PROJECT RUSSIA ¹56 - Perm

In the entire lifetime of our magazine there have only been two issues devoted to single cities. They were Nizhny Novgorod (1997) and St Petersburg (2003). Could any one have imagined, even not so long ago, that our third such issue would be on Perm? It is, of course, true that buildings in the city on the banks of the River Kama have been designed by architects who are, by Russian standards, more or less well-known – among them Mendel Futlik, Sergey Shamarin, and Igor Lugovoy. And the latter have, of course, been joined by figures from Moscow – including ABD architects, Art-Blya, Alexander Asadov, and Alexander Vysokovsky. And then, of course, there have also been foreign architects getting a look in; Valode & Pistre (France), for instance, were asked to design a large residential street block for Renova. So, all in all, the situation in Perm was exactly the same as in all other regional centres in Russia with some money to spend. There was nothing at all here, it seemed, that required a special issue of Project Russia. Perm today is not a very attractive city. It is incoherent, poorly looked after, cut off from its river (the River Kama) by railway tracks, and built up with districts of prefab houses and pretentious colossi of the kind that used to be erected in the era that was recently brought to an end by the economic crisis. In fact, Perm fails to enchant both visitors and its own natives. As research by Alexander Vysokovsky has shown, what irritates locals most in their daily lives is the quality of the landscaping. “During the course of conversations,” says Vysokovsky, “it becomes clear that ‘poor landscaping’ is a term used to express dissatisfaction with the urban environment. Landscaping is a matter of more than just benches and paving; it implies a more fundamental tactile link between a person and what surrounds him.” (1) As a space, Perm is fundamentally in need of improvement. And quick. For people are ‘voting with their feet’: the city has already ceased to be a city of one million inhabitants, having shed 100,000 of its population over the last 20 years. This is a situation which cries out for a declaration of ‘Revolution or death!’ And this is precisely what makes Perm unique. For revolution is indeed underway here. The team led by Governor Oleg Chirkunov has broken with established practice in urban planning – with that practice which is a matter of reproducing two models that are equally unacceptable from the point of view of modern standards of quality of life, namely microrayons of prefab housing and infill development in accidental locations. And now here’s an interesting thing: in this situation our establishment professionals have turned out to be surplus to requirements. The new generation of managers and politicians – people who are fluent in foreign languages and equally fluent in their grasp of what’s happening in the world – find it easier to work with like-minded people. For them the word ‘context’ is, so to speak, two-layered. The first and inner layer is a matter of a person’s immediate physical surroundings; the outer layer concerns global theory and practice in urban planning. To be able to focus on both kinds of context requires a special bifocality and extremely broad range of vision. So it is logical that Perm’s strategic masterplan – a document which must lay down principles for the city’s future development – has been commissioned from KCAP, a Dutch firm of architects and urban planners working in London, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and many other cities. The masterplan has an ambitious aim: to turn Perm into a city that is comfortable to live in by European standards. A city that will be mid-rise, compact, consisting of multifunctional street blocks, and possessing landscaped streets, embankments, and parks. Important signs of the new policy are a series of designs for new public museums. Boris Bernaskoni’s museum on the River Kama, Project Meganom’s reconstruction of the River Port building, and David Chipperfield’s extension for the Opera and Ballet Theatre are works that have won victory in intense creative battle in international competitions. They form a growing collection of interesting architectural solutions providing a clearer picture of the city’s desired future. But how realizable is all this? Will the spark grow into a flame? Projects on this scale are not, of course, to be seen as something frozen or dogmatic. How quickly they move forward largely depends on the extent to which the general public is involved. There can be no substitute for broad and object-specific discussion of the incipient transformations. Our magazine’s contribution to this process is to present the projects in question to the public, together with notes and comments. So, dear readers, you have a sketch of Perm’s future in your hands. Look, analyze, and make up your own minds. (1) From a speech given on March 26th, 2010 at the ‘The city tomorrow’ Forum in Novosibirsk. Alexei Muratov, editor-in-chief CONTENTS