PM: We are trying to find a balance point between two extremes — a sprawling low-rise city and a high-rise stone jungle. More often, high-rise construction causes a lot of negative emotions. When is vertical development positive?
Dmitry Vasiliev: Speaking of vertical development, I usually cite the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver as examples. Vancouver, the center of which is built up with buildings 40-60 stories high, nevertheless consistently ranks among the world's most comfortable cities for life. So this is the same vivid example: vertical can be appropriate, vertical can be comfortable.
Dmitry Vasiliev, architect, co-founder of archimatika
PM: And what is their secret? Is there any way to explain to people in simple words that a tall building is not always and not everywhere evil incarnate?
D.V.: In fact, this is a question of the quality of architectural and urban planning solutions. What has been done in Vancouver and Toronto? First: despite the dense construction, the clear lines of the streets have been preserved there. A classic solution: there are 40-story towers on the corners, and a series of townhouses between them. Even if the building is expanded or an entrance platform is created, the elements of landscaping - fountains, flower beds - all of them keep a clear line of the street. This is one of the methods that allows creating a visually safe, predictable environment at high density.
Second: self-scaling is handed over to a person. The secret of Canadian success is that they don't build skyscrapers in the form of a wall that starts 100 meters up from the sidewalk. There is a gradation of volumes. First, the first one or two floors stand out at the street level, then there is a stylobate with 5-6 floors, and then the high-rise part. And when you walk down the street, you feel comfortable. Let me clarify: along a narrow street, not along a hundred-meter-wide avenue. There is no norm that a setback of 100 meters or more is required when constructing a high-rise building. Therefore, the pedestrian feels in an accessible, predictable environment and sees in front of him the architecture of commensurate height. People usually don't walk with their heads up, they look straight along the street, and in this perspective they see everything within 5-6 floors. A well-designed, decorated, active and functionally filled visual area creates a feeling of comfort. Shop windows built into residential buildings, shopping centers and public centers, beautiful glass lobbies — thanks to this, the effect of a comfortable environment is achieved.
The center of Toronto on the shore of Ontario began to be built up with skyscrapers starting from the middle of the XNUMXth century. Photo: Yeshi Kangrang / unsplash
Concentrated development allows Canadians to free up space for spacious parks. In our country, everyone tries to build everything at once on his plot - a children's playground, a parking lot, a place for recreation. And there, the building usually occupies almost the entire site. Sometimes a mini-park with lakes and a piece of wild nature is formed in the middle of the complex, but all this is intended exclusively for admiring it from the windows. And in order to walk, there is a large landscaped park with all functions for children and adults. The city has a balanced environment — there is a place for recreation and dense, comfortable areas. And all because the most expensive plots in the center are allocated for high-rise construction. Was it possible to build 5-6 floors? It is possible. Would it be better? It would look almost the same, but the cost per square meter there would be exorbitant.
The quality of detailing at the lower, pedestrian level, the quality of construction and finishing materials is important
PM: The Canadians succeeded, but we are not doing so well. Who should regulate height issues?
D.V.: The city must regulate. How was the general plan of Toronto envisioned? All industry will be taken and moved outside the city, and skyscrapers will be built on the shore of the bay. Yes, there is a permissible height, the so-called blue line, there is a certain density. The presence and absence of these rules is the main difference between the situation in Toronto, Vancouver and Kyiv.
And the second important condition is the quality of architecture. The quality of detailing at the lower, pedestrian level, the quality of construction and finishing materials — all this is very important. Few of us pay attention to detailing and vertical stitching. And the architectural solutions themselves are quite cheap and primitive. Creating a not very pleasant impression that a skyscraper is such a homogenous roughly plastered tower, which is the same from the ground up to the 30th floor. It is clear that she is perceived as a sad 100-meter monster. In recent years, Kyiv has begun to use the correct techniques — proportionality, development of first floors with rich detailing, architectural plasticity. The New York Concept House residential complex, for example, or the Chicago Central House residential complex, where a glass cube focuses a person's attention on itself and makes this large object commensurate with the surrounding buildings.
