Moscow says: Shukhov Tower should become a site of federal importance

Experts of the Moscow government committee on urban development concerning places of interest and protected areas of cultural heritage sites unanimously recommended to recognize the Shukhov Tower as a monument of federal importance.

Intense discussions around one of the greatest achievements of world engineering art have been going on for several months. There was talk about the tower’s transfer to Gorky Park, the All-Russia Exhibition Center, Samara, Sevastopol — and on the background of all this, the architectural community never ceased to sound the alarm. The tower should remain there and in the form in which it was designed by Shukhov. To disassemble and reassemble the tower again, much less in a different location, is impossible; its condition of disrepair in fact threatens no one and nothing; there are ways to reconstruct the tower “in place,” etc.

Appeals were written, signatures were collected — coming to the defense of the Shukhov tower were not only local residents, but also stars of world architecture like Tadao Ando, ​​Kengo Kuma and Elizabeth Diller.

Many times the chief architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov participated in numerous panel discussions and meetings on the radio and on television. Expressing his position as a member of the professional community, he noted that “no one doubts the uniqueness of the tower” — it is one of the “beacons of patriotism” which needs to be preserved and developed.

Sergey Kuznetsov strongly supported the idea of organizing a cultural cluster around the Shukhov Tower, which repeatedly was put forward by the architectural community; there are several notable buildings of the Soviet avant-garde era concentrated around the creation of the famous Russian engineer.

“Thus far, I do not see the motivation for moving the Shukhov Tower elsewhere. Maybe it exists, but then it’s worth it to present this idea for discussion. The tower is the dominant at its current location in an area of constructivist buildings, and so in the streets of the Shabolovka neighborhood cultural integrity is formed,” emphasized Moscow’s chief architect.

Currently the Shukhov Tower is merely a site of regional importance, and on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Communications. Assignment of federal status could radically change the situation.

And then finally, at the latest meeting of the Moscow government committee on urban development concerning places of interest and protected areas of cultural heritage sites, it was resolved to appeal to the federal government with an official recommendation to recognize the Shukhov Tower as monument of federal importance.

The decision was unanimous. Experts from the scientific advisory board of the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage expressed their readiness to make the necessary expert evaluation and deliver the results to the Ministry of Culture of Russia.