On Friday, April 28, at 20:00, in the St. Petersburg art space mArs (Marsovo Pole, 3) a regular meeting of the Discussion Club of Daniil Kotsiubinsky “Why is everything wrong?” This time, city defender Alexei Kovalev and architect Nikita Yavein will argue about how to properly protect St. Petersburg and its architecture.
“The Historic Center of St. Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments” became in 1990 the first Russian object included in the UNESCO List.
The structure of the facility included 36 components and 86 elements located on the territory of two constituent entities of the Russian Federation – St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. The historical center of St. Petersburg is the core of this nomination, its area is about 4 thousand hectares. The boundaries of the entire facility cover an area of over 23 thousand hectares.
How to save all this? Does the city have the right to “collapse” the protected zone, compared to the one that was declared by UNESCO in 1990?
The dispute about its specific boundaries of the St. Petersburg buffer zone, which lasted for many years, ended in the summer of 2014 with the fact that the World Heritage Committee approved the boundaries of the historical center almost unchanged compared to 1990.
In this regard, the question of what can and what should not be done within the historical center of St. Petersburg is still extremely acute. As well as the question of what to do with the monster houses that over the past years have managed to grow like giant poisonous mushrooms throughout the city center.
Do modern architects have the right to invade the fabric of the protected zone? Does the city government have the right to allow the demolition of buildings within the historic center and authorize the construction of new facilities in their place?
And one more very important question: is it necessary to preserve only what is included in the line of the “historical center and groups of monuments associated with it” – or should much of what was built after 1917 be treated with care? It is worth recalling that City Law No. 820, recently passed by the Legislative Assembly in the second reading, may be the beginning of a process of landslide demolition of buildings built in 1917-1957. outside the historical center (so far, the city legislation still protects them), in particular, on Ligovsky Prospekt and beyond the Narvskaya Zastava.
Constructivism – early and late, “Stalinist” neoclassicism – pre-war and post-war, Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s modernism – should they be protected? Or, on the site of architectural monuments of the era of the failed breakthrough to a brighter future, is it time to erect post-post-modernist human settlements, shopping and office centers and other artifacts of the current glorious era?
Aleksey Kovalev, a well-known St. Petersburg city defender, whose activity began back in the era of the struggle to save the Anggleter Hotel and the Delvig House, a deputy of the Petrosoviet and the Legislative Assembly (1990-2021), and Nikita Yavein, a people’s architect of the Russian Federation, will try to find answers to these questions ( 2022), full member of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Building Sciences, Professor of the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after A. I. E. Repina (Russian Academy of Arts), head of the Architectural Bureau “Studio 44”, author of many buildings built in the historical center of St. Petersburg in the latest architectural styles, in the past – chairman of the KGIOP (1994-2003).
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.
