Nefedov Valery Anatolievich urban landscape design. Valery Nefyodov passed away

Valery Anatolievich Nefyodov, Doctor of Architecture, Professor of the Department of Urbanistics and Design of the Urban Environment, St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Honored Worker high school Russian Federation

MARCH 2013

Valery Anatolyevich, what, in your opinion,
emotional/intellectual/technological component of design?

I think that the emotional side of design is one of its main components, since works in this area are addressed, first of all, to the emotions of a person - a user, a consumer, an admirer of everything that is created by designers. They, works, either make him happy or upset, and by this they form the mood of a person, the atmosphere around him and influence his attitude towards his surroundings. It is in this that design acts as a “conductor” between the emotions of the person who creates it and everyone to whom it is addressed. Therefore, only a person who is capable of generous emotions and has a “colorful” vision, who sees more and feels deeper the beauty of the world, can engage in design.

The intellectual component lies in the ability of the designer to create his works from the standpoint of understanding and mastering the most modern and advanced information. Design is a carrier of new information, and the skill of a designer lies precisely in conveying this information in the most accessible way and using it most effectively. But this presupposes the constant intellectual development of the designer himself. In design, it is not relevant to use the knowledge of yesterday, retell history or borrow old means. The design assumes a lively and dynamic intelligence, regularly updated and constantly expanded based on the addition of new information.

Without a technological component, there can be no modern design, which implies the constant development of new materials, techniques and methods of their use when creating any object. Design acts as a creative means of expressing new possibilities of materials and technologies, the artistic understanding of which is one of the main professional skills of real specialists in this field. A trained designer can use a material resource in a way and range that for a non-specialist is devoid of any functional and artistic meaning. And only by turning to new resources of materials can you get a really modern design.

What cities in the world are filled with a special design atmosphere?

Definitely useful for familiarizing with the real values ​​of modern design are cities in which the environment, events and people together make up a unique atmosphere of familiarization with creativity and the constant search for something new in everything. Among such cities, in my opinion, it is worth highlighting Paris, Barcelona, ​​Helsinki, Berlin, Milan, Copenhagen.

These are cities in which, in many nominations of design and architecture, events have already taken place and are constantly taking place, bringing revival to creative life and making you think about new opportunities in creative professions, about overcoming complexes and standard solutions, about mastering new technologies and the possibilities of the most non-standard solutions in seemingly long-known design categories.

A number of these cities have an inexhaustible emotional and cultural resource with an infinite number of centers of high culture and a large number of constant creative events (Paris, Barcelona), other cities have earned their fame in promoting design with the involvement of the general population and with a dynamic renewal of the environment while maintaining their traditions (Helsinki), third cities are distinguished by a stable commitment to the latest technologies, brought to excellence in design and architecture (Berlin, Copenhagen) and, finally, in cities like Milan, one can find a concentrated expression of a centuries-old culture of thinking and creating avant-garde, which is visibly present in the atmosphere of the city and not only during the periods of the largest events in the field of design.

What are the most important skills / abilities / knowledge you see in the work of a modern designer?

A modern designer really needs a lively, open and dynamic thinking, constant readiness for creative development and renewal, a rich imagination and a fine sense of proportion, knowledge of international practice in his field. You need the skills of professional communication and interaction with subcontractors, the selection of useful information from its large mass, the skills of quick and concise graphic expression of your main ideas and a convincing presentation to the customer. Need knowledge latest materials and technology, including knowledge computer technology, ergonomics of space, social and psychological foundations of the formation of space for a person, features of work on the organization of space and artistic aspects of its perception.

The designer must be able to evaluate the existing space from the standpoint of its effectiveness for organizing a given function, understand the essence of the processes taking place in it, see the interests of a person and feel the resource for transforming space using the latest technologies.

Why are the international workshops of the School important for a successful designer?

Without knowledge of modern international practice and regular replenishment of this knowledge in the form of international internships, it is generally impossible to become not only successful, but even just a designer. For a designer, for his stable advancement in the profession, the main condition for development is regular involvement in events in foreign practice with trips and programs that offer a concentrated expression of the achievements of a particular city or country in the widest range of design. It is useless to look for specific analogues for proposed projects only in a specific design category. The real formation of a modern designer can only take place on the basis of a broad study of modern international design practice, which develops systemic thinking and allows you to overcome many standard ideas gleaned from accessible periodicals or the Internet.

