first place is taken by the most futuristic and “nonrealizable” project it should have much fun to watch the development further.  

Sergey Nadtochiy
http://sergkonserg.blogspot.ru/