In the St. Petersburg art space mArs (Marsovo Pole, 3) on Thursday, March 30, at 19:00, a regular meeting of the Discussion Club of Daniil Kotsiubinsky “Why is everything wrong?” This time, architecture critic Maria Elkina and deputy of the Legislative Assembly and well-known city defender Boris Vishnevsky will argue whether it is possible to build up the historical center of St. Petersburg.
There are only three cities in the world that are almost entirely included in the UNESCO World Heritage List: Venice, Brasilia and St. Petersburg within the boundaries of its historical center. Yes, in addition to St. Petersburg, many historical centers of different cities are also included in this security list. But only in the case of the proud on the Neva, we are talking about a huge part of a huge metropolis, which includes more than 15 thousand architectural objects.
Brilliant St. Petersburg – the one that, in fact, is the subject of international protection, was “turnkey” to the Bolsheviks in 1917.
In the following decades, the city center was repeatedly subjected to architectural intrusions by the new government. New buildings built in the fashionable style in the first decades of the 20th century were inlaid into the body of “old Petersburg”. constructivism and functionalism, then came the turn of early and late post-neoclassicism (“Stalin’s Empire”), later buildings were erected in the spirit of the early 1950s-60s and late modernism of the 1970s-80s, “the style of developed socialism – the threshold of communism.”
Much of what was built in the era of the USSR, as life has shown, took root and organically “integrated” into the architectural fabric of the historical center. Yes, the Stalinist Empire style – against the backdrop of the masterpieces of Rossi and Quarenghi – looked like a wretched Neanderthal copy of high Cro-Magnon art. But even here there were successful decisions – to take at least the long-suffering building of VNIIB on Courage Square or the famous neoclassical Smolny propylaea (albeit built in an earlier period)
And even the modernist “patches” that arose here and there in the post-war period (mainly on the site of houses that died during the Siege), modestly stood in line with the flawless pre-revolutionary building, tactfully getting lost against its background and not trying to “push everyone with their elbows”. around”.
As you can see, even in that most difficult period for culture, when the country of the Soviets everywhere “overcame the damned legacy of tsarism” and “eradicated the remnants of capitalism and philistinism”, the Leningrad authorities and Leningrad architects understood that they simply did not have the right to “raise their hand” on an architectural monument of world importance – the historical center of “Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad”, as at that time it was customary to “semi-officially” call the city on the Neva. And therefore, as the holy of holies, they kept what communicated to the entire Neva city a single aesthetic and semantic integrity – the celestial line of the Neva and the height regulations standing guard over it, which did not allow the construction of buildings in the historical center (spiers, domes and technical structures, such as a television tower – not counting) above the Winter Palace.
But with the coming to power of post-perestroika generations of business and bureaucratic “mankurts”, stricken with budgetary and investment bulimia, the old city began to collapse more and more dynamically and be flooded with freak giants, breaking the sky line of the Neva “over the knee”, blowing up the historical center of St. Petersburg from the inside – and rapidly killing him.
Is it possible to continue to build in the historical center of St. Petersburg?
Or, given the pace of growth of the city-destroying catastrophe, is it time to impose a moratorium on any architectural intrusion into the historical center? And finally, to remember that, from the point of view of UNESCO, “old Petersburg” is just as priceless in its authentic integrity as a city-museum, like old Venice?
The members of the Discussion Club will try to find answers to these questions.
Tickets for the event can be purchased on TimePad or at the box office before the event.
Source: Rosbalt
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