See with your own eyes, understand and feel the approach of specialists to the solution creative tasks in other countries, to be convinced of the possibility of the impossible, to broaden one's horizons and gain new convincing arguments in favor of the latest technologies - the meaning of foreign internships. The external foothold for the formation of their views on design, acquired there, becomes the most important factor in accelerating the creative development of designers.

Publication in MSD (№2) 2009

What is modern landscape design?

It seems to me that modern landscape design should include a vast area creative activity specialists who are able to use the possibilities of natural materials to create a comfortable environment for a person. We must immediately emphasize that if we continue to associate landscape design only with the arrangement of individual plots or the restoration of historical parks (which is firmly rooted in the mass consciousness), then our cities will never find a worthy natural content, and the person in them will never find a modern environmental environment. Therefore, the interpretation of modern landscape design in international practice has long included an expanded idea of ​​it as a professional activity in the interests of man in order to transform the surrounding spaces - streets, squares, embankments, residential courtyards, gardens and parks into full-fledged fragments of the urban environment. So far, before the realization of such an approach to landscape design in Russia, a lot of things are missing.

Namely, with such an interpretation of landscape design, a many times greater need for specialists who know modern technologies and techniques for creating landscape compositions in the urban environment. Need to study new language design based on the use of modern shapes and lines, a combination of living and inert materials, taking into account climatic features and fashion trends.

What are the current challenges facing professional landscape designers in Russia today?

There are many tasks today and all of them are relevant. In the very general view this means overcoming many of the stereotypes that hinder the spread modern language and the latest technologies in the field of landscape design. Too strongly in the minds of many novice landscape designers is the belief that by leaning on history and studying historic parks, they can equip both individual plots and urban spaces.

Paradoxically, it is the economic crisis that is finally creating the conditions in Russia to think about high sense long-spread in international practice of minimalism in the interpretation of landscape compositions. Finally, many landscape designers, faced with a reduction in funds from customers, will suddenly realize that in addition to the usual heap of colorful flower beds, alpine slides abundantly sprinkled with stones, monumental fountains and cascades, there is the charm of laconic natural remedies, starting with the open surface of the lawn and beautiful field crops! There is a meaning in every line found in an original way, even the contour of ground cover plants, surface texture or sculptural form of plant material!

One of the radical tasks facing domestic landscape designers is a significant expansion of the range of vegetation that can ensure the preservation of the decorative qualities of urban open spaces throughout the year. The Scandinavian countries are a fairly convincing example of overcoming many of our stereotypes in terms of the choice of vegetation, primarily in terms of switching to crops with a constant plant mass, and not necessarily coniferous plants.
Landscape designers will have to learn to notice human needs in the urban environment, starting from the elementary design of spaces around benches for recreation, to creating an image of each fragment of the urban landscape through the use of geoplastics, characteristic compositions of vegetation, water and land art.
Surrounded by public facilities - banks, offices, hotels, shopping and cultural centers landscape designers have yet to master the skills of solving the problems of integrating architectural objects with their immediate environment, considering it as an extension of the space for human stay.

What, in your opinion, should students of the International School of Design pay close attention to in the process of learning landscape design?

I think that students will not be mistaken if they learn to regularly replenish their creative arsenal by constantly studying examples from modern international landscape practice, including familiarization with the experience of such countries as Germany, France, Sweden, Finland, primarily in relation to urban open green spaces. Then they will have a chance to keep up with the events in modern landscape design much more quickly.

It is possible to escape from the captivity of historical illusions in relation to the landscape of a modern city only through a systematic study of foreign implemented projects of urban open spaces. One of the main problems of domestic landscape practice is the lack of awareness of specialists about how similar problems are solved abroad. Not all of our professional landscape designers are familiar with the experience of landscape organization of parks and urban open spaces, at least in European capitals in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

As for the priority sections in education, it is unequivocally necessary to single out the areas of technology and ecology. Strange as it may seem, the issues of sustainable development of urban areas, which remain steadily “in the shadow” of domestic landscape education, are directly related to what landscape designers do. Even the issues of collecting and using rainwater, not to mention conservation natural resources and energy savings are also linked to the field of landscape design. The haste in creating landscape compositions that are doomed to costly maintenance or annual reproduction also contradicts the concept of resource saving.

