A park or walking area may appear on the site of the legendary House of Soviets, which began to collapse in Kaliningrad – such a decision was made by the townspeople. Andrey Tolmachev, director of the Regional Development Corporation, told Gazeta.ru that residents are against the construction of a new residential complex or shopping center, but do not object to the construction of administrative or hotel buildings.
“We do a lot of public case studies of what features we would like to see in the region. In parallel, they organized an exhibition of all the architectural and urban planning works that had been done in this area before. What has sociological research shown us? First, we as residents do not want to see housing there. This is the opinion of citizens and tourists. Second: The townspeople don’t want to see a big shopping mall there. He gave advice that it would be interesting to go there. Actually different functions: we are talking about parks, squares and walking area, including cafes, bars, restaurants, a kind of commerce. Administrative function, office function, hotel function and apartments are not prohibited for temporary accommodation. “We collected these requests and created the terms of reference to hold a competition for the development of this region,” said Tolmachev.
The final decision on what will appear on the site of the destroyed Soviet House will be made at the end of the summer, after the results of the competition for the best architectural solution.
“Approximately 44 firms and architectural offices have expressed their desire to participate in this competition and they are working on an architectural solution that we will observe, select, award winners and define a concept for in July-August. We made this decision on the professionalism of the architects and we will be pleased to see all architectural solutions to be submitted. We would be happy if suddenly the architectural community decided that the symbol of the House of Soviets should be recreated. If this decision is supported by the majority and the first places are taken, then of course we will gladly consider such a concept. But it will be a remake, stylistically it may look somewhat similar. The central point of Kaliningrad probably deserves something very interesting. And of course the central square. This region should work, live,” Tolmachev stressed.
He added that the House of Soviets was a very important architectural structure but had to be demolished for safety reasons.
“When we did some research, including the desire to rebuild the building’s technical condition to preserve it, the results showed a few critical things. The first is the current state, given that the object remains in an unprotected state for a long time. This led to the corresponding situation of reinforced concrete products, and therefore repair and some kind of reconstruction, preservation is not only convenient, but also dangerous for the future location of the object. The second story is that the previous operators of the plant carried out separate works and unfortunately damaged the foundations, namely the diaphragms, so it will not be difficult to restore the plant anymore. Thirdly, today’s SanPiN on the construction of buildings, the norms of GOST, the requirements for creating citizens’ comfort, fire safety, the need for access by people with limited mobility are somewhat more serious. Therefore, of course, there was a desire to save, but the current state of the object … We did not hide this story, we showed the questionnaire itself, we invited everyone to see the current situation. “We will need to disassemble it to ensure safety, including for future generations,” Tolmachev said.
Earlier in Kaliningrad they began to demolish the legendary long-term construction – the House of Soviets. The contract for the demolition of the building was signed with Tekhnoresurs LLC, the company will have to disassemble it to zero. Probably the work will take 14 months and cost 128 million rubles.
The House of Soviets began to be built in 1970, but construction was stopped in the second half of the 80s. The exterior of the building was renovated in 2005, but it was not allowed to be used due to structural defects.