METHOD OF CONFLICT-FREE RECONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL BLOCK

Authors
A. Skokan, A. Gnezdilov, V. Stadnikov, M. Skorokhod

Address
Samara city,

The total area
3,5 hectares

Start
2010

The architectural bureau «Ostozhenka» proposes the method of new construction on the basis of historicalbuilding laws and modern urban-planning standards which enable to keep a scale, cultural identity and virtuesof historical environment.

 

The pre-revolutionary Russian city blocks were always divided into housing estates, and the Civil legislation required from owners to follow the Neighbourhood law:

 

- «one who builds a house on the boundary with his neighbour must not make windows towards the neighbour»

 

- «the neighbour must not pour water, sweep away litter towards, make a roof slope right over the neighbour’s yard»

 

It meant that all owners, irrespective of a form of their property, could develop it without prejudice to neighbours. In this system the borders and boundary relations became basic that in itself created preconditionsfor growth and consolidation of building during an era of rapid development of capitalism of the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Even now the historical urban environment possesses the following merits:

 

- architectural and typological wealth;

- variety of functional elements;

- high-quality beautification and planting;

- comfortable scale;

- well developed social infrastructure;

- many objects of cultural heritage.

 

At the same time, during the Soviet period this environment catastrophically degraded because there was no private real property. General mismanagement resulted in:

 

- destruction of housing stock;

- badly organized public utilities;

- investment unattractiveness;

 

The Soviet practice of construction in historical center areas was based on erecting the large-scale complexes which satisfied sanitary and fire-prevention restrictions, but did not presuppose any private property, and therefore, any clear boundaries of owners’ interests and responsibility of such owners for maintenance of general yard territories. The civil legislation and the urban-planning rate setting practically ignore the fact that the socialist property was superseded by the private property, and it relates also to mass consciousness. The availability of modern amenities and homogeneous social composition of recent development albeit relaxneighbour's contradictions, but do not bring to the human environment any new merits. Having lost the state trusteeship, this habitat did not receive a new master and is characterized by the following unattractive traits:

 

- architectural and typological monotony;

- unorganized parkings and snow banks;

- lack of beautification and planting;

- hypertrophied scale of development;

- undeveloped social infrastructure;

- no cultural heritage objects;

- interdependence of all inhabitants;

- interdependence of all engineering communications;

- impossibility to build by phases.

 

Passages and parkings, grounds for sports and rest inside the block are zones of economic conflicts and chaos. Further construction and reconstruction is obstructed by neighbours and development of such block inforeseeable future is not planned.

 

It is necessary to introduce the regulation of construction activity in historical blocks using the land use anddevelopment rules which there were earlier and which supported the principles of relations betweenneighbours accepted both in pre-revolutionary Russia and all the civilized world:

 

Here are the main of these rules as we see them:

 

- at least one side of the site of a housing estate should be adjacent to the Building line;

- engineering support, removal of atmospheric precipitation, garbage disposal, approach roads, footaccessibility, civil defense and emergency measures are to be provided in each housing estate irrespective ofadjacent housing estates;

- the walls of structures directly adjoining the boundaries of adjacent housing estates should be fire-prevention walls (firewalls) without window and door openings;

- the walls of structures coming to the Building line or being at a distance of no less than passage width from boundaries of adjacent housing estates can have window and door openings in facade walls;

- it is necessary to leave a space from walls of structures to boundaries of adjacent housing estates no less thanthe passage width in order to avoid the formation of inaccessible fire-hazardous pockets.

 

These principles enable:

 

- to minimize «boundary» disputes and economic conflicts between owners of existing, reconstructed and new real estate objects;

- to increase efficiency of land use without destroying the cultural heritage objects;

- to allow clear division of the territory into zones of responsibility;

- to create a system of free evolution of block development within the established rules.