How, in your opinion, is modern landscape architecture and design presented in Moscow and St. Petersburg?

According to the international scale of values, in none of these cities really modern landscape architecture or design, unfortunately, almost exists. There is a practice of creating long-term monumental works, designed for old-fashioned effects of external prettiness. Hence the predominance of "dead" materials in the form of granite boulders in the structure of allegedly new pedestrian zones or pompous squares, the filling of representative spaces along the streets and avenues with expensive flower arrangements.

But at the same time, the issues of creating a “green frame” of the city are systematically ignored, using vegetation as a decisive factor in structuring the territory of any purpose, starting with a car park, or achieving an ecological balance. As a result, all this is reflected in the state of urban ecology, primarily the air basin. While maintaining even the already existing number of individual cars, such a path leads to ecological collapse.

The evidence that our Largest cities clearly deprived of landscape design, not as a means of decoration, but as a means of achieving psychological comfort for a person to stay on the street, residents of the city feel it when they come into contact with most spaces of streets, squares, embankments, courtyards and parks.

in Moscow from good examples can be called the design of the slope along the Moskva River near the Kievsky railway station with a modern interpretation of intersecting flower lines. In St. Petersburg, a certain attempt to overcome historical stereotypes is connected with the design of such highways as Bolshoy Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island and Nalichnaya Street near LenEXPO. Innovations are associated with the volumetric interpretation of the characteristic waves of flowers, as well as the use of decorative vegetable crops that enliven the urban landscape until late autumn.

But, unfortunately, there are no examples of creating really comfortable urban spaces that radically solve the issues of delimiting transport and pedestrian traffic, providing meaningful forms of leisure in the natural environment for various age groups of the population.

How does modern landscape design influence the process of restoration of historical parks and ancient estates?

One of the main resources in the use of modern landscape design is the technology of creating compositions from vegetation, water and relief. The possibilities of processing the surface of the earth with the achievement of fixed forms of geoplastics have expanded significantly due to the spread of new roll materials.

The extension of the period of perception of historical landscape compositions in the evening, not to mention the previously unheard-of possibilities of their dynamic illumination with a variable color gamut, have significantly changed the appearance of many landscape objects created centuries ago.

It must be said that while maintaining the general configuration of the floral design of historical objects - both parks and estates - there are many opportunities to introduce new features into their appearance every year. In many respects, this became possible due to the spread of technologies for processing inert materials (including their coloring), as well as through the use of modern installations in the form of seasonal sculpture or land art. The appearance (as well as the disappearance) of such symbols and signs in the historical landscape gives him a chance to live a modern life.

It is becoming a norm that historical landscape objects never freeze in their original form. The task of landscape designers is to feel the new time, in which old objects can respond to the needs of a modern person.

Valery Nefyodov was a professor at SPbGASU, a doctor of urban planning, an excellent landscape architect, and an author of unique books on his subject.

Valery Nefyodov's professional interests were very broad: the world's latest architecture and design, the interiors of public and residential buildings, the use of new technologies in the design of urban open spaces. Valery Nefyodov wrote more than 70 scientific works devoted to landscape design, modern architecture, architectural and landscape reconstruction of the urban environment based on the concept of sustainable development.

Valery Anatolyevich was ill for a long time. However, until the last he worked and made plans for the future.

We publish some statements by Valery Nefyodov, which can serve as good rules for professionals in the field of landscape design, architecture and urban planning:

