Expressionism of Krasnogorsk

Vigorous growth and often chaotic development of Russian cities in the second half of the 20th century shattered the normal way of living in them, and despite its neighbouring location to the capital, even the Moscow region was no exception either. Further aggravation of the situation happened in the 90s and early 2000s, when the market forces triggered the emergence of faceless neighborhoods deprived of public spaces, infrastructure and transportation, cultural and social facilities.

Nowadays the situation has radically changed. As a result of the proactive government policy, the government of Moscow and the Moscow region the life environment of the people has been changing over the past few years. The concept of creating a comfortable living environment has become a priority task. Superior attention is paid to the architectural appearance of the neighborhoods, and the development of integrated and qualitative urban environment. One of such projects was to build a large-scale pedestrianization program of Moscow suburbs, which pilot version to be implemented in the town of Krasnogorsk.

The summarized results of the undertaken work in the field of conceptual reorganization of Krasnogorsk public spaces were presented at the first (I) International Conference of Urbanists “City for People”, which was held in late April at the Palace of Culture “Podmoskoviye”.

The main attention was focused on the problems of perspective development of the urban environment and the local regional development methods of not only each several neighborhoods and residential areas, but also pass-through public spaces and territories. When opening the conference, Pavel Starickov, interim town mayor, outlined the nature of the issues.

Nowadays Krasnogorsk got not the best hangover of the 1990s, when against the background of the construction boom numerously were built new “square meters” of substandard housing, and the convenience of utility systems or the rational urban land improvement were generally neglected. As a result, the town’s infrastructure turned out to be significantly less developed and poorly adapted to the needs of a large number of people, living in the neighbourhoods built that period in Krasnogorsk.

Therefore, the architects, designers and urban specialists of today have a very critical task: to offer a modern arrangement of the urban environment. Especially for this purpose the Moscow region involves in development of projects the best of both domestic and foreign experts.

During the conference the leading experts in urban and city planning learnt the latest trends in the development of a comfortable environment and shared their experience in this field. Presentations were made by Irina Irbitskaya, Director of the Center for Urban Competencies with the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy, Fedor Kudryavtsev, Chief of urban research laboratory at the Moscow Institute of Architecture; Magdalena Haggärde, partner with the 70N arkitektur achritectural bureau; Birgitte Katborg, Chief Architect of the Citymakers company and many other professionals.

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TEXT: MARIANNA SMIRNOVA;
photos provided by KROST