new century high risers in the core areas of historic cities in russia

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a Prerequisite for Sustainable Development doi:

1877-7058 © 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a

Prerequisite for Sustainable Development

doi: 10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.940

New century high risers in the core areas of historic cities in Russia

Galina Ptichnikova a,*

a

The Scientific Research Institute of the Theory and History of Architecture & City Planning, 107031, Moscow, Russia

Abstract

This article is an attempt to trace the changes made to the Russian city silhouettes new high-rise buildings constructed in the last ten years, to identify the conflicts that they have generated in the collision with the historical cultural landscapes Numerous examples of regional and metropolitan skyscrapers revealed the birth of a new system of high-rise building in the Russian cities

© 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a Prerequisite for Sustainable Development

Keywords: high rise building, historical urban landscape, historical cities, contemporary Russian architecture, urban development

1 Introduction

The long-lasting process of urbanization in Russia created harmonious unique ensembles in many historical cities and towns containing outstanding universal value

Urban development during the centuries was gradual, based on traditions Continuity and consistency with the existing spaces and stock were the norm

Currently urban development is often abrupt and ill-conceived, enlarging in scale, and thereby in impact The last ten years marked, on the one hand, by the domestic economic reforms and, on the other hand, by the inclusion of Russia in the external processes of globalization, influenced the forms of high altitude arrangement of the historic cities as well as the appearance of the new types of high risers (Fig.1)

* Corresponding author Tel.: +7-902-650-85-27

E-mail address: ptichnikova_g@mail.ru

© 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a Prerequisite for Sustainable Development

Fig 1: New century high risers in Moscow (Photocollage: O Prokofieva, 2006)

Historically the cities’ altitude dominants have always been the buildings socially important for the citizens – temples, town halls, assembly halls Globalization, that has covered Russian cities, changes the correlation between the social and the private in favor of the latter [1-10]

2 New century high risers in the core areas of historic cities in Russia

The social space of the city has always been considered public domain that sets the priority of collective values over individual interests The reduction of the state intervention in the economy makes national governments gradually transfer their historical privileges of power to the transnational corporations These organizations mark the territory with the signs of their power – corporation temples – towers of skyscrapers

By the beginning of the new century office buildings of different companies or residential houses of special elitism had become the main verticals of the cities The stage of high-rise building in 1990s in our country has not accidentally begun with a thirty-five-storey (over 150 meters high) tower of the “Gazprom” headquarters in Moscow, a monopolist corporation striving to become a leader among global energy companies

Piece by piece and very soon new high risers have appeared in Moscow to be scattered across the city without any clear town-planning reasoning Among them is, for instance, the fifty-seven-storey residential building

“Triumph-palace”, situated in the historic district “Sockol” Nevertheless, we must admit that at that time there have been attempts to use the elements of the”Moscow style“- spiers and pinnacles

However, new times require new form The spirit of globalization materialized in the form of skyscrapers MIBC (Fig.2)

Fig.2: “The Moscow City” (Moscow International Business Center – MIBC) (Photo: A Fatkulina, 2011)

changed and cities are subject to development pressures and challenges

Not only in the capital, but also in other Russian cities there are plans of constructing new high risers In the first decade of the twenty-first century, attention is focused on urban places as dynamic historic environments continually being reshaped and renewed Most frequently the high risers of “regional value” are buildings not as high as in Moscow or Saint-Petersburg Their height is from 100 to 150 meters Among them are a building called “ChelSy”,

an A-class office centre founded in 2008 in Chelyabinsk as well as the buildings of the residential complex “Volga sails” and the office complex “Volgograd-City”, which had been finished by 2010 in Volgograd (Fig.3)

Fig 3: The residential complex “Volga sails”, Volgograd (Photo: G Ptichnikova, 2012)

Altitude is the pure expression of the concept of excellence New dominants, being several times higher than the existing building, show their urban superiority and unwillingness to fit into the historical shape A separately situated tower at the background of the low, horizontally sprawled buildings stands out of the architectural line of the city silhouette

The last decade has seen a real surge in the demand by city governments for high risers as iconic architectural works to boast image of city This often regardless of the city’s existing character and inherited values Computer-generated towers with different names are springing up all over the place The most striking example of such glaring discrepancy between the scales of the vertical, trying to intrude the city borders, and the existing historical building with its laws of construction was the idea of constructing the Gazprom skyscraper “Ochta-centre” in Saint-Petersburg

The conflict between the new high-rise buildings and the existing silhouette takes place not only because of the scale mismatch, but also due to the peculiarities of the new building forming Among the historical shapes of the city dominate steeples, domes, arches and curved shapes of walls and towers Characteristic of the architecture of the modern high-rise buildings are straight facade lines, large areas of facade glazing, visual lightness of the buildings

The threat to the historical shapes can be seen in their overlapping and stratifying by new dominants Random forms overlap historical silhouette, distorting its time-tested shape and proportions An example is the effect of the appearance of the 165-meter hotel “Swissotel/Red hills” in the historic panoramic views of Moscow center (Fig.4)

Fig 4: Panorama of the Red Square from north to south or from the History Museum in the direction of the Moscow River Background

- the 165-meter tower Swissotel “Red hills” (Photo: G Ptichnikova, 2006)