• If more and more alternative free lines and forms are added to natural forms, then in the end we will get an approximation to modern design.
• The originality of the composition lies in the collision of some paradoxical elements coming from the texture of the material, the line. In this regard, the world landscape is becoming more and more diverse, as today it is quite capable of absorbing what is new within the country. The only thing we lack is access to high technologies.
• Water is that rich plastic medium that should be presented more intricately: so that it envelops some high-tech surfaces, pleases the eye with an abundance of colors thanks to the backlight. The fountain reveals only a small part water resource. Note that a thin water mirror somewhere in Sweden, Finland is initially made shallow, and at the end of November, when it needs to be turned off, what was under water will be an expressive first line, a picturesque texture.
• A small scale is a chance to express a person's identity, a particular style. Ideally, you need to tell the designer: I want a landscape that is not the same as that of a neighbor, make me your own, personalized. Let its main feature be too many elements, the main thing is that it does not look like another.
• If people, different in character, status, prosperity, would really order different forms vegetation, and not flowers in the first place, but, for example, flowering and fruiting bushes, various conifers, we would gradually come to biodiversity. And this is one indicator of sustainable development of landscape design.
• Rockeries, alpine slides, retaining walls with a huge amount of vegetation, all these banal water "cascades" are an on-duty set that actually nullifies the education of a landscape designer who is ordered the same thing. To do this, he does not need to study, just open any magazine and do everything as it is written there.
• The point of design is to look for alternatives. Only those who know how to come up with something new, and not just assemble a retaining wall with a water cascade, can call themselves a landscape designer.
• The future is for those who are determined to get a real education.
• The designer must be prepared for the fact that first you need to conduct a philosophical dialogue with the customer. After all, the task of a specialist is to reveal the character traits of the client, to understand the characteristics of his lifestyle, to identify his cultural attachments, and on the basis of all this to create a design.
• Any departure from stereotypes requires additional education. It is necessary to look for dissimilar things, to study information from any world exhibitions of landscape design, where there is at least some glimpse of a fresh line, fresh material, fresh interpretation.
• About exhibition gardens. Each exhibition in France has its own motto. This also applies to any composition, approaching which you, without having special education must somehow figuratively name it, express its essence. If it's just a bunch of flowers, stones, and it doesn't have a name, then I think the philosophy is very banal.
• There is such a thing as “garden semantics”. This is the meaning that you must read yourself if the composition tells you something. It can be a garden of good or evil, a garden of joy or sadness. If the garden doesn't tell you anything, then the designer didn't do a good job.
• All this imagery appears when the designer is working on creating a philosophy of the garden. That is what is important, and not at all a specific combination of microrelief and vegetation.
• Any real landscape composition, having a language, can talk to you. If pots are lined up and there is a retaining wall nearby, no communication will take place, because it is just a set of finished products.
• About the French exhibition gardens. These are joyful colors, joyful lines. This is a kind of garden that lifts your spirits. This is a sea of ​​positive emotions, a kind of message of the kindness of the garden.
• My garden, which is located next to my entrance, I do with my own hands from improvised materials. I want the neighbors to feel proud that at least something is arranged around, even if it is a piece of 10 × 10 meters. It depends on each of us whether there should be at least a small garden in the city, where the soul is invested, positive emotions.
• Ideas for a winter city. With sadness looking at our city in winter, every time I mentally return to the Scandinavian countries. For example, Stockholm or Helsinki are cities that delight us with colors in the landscape. There are no blooms, or there are not many of them. There may be some kind of heather arrangement in there, and it will shock you, because in January or February you least expect bright colors. And the most important of these things that are worthy of reflection, development, continuation are landscape modules of psychological support for the population in northern countries. These modules are under glass. The temperature there is maintained at +20...+25°C. Even in the most severe winter, when there is snow and ice around, the modules are filled with flowering vegetation, which you admire to the soundtrack of singing birds. All this is done so that people in winter firmly believe that a warm spring will come. So the resource of nature is used to create positive emotions in humans.
• Advice to summer residents and everyone who has a private house. I am for communication, I am for people to be different and have different landscapes. If the population had been more educated, had a better understanding, had a deeper interest, there would not have been such a massive use of standard solutions that we observe in the landscape design of suburban areas. It is important that our people from childhood were in a comfortable environment. Then the child grows up to be a more creative and caring person.
• Advice to citizens. Take climbing plants that can be raised along the frame to any height. It is necessary to raise the verticals, and everything will work out.

On January 29, 2017, Valery Anatolyevich Nefyodov, Doctor of Architecture and Professor, Professor of the Department of Urban Planning of the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SPbGASU), Honored Worker of the Higher School of the Russian Federation, member of the Union of Architects of the Russian Federation, died at the age of 68.

Valery Anatolyevich Nefyodov was born on May 20, 1949 in Riga. In 1973 he graduated from the Leningrad Civil Engineering Institute (LISI, now SPbGASU). In 1973-1976 he worked as an architect at the design institute LenzhilNIIproekt. From 1980 until the end of 2016, he taught at the Faculty of Architecture of SPbGASU. Having started work as an assistant, Valery Nefyodov became a professor at the department of urban planning, and for 10 years from 1997 to 2007 he served as dean of the Faculty of Architecture of SPbGASU.

