Novy Arbat, Moscow

Novy Arbat is a street located on the territory of the same name in the Central Administrative District of the Russian capital. It stretches from the square of the Arbat Gate (from there the numbering of buildings begins) to the area of Free Russia.

origin of name

Ul. The new Arbat was conceived by the designers before the Great Patriotic War. Thus, the general plan for the reconstruction of the capital, which appeared in 1935, provided for the laying of a new urban highway from Arbat Square to Dorogomilovskaya outpost connecting the center of Moscow with residential new buildings in its western part. The specified highway in the very beginning should pass in parallel already existing street Arbat, that is why the working variant of the name became New Arbat. In addition, this site was called the Prospectus of the Constitution. Unfortunately, the war did not allow the realization of all these plans. They returned only in the sixties.

In 1963 a merger occurred in a single highway from the Garden Ring to Arbat Square, part of Kutuzov Prospect and ul. Kalinin. This zone became known as Kalinin Avenue, named after Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin. Muscovites themselves used an unofficial name for the site between the Garden Ring and Arbat Square - Novy Arbat. This option was documented in 1994.

Significant Events

In the tunnel under the New Arbat, in the course of the August putsch (the events of 1991), three people were killed. In memory of the tragedy, a memorial sign was later installed.

On March 10, 2010, Novy Arbat became the venue for the nationwide rally "For Fair Elections." Its participants, according to various estimates, are from ten to twenty-five thousand people. Crowds of people moved along the odd side of the street, the traffic did not overlap.

Architectural features

Over the ensemble of the site in question in 1962-1968 architects Thor, Posokhin, Makarevich, Mdoyants, Ayrapetov, Popova, Pokrovsky and Zaitseva worked. Thanks to their efforts, a new voluminous fragment of the metropolitan environment appeared, in which everything was subordinated to a single plan, from the basic orientation of the space structure to advertising and improvement elements.

On the northern (even) side there is a dotted line of five houses. In each of them there are twenty four floors, the material of construction is frame panels, the number of apartments is 176. These buildings are similar to each other as twins. It was assumed that representatives of the creative intelligentsia and Soviet officials of high rank will live in grandiose buildings. On the first two floors of the houses there are cafes and shops. In between the tall towers, two-story buildings are erected, including the House of Books and the Oktyabr cinema. Thanks to such a decision, the New Arbat became even more contrasting. However, not all consider this a plus.

And what is located on the southern (odd) side of the street Novy Arbat (Moscow)? This site is occupied by twenty-six administrative buildings. They are connected by a continuous plane of an eight-hundred-foot stylobate. It has two underground and ground floors. They serve to accommodate the lobbies of administrative buildings and a large shopping center.

The development of the odd side is characterized by the most modern level of organization and maintenance of its time. Mutual interference in the implementation of trade and administrative functions of buildings does not arise, the division is made with the necessary clarity. Architects proposed an effective solution to the problem of unloading goods into stores located in buildings. For this purpose along the entire length of this building a tunnel was built in 1 km long and 9 m wide. Entrances are from the side of two lanes and from the ends. This does not disrupt the habitual course of life of the local population and creates comfortable conditions for the employees of the shopping center.

Current state of affairs

At the present time, Novy Arbat (Moscow) is not yet a complete project. So, on this street on both sides are left from the old building construction, sometimes even their backs, which in no way fits into the shape of the modern highway. Houses on Novy Arbat, erected in the late XIX - early XX century, tower above the shopping center on the south side and protrude between the 2 nd, 3 rd and 4 th towers on the north. Their forms in the general ensemble have the character of random, but at the same time provide a sense of habitation, which is so lacking in modern buildings. At the end of the twentieth - early twenty-first century, houses No. 14, 18, 21, 21a, 23 were reconstructed. At present they have a representative look.

Territory from the Garden Ring to the Novoarbatsky Bridge

Work on the construction of this part of the street was carried out in 1957, but its unique appearance is being formed up to now. This territory of Novy Arbat is in the development process since the 1920s (that is, before the planning of the construction of the highway), which can not be said about the main site, formed over a decade for the whole project.