Due to its radial-circular layout this skyscraper appears in the city silhouette in the most unexpected places The tower, which top reminds of a control block of an airport, rises above the towers of the Kremlin, and on the Red square it wedges between the St Basil's Cathedral and the Spassky tower This classical view, which opened to the side of the hill Borovitsky Zamoskvorechye, is now blocked by the huge tower of the Swissotel/“Red hills” Its technical and mechanistic form of execution completely kills the nature of the historic city

The problem of stratifying the new dominants on the historical silhouette of the city is extremely acute in other Russian cities as well In Saint-Petersburg a number of buildings, distorting the historical panorama, have been erected For instance, in the centre of the Petrograd district a residential complex “Silver Mirror”, rising high above the historical horizon, has almost been finished by now The complex "Silver Mirror" broke the historical panorama

of the Peter and Paul Fortress from a view from the arrow of Vasilevsky Island Two high-rise buildings of the Exchange complex "Financier" destroyed the city silhouette with critical points: the English Embankment, the Admiralty Embankment and the Troitsky Bridge

In Volgograd as a result of the new high-altitude building the panorama of the memorial architectural-landscape complex Mamaev kurgan, perceived from the central part of the city, is almost blocked, and the scale of the various plans of building is lost (Fig.5) Painted in flashy blue, red and white colors “candles” pushed into the background the silhouette of the famous monument The scale is lost between the various plans for development

Fig.5: The memorial complex Mamayev Kurgan lost its role of the natural landscape and urban dominance, Volgograd

(Photo: G Ptichnikova, 2015)

Yekaterinburg faces another problem, connected with the high-rise building Entire neighborhoods of the valuable historical buildings have been demolished to clear the space for the construction of new verticals For example, the high-rise building “Antaeus” has been erected on the place of the demolished old manor, among the low-rise buildings typical of the centre of Yekaterinburg (Fig.6)

Fig 6: The high-rise building “Antaeus-3”, Yekaterinburg (Photo: A Antyufeev, 2012)

New high risers suppress not only monuments but the historical urban landscape (HUL) as well The core of the successive development of the HUL is the observance of the traditional principles of its formation that accounts of the nature of the landscape and the drainage of the city The features of the Samara relief, for example, are characteristic slopes, which start from the Volga embankment and end along the Kuibyshev Street They formed green terraces, covered with turf, and the natural “amphitheater” of the city Nowadays high-rise buildings, erected

on the Gorky Street, cover the whole panorama Samara’s silhouette is crossed by random houses with random number of floors, erected in random places

Rapid and frequently uncontrolled development is transforming urban areas and their settings, which may cause fragmentation and deterioration to urban heritage with deep impacts on community values Numerous examples of uncontrolled construction of tall buildings in historical cities (Novosibirsk, Saratov and others) lead to the transformation of urban landscapes, to confrontation, rather than harmonization (Fig.7)

Fig.7: The tower “Cobra”, Novosibirsk (Photo: A Kuzmichev, 2009)

The architectural and urban planning activities, presently performed in our country, have changed the historical urban landscapes in the Russian cities Nevertheless new high risers are built often regardless of the city’s existing character and inherited values It seems that the idea of a city as a piece of a work of urban art has been lost in the professional mind It is necessary to curb this “high-rise fever” by imposing some regulations, on the one hand, and

by creating new programs of altitude construction from the point of view of the formation of expressive architectural image, on the other hand We should move from the tasks of the “big money” architecture with its construction of grandiose buildings, breaking all altitude records, to the problems of humanization of the urban environment in the natural tendency for human well-being

For a surviving of historic urban landscapes new development projects should aim to maintain character – the

“spirit of place” related to cultural identity of local society (Fig.8)

Fig 8: Preservation of HUL for the architectural identity of local society

Volgograd, the historical embankment (Photo: V Antimonov, 2007)

3 Conclusion

In the first decade of the twenty-first century our attention is focused on urban places as dynamic historic environments being continually reshaped, renewed and refurbished This requires an understanding of transformation processes that underpinned the city’s historic evolution over time and the determination of limits of acceptable change In conclusion, we have to say that the existing planning tools have to be revised so as to integrate these essential aspects in the planning process New century high risers in the core areas of historic cities in Russia presented in Table 1

Table 1 New century high risers in the core areas of historic cities in Russia

The

appearance of

the new types

of high risers

in the core

areas of

historic cities

The last ten years marked,

on the one hand, by the domestic economic reforms and, on the other hand, by the inclusion of Russia in the external processes of globalization, influenced the forms of high altitude arrangement of the historic cities as well as the appearance of the new types

of high risers

Moscow The Kremlin and MIBC

Invasion of

the historical

panorama

New high risers boldly invaded the established historical panorama

Project of the Gazprom skyscraper “Ochta-centre” in Saint-Petersburg sails”

Neglect of the

urban context

The conflict between the

new high-rise buildings and

the existing silhouette takes

place not only because of

the scale mismatch, but also

due to the peculiarities of

the new building forming

The hotel “Swissotel/Red hills” in the historic panoramic views of Moscow center

The Exchange complex "Financier” in Saint-Petersburg

Destruction of

historic

buildings

Entire neighborhoods of the

valuable historical buildings

have been demolished to

clear the space for the

construction of new

verticals

The high-rise building “Antaeus” has been erected on the place of the demolished old manor Yekaterinburg

Passing by

the natural

landscape

New high risers suppress

not only monuments but the

historical urban landscape

as well

Samara The city’s silhouette is crossed by random houses with random number of floors, erected in random places

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