protesting (1)

Got momentarily excited by this poster, suggesting that some political protest was at last happening in Moscow, until I realised that it was just a design student project. In fact, some of the liveliest campaigning groups in Moscow seem to be around architectural heritage and its destruction (no Occupy movement here yet).

The group Archnadzor  has brought together some of the different preservationist groups and do a lot of campaigning including some direct action - still a risky business in Russia. You can see some old photos at Moskva Koterey Net (The Moscow that is No More) of what has already been demolished to make way for the post-Soviet/Capitalist Realist boom; and read more at MAPS (MoscowArchitectural Preservation Society) - the only site with an English language version.

thoughts from blighty

Been in London for a few days with my Russian colleagues V and L, and stupidly blurted out at some point that I found London much more civilised than Moscow. Then spent a lot of time back-tracking (and trying to clarify what I was getting at). That I didn't mean that the people are uncivilised, or even the mindless rules combined with chaos - muscovites notice lots of random rules in London and cannot believe that we follow them - only that the public urban space of the city is so much more comfortable, much more for the 'public'.

Although we also nicknamed London ToyTown, both because of the tiny houses all lined up, and because compared to Moscow, public transport is designed for midgets.

road works-not

Back in Moscow, albeit briefly, and start out very grumpy as I appear to have been completely re-Londonised in my time away.  Horribly flustered by heaving chaos, queue-barging and being stood very close to whilst going through Domodedovo airport passport control. And in the centre of town find that all the pavements have been (half) dug up, making walking about a bit haphazard (as well as a hazard), as if some disruption to everyday life must always be essential here.

And of course, the rumours are that the works - commissioned by the new mayor, Sergei (I will stop corruption) Sobyanin - are happening because his wife owns a brickworks, and yes you have guessed, all the pavements are being bricked. And now the city has run out of bricks.

Which is so typically crazy that you have to laugh, so then I remember that this is one of the many reasons I like Moscow and find I am very glad to be back.....
  

(il)legal?

This post was going to be about the new Mayor's (rumoured) campaign to stop illegal street advertising in the city. But first I have to mention that - after a false spring - it has rained and snowed almost all weekend. The English language may have many different words for snow, sleet, hail etc; but this was mainly like what I can only call 'fast snow', a kind of thick, white, cold rain. Today we have grey skies and a more desultory snowfall, but it is still horrible. Thank you for listening.

As to outdoor advertising signs, I merely pass on a story doing the rounds - that people are just pretending to do up their apartment blocks, so they can get the money from the banners on scaffolding that result. And I say 'rumoured', because since Sergei Sobyanin hit town he seems to be aiming at putting a lot of space between his intentions and those of the previous incumbent Yury Luzhkov; also saying he is going to do something about the (impossible) traffic, stop knocking down old buildings and control new development better. We wait to see the outcomes.

One-offs: number two

And this is the only disabled lift into an underpass I have seen (there is one on the other side of the street too which was both a relief and - in a way - a surprise.) Again, other sightings appreciated.

on new architecture

Contemporary Moscow has taken both post-modernist architecture and what has been called capitalist realism to its ample, chaotic, sometimes ugly, and often corrupt, bosom. I have been resisting showing examples of this work, which takes its references from surface style rather than substance, and is as happy to plastic coat re-versioned Stalinist skyscrapers and giant baroque Faberge eggs as it is to stick a new Tatlin's tower atop a roofline or throw extra classical columns at any large piece of glass facade.

However, my collection of architectural photographs seems to keep expanding, so I have decided it is time to start sharing.

(I note that capitalism realism is also the title of a new book by Mark Fisher, who uses it to describe contemporary Britain. On the day the UK elections produced a hung parliament, it seems an appropriate read.)

city cross-section

Traveling back from Domodedovo airport on the aeroexpress train offers a good cross-sectional cut through Moscow (so good to do this journey in daylight if you can.) Coming towards Moscow, there is first a few small satellite towns and villages, each with their banal ring of Khrushchev era high-rise apartments; these are interspersed with pine plantations and scatterings of birch, together with older dachas, small traditional villas for people escaping the city at weekends and in the summer.

As you get nearer, more recent dachas pop up - many more of them, much more tightly packed and in wide variations from almost sheds to huge, overbuilt and over-styled mansions. Then, the next band of dull high-rises, this time on the outer ring of Moscow itself and now overlapping randomly with industrial buildings, miscellaneous yards and rows and rows of garages and 'car-cans'. Finally the city proper - still showing its comfortably worn out pre-revolutionary buildings knotted together with housing, offices and factories from every period.

And then into Paveletskaya, not a pretty station....