In 2005 Valery Anatolyevich defended his doctoral thesis on the topic: "Architectural and landscape reconstruction as a means of optimizing the urban environment." As a supervisor, he prepared 7 candidates of science, as the head of an educational creative workshop, he trained hundreds of qualified specialists - graduates of the department "Urban Planning" and "Urban Studies and Urban Environment Design", now working in St. Petersburg, as well as other cities of Russia and the world.

For 18 years, Valery Nefyodov acted as a coordinator of international educational programs and joint project seminars with universities in Germany, France, Italy. As a visiting professor, he gave lectures, conducted project seminars on architecture and design in educational institutions in China, the USA, France, and Sweden. He made presentations and took part in major scientific international congresses and conferences dedicated to landscape architecture in Venice, Porto, Bergen, Zurich, Rio de Janeiro.

Valery Anatolyevich Nefedov is the author of three books: "Landscape design and environmental sustainability" (2002), "Urban landscape design" (2012), "How to return the city to people" (2015) and more than 70 scientific articles on topical issues architecture, urban planning and design of the urban environment.

In 2007, the outstanding teacher of SPbGASU was awarded the honorary title "Honored Worker of the Higher School of the Russian Federation".

The Urban Development Committee expresses its sincere condolences to the family and friends of Valery Anatolyevich Nefyodov, as well as to the entire staff of the St. Petersburg University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

We inform you that the farewell and civil memorial service will take place on February 1, 2017 (Wednesday) from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Architect's House at ul. B. Morskaya, 52. The funeral will take place at 13.30 in the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God at st. Kamskaya, 24.

Press Service of the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture
242-31-48,

Doctor of Architecture, Professor of the Department of Urbanism and Design of the Urban Environment of the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering Valery Nefedov tells how to ensure optimal ecological situation in the city and maximally adapt the environment to the changing interests of modern man.

The book is dedicated to the emerging eco-consciousness of modern cities. According to Valery Nefedov, its key indicators are the development of city parks, coastal areas, public transport and "green" technologies in construction. Landscape urbanism as a strategy for the development of megacities suggests that nature acts as the main factor in the structural optimization of public spaces and interacts with other types of urban infrastructures, including transport networks and utilities.

The degree of ecological well-being of the environment, its social adaptation and, finally, the implementation of modern green technologies in favor of a person living in the city can be judged by the organization of a full-fledged natural and park environment in the city. The park has ceased to be a decorative element; today it is able to replace both a summer residence and long-distance travel.

The concept of green transformation - "parks instead of the former industry" - has gained multiple confirmation in international practice over the past half century.

The Parisian parks "La Villette" and "Citroen" are a direct confirmation of this. They embodied the new ideology of the park - as a space for freedom of choice of recreational activities and constant intellectual development. Both parks arose on the site of former industrial territories and turned into a fertile environment for recreation.

The development of the residential areas of the new Stockholm, including the construction of the Hammarby Sjostad district, was used by the authors of the project to organize a coastal "reed" park, which has become a favorite place for walking the local population. At the same time, there are no traces of landscape components traditional for historical parks, but considerable benefits for the ecology of the region have been gained - the park, as a stable ecosystem with a self-regulation mechanism, has become a landscape stabilization factor.

In most cases, parks, as part of the city's new green strategy, have become a logical result of a targeted urban policy to turn former industrial and warehouse territories into a vital element of natural infrastructure for the city, as close as possible to the places where a large number of people live and contributing to the normalization of the ecological situation there.

How to Give the City Back to the People contains many successful landscaping projects that readers will want to learn about for themselves. Valery Anatolyevich is also an active user Facebook and regularly publishes examples of the organization of a high-quality and humanized urban environment on his page on the social network (the author's style and punctuation are preserved):

BERLIN, ADLERSHOF. “If the urban landscape is done for a long time and for real. No illusions with annuals. Stable and reliable - nature in the city is like at home. Minimum maintenance costs. Everything just grows and creates a comfortable environment for a person... Not expensive and not monumental, but very natural.”

