Competition for Tverskaya Street Improvement Design Launched

The open international competition will be held for Tverskaya Streetscape Concept Design (the design project covers the territory from Pushkinskaya Square to Belorusskiy Vokzal Square). The competition is held under the order of the Department for major renovation of the city of Moscow of Strelka KB with the support of the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning.

Tverskaya Street improvement project is a part of the My Street Programme launched by the city government. The Program for complex renovation of the city streets and back alleys, avenues and embankments is carried out in stages: the reconstruction works at the first site of Tverskaya Street — from Mokhovaya Street to Pushkinskaya Square — started as part of its second stage in May. The author of the project is the Dutch architecture firm West 8 under the direction of Adrian Gёze who is well-known for his projects for public spaces in Madrid, Toronto, London and Barcelona.

‘The main idea of My Street Programme launched by Mayor Sergey Sobyanin is that our city is becoming more friendly and humane towards people, and it’s enjoyable just to be in the city street,’ said Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow. ‘It’s a different perception of the city, designated as “friendly urbanism”. We can see that many streets in the city center have been changed greatly, while the main one remained unchanged. So the point of this competition is to find a new image of the city’s main street, which shall convey the nature of Moscow urbanism.’

The area in front of Pushkinskaya Metro Station. West 8

Savvinsky courtyard. West 8

‘We had two options — either to give the second section of Tverskaya Street to Gёze or to hold the competition,’ said Grigory Revzin, partner of Strelka KB. ‘We thought it was important to engage young architects in this project for street renovation, which is of great significance, because two or three years ago this sphere lacked highly-qualified architects. This practice started with the competition for Triumfalnaya Square design, which I consider to be a heroic action of the Moscow City Architecture Committee and the Chief Architect. We would like to continue this practice and decided to announce a competition.’

The competition will be absolutely open, without pre-qualification selection. Applications will be accepted from Russian and foreign landscape designers and architects until June 28, 2016. The winner will receive prize money and, in fact, will supervise the project. The winner and Strelka KB will conclude the Project Development Contract which will be the part of the bidding procedure for the street improvement. After that KB will have to hand over the construction design documents to the city government.

Central Telegraph. West 8

‘After the 1930s Tverskaya Street became one of the great streets which Alan Jacobs writes about in his famous book, said Grigory Revzin. ‘The main street like this as a public space is a highly civilized city perception: the way you walk, the way people look at you. As far as the street problems are concerned, I believe that the concept should provide a solution to organize commercial spaces, cafes, parks — as pavements vary in width from 4 to 15 meters — and parking. There is also a problem of intersections that have the form of grand parterres, each of which must somehow be resolved.’

In the process of Tverskaya Street reconstruction, park-like atmosphere will be created. The width of the roadway will be reduced to the minimum of 25 m, consequently the pavement width will be increased. Also, trees will be planted again in the ground in Tverskaya Street. Revzin explained, that in order to make the trees survive in a hostile environment, they will be planted in isolated concrete underground boxed, which will require all-round relaying of utility connections.

The winner will be determined at the meeting of the jury and announced on July 7th. The judging panel consists of Adrian Gёze, architect and co-founder of West 8 architecture firm; Tatyana Guk, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of Moscow; Varvara Melnikova, CEO of General of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, partner of Strelka KB, CEO of Afisha; Alexey Novikov, professor, Dean of Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism at the National Research University Higher School of Economics; Grigory Revzin, architectural critic, partner of Strelka KB; Philip Wren, architect, retail trade specialist, managing director at Wren Architecture; Sergei Tchoban, architect, managing partner of SPEECH architectural bureau; Martha Schwartz, architect, principal of Martha Schwartz Partners; Nicholay Shumakov, president of the Union of Moscow Architects. The Jury Chairman is Petr Biryukov, Deputy Mayor of Moscow at the Government of Moscow for Housing, Utilities and Amenities.

As noted by Giovanna Carnevali, competitions programme director at Strelka KB, ‘one of the main goals of the competition is to engage the new generation of architects into work on urban projects. Due to our work carried out during the current and the previous year on the position of a strategic consultant for the Government of Moscow, we managed to develop the standards for the streetscape improvement and invite the leading international architects to implement projects of the main streets of the city, thereby setting the quality level for projects that we would like to establish as standard for streetscape improvement in Moscow.’

Grigory Revzin pointed out that Tverskaya is deliberately divided into two project sections, as these parts of the street are very different in terms of their profile and functions, also traffic to and after Pushkinskaya Square differs. Revzin said that the street diversity is advantageous, adding that the project will also comply with the uniform standards adopted by the Department formajor renovation of the city which will preserve the general landscape format of the street.