The CN Tower, 553 meters high, remains a dominant feature of the Toronto skyline. Photo: Arturo Castaneyra / unsplash
PM: One of the most frequently used arguments of opponents of high-rise buildings is as follows: "Now a tower is going to be built here, and we will no longer drive or pass through this street." Is it possible to refute this opinion?
D.V.: It is necessary to make a clear distinction - are we forming new districts with high-rise buildings or pushing towers into established narrow historical streets? And if it is possible and necessary to form a new development competently, then the question of compaction of old historical districts is indeed very doubtful. If this is a two-lane street, where the intersections are 200 m apart, then if we put three towers in a row, we can really create problems. The 100-meter tower dissonates in the existing 5-story building - unless, of course, we form some important architectural and town-planning accent, some special ensemble. In Kyiv, this is happening in front of the Ocean Plaza Mall, where old industrial areas are being built up with new high-rise complexes.
PM: Yes, but there is a powerful transport interchange and there are no problems with detours and driving.
D.V.: Precisely. But if we insert a large volume into an already dense low-rise environment, we disturb the balance. And it is a completely different matter when it comes to new quarters. I believe that it is good to form a new development with high-rise buildings. Because low-rise buildings mean distances, networks, expensive repairs and maintenance. All these are quite large costs for the maintenance of urban infrastructure. And if we put the cubes in the tower, then the expenses became much less, and now they fall on the tenants and new owners, and not on taxpayers from other districts of the city. Yes, the city should have different districts, different formats, because all people are different, with different preferences. And the cities are different.
Why does Vienna, even though it is a rich city by our standards, build new districts with medium-rise buildings? They want to preserve their historically established form. And they can afford not to build skyscrapers at all.
It seems to me that we are closer to the experience of Paris with its removal of high-rise buildings to Defense and the preservation of the historical buildings of the center. The solution to the problem of the chaotic development of Kyiv would be to introduce a rule back in the 90s that any new building that would appear next to the existing architectural ensembles — Institutskaya, Reitarskaya, Podol, Khmelnytskyi, Khreshchatyk — could not be higher than neighboring buildings.
The center of Toronto on the shore of Ontario began to be built up with skyscrapers starting from the middle of the XNUMXth century. Photo: Mwangi Gatheca / unsplash
PM: Is this the same notorious "blue line"?
D.V.: The "blue line" formula is more complicated. Even the primitive rule "do not build on the neighbor" would have been enough at that moment to prevent chaotic construction. Now it's too late, the landscape has become so loose that now we need to accept the situation as a given, create a three-dimensional map and supplement reality with new well-thought-out and high-quality interventions to smooth out the gaps that have formed. And this is a really serious scientific work. If we leave it as it is, then the ridiculous towers that we managed to build will remain dominant, will look like our ideological manifesto - ridiculous, unaesthetic. That is, where the landscape has not yet been disturbed, preserve it, and where there are already aggressive inclusions, try to create counterbalances.
It is necessary to make a clear distinction - are we forming new districts with high-rise buildings or pushing towers into established narrow historical streets?
Photo: Matthew Henry / unsplash
PM: Are we, in principle, capable of such strategic projects?
D.V.: Just now, we have come to the point where we are ready and capable. A public opinion about the value of a high-quality urban landscape has already been formed, and the professional attitude towards the city has become more careful and conscious. But in this issue, there is no way without the participation of the city and the authorities.
PM: How will the pandemic with its lockdowns affect the development of high-rise construction in the long term?
D.V.: It is difficult to say. Everything depends on how the situation will develop. If new waves of the pandemic follow, then all our problems will worsen, and people will avoid the crowd, work outside the office. And demand will increase for suburban low-rise real estate. But for now, I hardly believe in such a negative forecast.