HELSINKI. “The true signs of the coming winter in the Finnish capital are the bright colors of heather and conifers until late at night. It seems to be a trifle, but it's nice when the colors of wildlife from morning to night fill the urban space with a sense of full life. And it is not so expensive, but this is part of the mentality - always with nature. In the colors of nature and the abundance of real vegetation in January, one can easily see signs of not only a different attitude to nature and an alternative idea of ​​the winter image of the urban environment, the meaning of landscape education, but also notice that January can be filled with many sources of positive for a person.

HELSINKI, VIIKKI. “The natural priorities of life in the city are manifested in the way coniferous vegetation is used to structure spaces that are increasingly in demand for permanent use - a bicycle parking near the Korona information center. Simple logic - those types of vegetation that are always green and do not require any additional care are useful.

ESPOO, ESPOOLAHTI.“The square as a public space least of all needs monuments reminiscent of the past. Much more benefit from what the area has to offer for the development of people in the future, including their communication and development. At the same time, the presence of nature, primarily high vegetation, as an obligatory indicator of the humanity of public space, makes staying on the square much more attractive. There are special words about small forms and street furniture - they promote and develop the taste of the population, pulling it out of the dilapidated lines of past centuries with useless decoration.

BERLIN, ADLERSHOF. “If the city square is done in a smart way, then rainwater can also come in handy there. It's just that where there is more of it, more grass will grow there. And you should not rush with stone paving - the alternation of green modules with a lower mark and paving stones on the square no longer looks like a military parade ground. And there are no parades. And there is plenty of room for trees. There are places to sit and things to see. No monuments. Triumph of nature on the square.

LYON, Cite International. “The level of development of public transport and the allocation of special “green” corridors for it is another of the true indicators of the presence of eco-consciousness among so many people who influence the development of the city’s transport system. In Lyon, a street has been specially created for the movement of trolleybuses, along which cars do not drive, but pedestrians and cyclists walk nearby. An environment has been created for life without the pressure of cars with the priorities of man and nature.”

ESPOO, ESPOOLAHTI. “City squares are returned to people when the cars from them go underground. But on the ground from them there are descents to underground parking lots. The question of choosing building technologies - how to make such a descent not very annoying for people on the square - is a matter of taste. But there is always a chance for experimentation, including the choice of the original technology for printing on concrete.”

BERLIN, ADLERSHOF. “The surface of a city street in German. Convenient for pedestrians and cyclists. Technologically and aesthetically. No nightmares of total stone paving in one gray color. The emergence of new "green" technologies and the transition to the implementation of a sustainable development strategy make it possible to minimize the destructive impact on nature. Foreign cities were able to demonstrate real steps to change the environment in favor of people. At the same time, the vector of development has seriously shifted towards landscape urbanism.”

ESPOO, KAUKLAHTI. “The polychromy of the Finnish street with the development of townhouses is a reasonable scale and architecture adequate to the natural environment. This is when the mind visibly triumphs over the bursting desire to certainly build a cottage-castle outside the city on a plot of a couple of hectares and enclose it with a fence, so that you never see your neighbor for anything. The architecture of neighborhood and harmony as a reflection of the state of society.

COPENHAGEN, Residence Frederiks Holm. “An environment for life without fences and signs of elite. When cars receded before the priorities of nature. A space for the triumph of the mind with thoughts about the health of the next generation. Eco-consciousness as a factor of real progress in the arrangement of the urban environment.

HELSINKI. “On a winter evening in alternating rain and snow in the Finnish capital, you can see that lighting design has long been a special meaning of organizing a living environment for a person. In the yard, not killed by a dump of cars, a person can feel visible security thanks to the light accompaniment to the brightly lit porch of each entrance.

ESPOO, NOKIA Headquarter in Keilaniemi. “Finns have been working on the idea of ​​‘architecture as a continuation of nature’ for a very long time. And even going to the most high tech Hi-Tech, they do not forget that there should be even more nature around the most modern buildings.”

Images: Valery Nefedov

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Petersburg does not justify the title of a city on the water, and in terms of the use of embankments it lags even behind Moscow. The Village spoke with an architect about how the problem is solved in the world and what we need to do

• Natalia Vasenkova , December 16, 2014
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Last week, a competition for the project of the Moskva River embankment ended in Moscow: 220 kilometers of coastal territories will be turned into places for cultural leisure and recreation with dozens of parks, stations water transport and promenade. At the same time, in St. Petersburg, despite the fact that it is historically considered a city on the water, nothing like this happens: projects for the development of embankments, which young architects and urbanists are increasingly involved in, do not find support from anyone except a small circle of sympathetic citizens. Professor of SPbGASU, Doctor of Architecture Valery Nefyodov told The Village why this is happening, how to work with St. Petersburg embankments and what is being done in this area abroad.

