PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: To what extent will the pandemic slow down vertical progress and how will new waves and mutations of the virus affect the perspective of high-rise construction?
Andrey Ryzhikov: The pandemic did not slow down vertical progress as such, they are planning to build high-rise buildings just as they planned. The pandemic itself periodically stopped the construction process, but these were temporary quarantine restrictions. In addition to the existing formats, the trend of suburban housing appeared, but high-rise buildings remained as they were.
Photo: Jakayla Toney / unsplash
PM: How justified is high-rise construction in the center of the city? Is it permissible to "stand up for the blue line", and if so, in what cases?
A.R.: The "Blue Line" in Kyiv has not yet been determined. There is a zoning project in which it will be approved, there is the DBN "Planning and Development of Territories", in which the concept of "blue line" was introduced, but there is still no de facto regulation as such.
I am a supporter of high-rise construction in the city, for me the "blue line" is a step back. First, how exactly should it be measured - by low-rise pre-revolutionary buildings? No. Kyiv is built quite chaotically and there is no historical center as such, there are separate architectural monuments, there are several ensembles, but they are concentrated very precisely. Secondly, the "blue line" actually violates the right to use the land - when you want to extract the maximum benefit from a small piece of land in the center (and the benefit is not only money), you cannot do it.
Therefore, I would allow the construction of high-rise buildings in the center, but I approached it from a scientific point of view - I modeled the situation with flows, with transport, etc. And I did not just build a 50-story high-rise wherever I wanted.
PM: Can the vertical growth of cities solve such urgent problems as heavy traffic, shortage of affordable housing, deterioration of the ecological situation? Or, on the contrary, will it aggravate them?
A.R.: The situation is twofold. On the one hand, if we start thoughtlessly raising the number of floors and densifying the population, then, of course, this will aggravate the situation. If the centers of employment, housing and recreation are separated, the number of people who move will increase, and we will get a worsening of the transport situation and an increase in the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere. Therefore, it is necessary to build vertical buildings that assume a minimal need for movement, that is, in fact, you need to live, work, and rest in one building. In addition, the building itself must be able to generate energy and resources, then the situation will improve for the city.
Andrey Ryzhikov, CEO and managing partner of the DC Evolution development company
PM: Why didn't the predictions of the futurists of the early 2th century, who predicted that the second industrial revolution would lead to the emergence of multi-level cities, come true? What will be the skyscrapers of the future in 5-XNUMX decades?
A.R.: And why are we still not living on Mars or the Moon? Humanity is actually busy with a few other things - we actively promote the culture of consumption, and instead of building futuristic vertical cities, flying to other planets, we consume resources for the sake of consumption itself. Futurists of the early XNUMXth century. were pragmatists - they thought that everything would develop in step with science, but that did not happen. There will definitely be vertical cities. What kind? I think that the buildings will actually be separate cities - everything as written in books and shown in movies. Everything will be fine, just not as quickly as expected.