Step One

The initial stage of the formation of this part of the street fell on 1920-1960. Two residential houses were erected on Bolshoy Novinsky Lane. Their modern address is Moscow, ul. New Arbat, 23 and 25.

In the 1930s, the building of the Institute of Spa and Physiotherapy appeared. After laying a new highway, this structure turned out to be on its red line.

In 1940 a residential building was erected on the corner of the future Novy Arbat and the Smolenskaya embankment. The author of this project is the architect A. Schusev. Two houses at the intersection with the Garden Ring, which acted as the beginning of this section of the planned highway, appeared in the 1950s. From 1963 to 1970, the construction of the CMEA building continued, and then for almost thirty years the appearance of the famous street did not change.

Step two

A new stage in the formation of the site from the Garden Ring to the Novoarbat Bridge is considered to be the late 1990s. On the odd side there are residential complexes "Novy Arbat, 27" and "Arbat Tower" (29th house). In 2006, the structure of the Institute of Resortology was occupied by a multifunctional complex called "Novy Arbat, 32".

Project Evaluation

The creation of the New Arbat is the largest reconstructive process in the interior of Moscow, conducted in the 60s of the twentieth century. As a result, along the highway an extensive spatial system was created, a new monolithic element of the urban environment appeared that entered the structure of the capital and set the main tone for its further transformation.

According to the famous architectural historian Andrei Ikonnikov, the large-scale ensemble of Novy Arbat is characterized by its character and special strength. These properties are most clearly manifested when viewing the panoramas of the street from the side of the embankment to them. Taras Shevchenko. But in the landscapes that unfold from a high plateau in the southwestern part of the capital and along the branch of the Moscow-river bend, the Crimean and Bersenevskaya embankment, Novy Arbat cuts like a huge wall of skyscrapers. Because of this flat crest, the importance of high-rise buildings of the 50s of the 20th century is reduced, due to which the architectural silhouette of the city had a special picturesqueness. A new street, making its way through the historical canvas of the capital, not in any way connected with nearby buildings, caused only dislike of Muscovites. The writer Yu. Nagibin even compared Novy Arbat with Moscow's false jaw. The humiliating nickname was to the liking of the townspeople and became popular. In the Architectural Guide to the capital, published in 1997, it is noted that three decades after the completion of the works the prospectus still introduces an imbalance in the structure of Moscow. From the adjacent embankments and from the south-western region of the city, the elements of the prospect of the prospect look like alien bodies.

But even in the process of creating the New Arbat, many historical buildings were transformed, this project allowed preserving the reserved parts of some Moscow streets, primarily the Arbat.

Transport

The movement along the street is not light, double-sided. Opposite sides of the street on its different segments connect six underground passages. There are no ground crossings. In the original version of the project it was planned to separate traffic flows from pedestrian masses, but this idea was not realized.

"Delicious" New Arbat

Restaurants located on this street give an opportunity to taste dishes of different cuisines of the world. Among the most famous are Navruz, Peking Duck, Zyu, Yakitoria and Tropicana. The longest story is at the restaurant "Prague". He first opened his doors to visitors in 1872.

Novy Arbat: shops

During the Soviet Union, supermarkets, department stores and other outlets located on Kalininsky Prospekt, such as Novoarbatsky, Voentorg, Moskvichka and Viasna, opened up to the Muscovites and guests of the capital an amazing world of scarce goods.

Even without the reputation of the main shopping street (like Tverskaya), nowadays the New Arbat is very popular. Investors often fight for the opportunity to possess priceless retail real estate on this street, constantly renovate existing shopping malls in order to increase the useful area, and on the remaining free plots plan to build exclusively shopping centers. The most famous shops on the left side of New Arbat are Adamas, Wild Orchid, Cashmere and Silk, Naf Naf, Delta Sport, TD Novoarbatsky, Moskvichka and Esso. The right side can not be called just as lively. There and the pavement is not so wide, and the available areas for trade points are smaller. But it is on this side that the famous Moscow House of Books is located.

Among the shops mentioned above, there are no objects with an interesting history, since Novy Arbat is still too young for memoirs. But there are a great many shopping outlets with an entertaining present.

In addition to reorientations and reconstruction, Novy Arbat plans to surprise residents and guests of Moscow with a series of new interesting projects.