Valery Nefyodov

Doctor of Architecture, Professor of the Department of Urbanism and Design of the Urban Environment of the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SPbGASU), author of the books "Urban landscape design" and "Landscape design and environmental sustainability"

Historically, the embankments of St. Petersburg were considered as spaces for the perception of panoramas of the other shore. The city strives for water, but, going to it, constantly postpones its arrangement for a person. In recent centuries, St. Petersburg has almost never considered coastal territories as a resource for organizing a decent human life. They were rapidly being turned into high-rise buildings with no signs of a comfortable environment next to water. Modern architects of St. Petersburg, having built something close to the water, can comment on photos of their objects with reflection in the water for a long time, reveling in the “beauty” of doubling the architecture. But they will never be able to find an explanation why not a single tree has been planted in front of the building and a public space has not been made for people on the embankment.

According to the General Plan of 1966, Leningrad unfolded in its development from the use of the "internal" water area of ​​the Neva delta to a new axis - the creation of areas on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. But once again, the main task was set postcard building - "Marine Façade", which could be looked at from afar. But walking along it along the well-maintained and landscaped promenades is still a problem.

Cars and their owners quickly outstripped the plans for arranging pedestrian spaces: the beautifully named Sea Embankment forever remained a place for storing cars in rusty metal garages-boxes, preventing people living along it from having a chance to go to the water for a considerable distance, except for the section from Europe Square to the mouth of the Smolenka. The main goal for the city near the water - the transformation of coastal areas into a quality environment - has again been left out of attention.

One of the most ambitious attempts to change the coastal areas along the Neva in the 20th century was the development of the Sverdlovsk embankment, on which the pedestrian and transport levels of traffic were correctly separated. But even then a person began to steadily move away from the water in the city, leaving the coastal area to traffic flows.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, this process only intensified. The transformation of the former industrial territories along the Vyborgskaya embankment, and then the reconstruction of the Pirogovskaya and Ushakovskaya embankments, had the main goal of arranging expanded spaces for the passage of an avalanche of cars. But there was not the slightest attempt to find a balanced solution for the citizens - for example, with the allocation of green stripes along the water. The city a few years ago had a unique chance to create the Embankment of Europe - with coastal space in the very center of the city. This could be the largest return to man of coastal spaces.

Public coastal zones vs elite development

The formation of coastal infrastructure can be beneficial. There you can create places of modern meaningful leisure: service, games for children and teenagers, rental of sports equipment and sports grounds. This is how they do it in many countries around the world. It is not necessary to build residential complexes close to the coastline and there should not be traditional intensive transit along the water. It is much more logical to leave up to hundreds of meters of coastal pedestrian spaces with leisure infrastructure. Thanks to her, the building is gaining an index of attractiveness.

Such decisions are difficult to wrap in any figures of the economic effect. Especially in relation to the income received from the sale of square meters of housing in premium homes. The decisive criterion should be the sound logic of the humanization of the environment, corresponding to the level of development of the country's civilization. To build new concrete residential monsters along the water is to admit that people are denied the environment to fully live in the most attractive coastal green areas for this. Gotta overcome lowest level ideas about the meaning of life in the city.

How to revive the coast

Coastal territories are provided with engineering infrastructure at the expense of the city budget. This is what happens in many countries. Further, the regulation of the maximum building height (up to two floors) and the functional range of the development of the territory are established. Priority is given to sports, catering, teen projects, beach and quiet areas. Private owners and contractors are selected on a competitive basis. But for the civilized development of this process, the political will of the city's leadership is needed. And the initial coordination, excluding an aggressive attack on the coastal territories only by commercial buildings, sports clubs or restaurants. The alternation of built-up and open spaces is the elementary logic of the balanced development of the city near the water. And from these positions, restaurants growing like mushrooms on the southern bank of Krestovsky, which leave no chance of preserving the coastal ecosystem, look quite absurd in their essence.

