{"id":163218,"date":"2010-01-10T20:20:38","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T01:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skyscrapercity.com\/showthread.php?t=1042719"},"modified":"2010-01-10T20:20:38","modified_gmt":"2010-01-11T01:20:38","slug":"st-petersburg-city-under-siege-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/163218","title":{"rendered":"St Petersburg: City under siege?"},"content":{"rendered":"
An op article by Gavin Stamp at Apollo Magazine…<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.apollo-magazine.com\/news-…er-siege.thtml<\/a><\/p>\n

City under siege<\/b>
\nDespite local opposition and criticism, St Petersburg is being spoiled by developlers in the name of modernisation.<\/i>
\nGavin Stamp, Wednesday, 6th January 2010 <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

… As in Moscow, the authorities are complicit in this process, insisting that the city must develop. The official (but often ignored) height restriction on new buildings has recently been raised from 48 metres to 100 metres. Incongruous new buildings are defended by politicians as symbols that Russia is rising from its knees after the long night of Communism, but, of course, there are close connections between many of them and the developers. There is, however, strong popular opposition to what is happening, focusing on the most serious threat to the skyline: the Okhta Centre, better known as the Gazprom Tower (Fig. 2), proposed for a site by the Neva directly opposite the Smolny Cathedral by Rastrelli. As it is essentially a colossal 400-metre-high tower, it scarcely matters that it is some six kilometres from the city centre. The architects claim that this is a ‘glass needle which echoes the spires across the city’, but for many citizens it is a symbol of the power and ruthlessness of the state-owned gas monopoly (whose former chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, is now President of Russia). There have been public demonstrations against this development, but it has been approved by the government of St Petersburg – despite the concerns of Unesco.<\/p>\n

This vulgar, gratuitous spike has been designed by a once-respected British firm: RMJM (Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Partners). Elsewhere, a damaging scheme for the former naval dockyard called New Holland is one of several projects by the firm of Norman Foster. Foreign architects – Italians, Scots, Frenchmen and Germans – have lived and worked in St Petersburg from the beginning, from Rastrelli to von Klenze, but as well as doing fine things they also somehow responded to its unique, Russian character. These modern interlopers, however, merely impose buildings that could be anywhere. As Philip Johnson observed, ‘Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we’ve both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business.’ As with prostitution, however, it is the clients who are really to blame, and I do wish I didn’t now feel so nostalgic for the days of the Iron Curtain.<\/p>\n

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An op article by Gavin Stamp at Apollo Magazine… ———————————- http:\/\/www.apollo-magazine.com\/news-…er-siege.thtml City under siege Despite local opposition and criticism, St Petersburg is being spoiled by developlers in the name of modernisation. Gavin Stamp, Wednesday, 6th January 2010 … … As in Moscow, the authorities are complicit in this process, insisting that the city must develop. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}