Floating facilities with autonomous infrastructure can give impetus to the development of coastal territories. On the Seine in Paris, it is precisely these leisure centers that cause minimal damage environment, but attract the most visitors. The floating pool in front of the National Library on the Seine is just one of many examples of successful waterfront development with floating facilities.

Coastal areas come alive when something interesting is constantly happening on them. In many ways, the popularity of the beaches in front of the Peter and Paul Fortress is associated with the events that periodically take place there: beach volleyball competitions, exhibitions of ice or sand sculpture, concerts. But there is only one such place in a city of many millions, and you need to look for other sites near the water that can be revived in the same way.

foreign experience

Cities of the world use the resource of water areas in different ways. Of the relatively modern completed projects, it is worth highlighting the floating bathing Harbor Bath in the center of Copenhagen and the Kalvebod Brygge embankment with pedestrian promenades over the water. Both examples demonstrated an elementary truth - comfort is needed to attract people to water. Without the pressure of cars and with the widest possible range of recreational activities: swimming and sunbathing, sitting in a cafe and chatting with friends, playing sports or just walking over the water.

In those few parks of St. Petersburg, which turned out to be closer to the high water of the Gulf of Finland - the 300th anniversary and the South Primorsky - the coastal areas did not find a really multifunctional content. The sad adherence to the St. Petersburg style with monumental priorities in the form of massive and expensive fountains, granite esplanades and amphitheaters in the first of them led to the devaluation of the resource of the coastal territory.

The valleys of numerous small rivers flowing through the contours of the new districts of the city also have a no less resource. If in peripheral areas small rivers would become the subject of reflection of the district authorities and the object of design, then with the advent of modern landscape design there, people would be able to relax, walk and play with children, go in for sports, and go to cafes with much greater pleasure. And not just mass walking dogs.

Promising territories

At the end of this year, a large-scale international competition was held in the capital to develop an urban planning concept for the development of territories adjacent to the Moscow River. It became clear that St. Petersburg risks falling behind forever if it does not urgently take some kind of radical and meaningful action, similar to Moscow. Since the banks of the Neva are rapidly turning into the most polluted transport artery, it is possible to return to a civilized version of development only by radically reversing this ridiculous trend. The city needs a different strategy for interacting with the water area. One can get out of the "anti-city on the water" only by revising the entire transport system. The city needs to refocus on the transformation of former industrial zones into modern parks, especially where depressed areas come to the water. And one can only regret that one of the most depressing and environmentally problematic areas of the city - the Obvodny Canal embankment near the Petmol plant - after the withdrawal of enterprises is tightly built up with new, non-human-scale residential complexes without the slightest attempt to create at least episodic signs of nature along the canal.

The sections of Oktyabrskaya Embankment already freed from industry or the still-discussed closure of a number of industrial sites along Uralskaya Street, on the northern side of which the banks of the Malaya Neva will have to be transformed, have no less resource. Special expectations are associated with this part of the Neva delta, since state of the art embankments with an abundance of rusty old ships and a spontaneous arrangement of barges and landing stages are not decorated with the second most important fairway of the delta, along which high-speed meteors are sent from the center of St. Petersburg to Peterhof. By replacing rusty shipwrecks with modern floating cultural centers, we can change people's attitudes towards the use of coastal areas.

One of the most large-scale exits of the city to high water is the development of alluvial territories around the new sea station in the western part of Vasilyevsky Island. Nature, instead of piling up heavy masses of housing, can at least in this part of the city stop that hellish conveyor of yesterday's open territories being filled with ominous lumps of gray concrete mass called "housing". This is hardly possible if the developer does not realize that it is not meters that should be sold, but the quality of the environment for living around.

Buildings in the northwestern part of the city in the Yuntolovo district are worthy of the same revision. The abundance of swampy, reed-covered spaces is not a problem, but becomes a code for the identity of the territory. You shouldn't destroy it. On the example of the coastal reed park in the Hammarby Sjöstad area in Stockholm, it is quite clear how effectively an ecosystem built on natural water circulation, refusal to strengthen the banks with stone walls and the maximum development of aquatic vegetation, over which pedestrian promenades are equipped, can function.

It is clear that the political will of the city leadership is needed to implement all of the above proposals. And a full-fledged Master Plan, where an important section would be the formation of the natural water-green frame of St. Petersburg.

Photo: Valery Nefyodov