Wandering "paper" dominants: positions and functions of high-rise accents in the urban development projects of Pushchino, 1950–1980s

Antipin Konstantin Sergeevich ORCID: 0000-0002-7701-4422 Postgraduate student; Department of the History of Russian Art; Lomonosov Moscow State University 109386, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovsky ave., 27k4 P2beep@gmail.com

Introduction

Pushchino is the first scientific town of the USSR Academy of Sciences designed separately from existing settlements. From the very beginning, conceived as a city with the prospect of population growth to tens of thousands of inhabitants laid down in the first scheme of the 1956 general plan, Pushchino continued to be actively designed over the following decades. The outlined contours of microdistricts in the general plans of different years moved and were filled with buildings in the spirit of changing trends and growing opportunities in the architectural and construction industry, as well as in accordance with the creative ideas of successive author groups.

The history of urban planning in Pushchino still remains practically unexplored: basically, researchers consider the existing architecture of the city as the fruit of the implementation of a one-time plan, although it has been adjusted over the years ^{[1; 2]}, so they do not attempt to analyze the dynamics of its planning projects. At the same time, despite the relatively modest size of the city, the topic of its general plans turns out to be wider and more multifaceted the deeper you dive into it. Therefore, the result of even careful and scrupulous research, not focused on any particular aspect, risks not having great scientific value. In this article, high-rise dominants act as such an aspect: their role and position in urban development projects of different years are considered. Each of the ideas is analyzed in order to answer the questions: what function does the accent object have and what volumetric form does it have, as well as how its position and scale correlate with the surrounding architectural environment. On the one hand, the changes in concepts can be explained by the change of the author's teams, therefore, in this work they correlate with the history of personnel changes within the Pushchino Institute, which was engaged in designing. On the other hand, considering projects in dynamics allows you to observe the process of transformation of functions and images, as well as changes in the environment and the position of the dominant in it. This allows us to pay attention to the general direction of the search and correlate them with more global trends in the history of Soviet architecture, as well as global processes that were comprehended by architectural theorists and philosophers.

The study uses a formal and comparative analysis of planning and architectural projects. The structure of the work is based on a chronological presentation: The course of the creative process is divided into periods, which, on the one hand, are based on the subject of research, but at the same time correlate with the general historical, architectural and philosophical-theoretical context of the epoch. Although the subject of the study is obviously not built objects, this does not negate the importance of the issue, since they were part of large plans, some fragments of which were nevertheless realized and formed the architectural ensemble of the city. Thus, through the consideration of the remaining ideas on paper, it is possible to understand the existing Pushchino development more deeply and better. The article practically does not consider the reasons that influenced the pace of construction of the city. For almost every specific moment, it is fair to say that it significantly lags behind the expectations of architects and the customer represented by the Academy of Sciences. High-rise dominants, as a rule, were not among the objects of the first stage of construction, and their construction was always attributed to some constantly receding "perspective".

The research is based on the work on the search, analysis and systematization of dozens of versions of the general plans of Pushchino from different years. The starting point for it was the publications and editions of GIPRONIA (All-Union State Institute for the Design of Research Institutes and Laboratories) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was engaged in the integrated design of Pushchino. However, urban planning projects were practically not published in Soviet times, so the main sources of the documents found are the Central State Archive of the Moscow Region, the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the funds of the Pushchinsky Museum of Ecology and Local Lore, but besides them a large amount of design materials was found in the families of architects — first of all, the archive of Pushchinsky architect V.S. Voronezhsky is valuable. The analysis of the projects, together with the study of correspondence between the leadership of the USSR Academy of Sciences with authorities at different levels, as well as decisions and resolutions made by them, allowed us to establish the dates and authors of some unattributed projects.

A lonely vertical above a flat city

The design of Pushchino in the spring of 1956 was entrusted to the team of architects of the GIPRONIA of the USSR Academy of Sciences: L.I. Batalov, A.P. Golubev and A.G. Barkhina. The master plan was based on the idea of parallel location of industrial, green (sanitary protection), residential and recreational areas. A similar "flow-functional" scheme of the city was proposed in 1930 by N.A. Milyutin ^{[3, pp. 28-29]}: thanks to this solution, the zones could develop longitudinally, if necessary, without interfering with each other. The site chosen for the construction of Pushchino was a high bank of the Oka River, bounded from the southwest by a ravine, and from the southeast by the territory of the FIAN radiophysical station, which did not allow the development of buildings in these directions. Due to these features, the science campus immediately received not literally a linear, but a radial structure with a given beginning and direction of future growth to the east.

A unique feature of the Pushchinsky complex of scientific institutes among other research centers near Moscow is the inclusion of its facade in the architectural environment of the city. The main entrance to the city was supposed to be organized from the south — through the Research Institute zone along the territory of the FIAN station. Isolated from transit traffic, the western edge of the city received a chamber solution: the architects decided to build up the slope of the ravine with four arched rows of cottages concentrically encircling the house of scientists. The site of the latter closed the strip of sanitary protection (or green) zone separating the residential and scientific parts of the town, that is, it was the beginning of the "ray", but at the same time the building itself, one of the few allowed for individual design, turned out to be outside the gates of all streets and pedestrian alleys, which would not be visible from afar.

Fig. 1. Scheme of the general plan of Pushchino, September 1956 (the position of the water tower is highlighted in red) [ARAN (Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences). F. 2. Op. 6m. d. 171. L. 16].

Work on the first Pushchino project (Fig. 1) fell on one of the most difficult periods for Soviet architects — immediately after the adoption of the resolution "On the elimination of excesses in design and construction" ^{[Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated November 4, 1955 No. 1871 // URL: http://www.libussr.ru/doc_ussr/ussr_5043.htm (date of application: 05/25/2022)]}. Accustomed to organizing urban development in blocks with perimeter buildings of houses with different plan shapes, now they were forced to use only the simplest straight sectional houses and, if possible, minimize the use of those that were designed for an inconvenient latitude orientation from the point of view of insolation ^{[4, p. 110]}. Thus, the core of urban development, the southern half of which was a scientific zone with a number of similar three-storey research Institute buildings, continued beyond the green zone with two rows of U-shaped groups of 3-4-storey apartment buildings ^{[ARAN. F. 2. Op. 6m. D. 171. L. 10]} with courtyards open towards the river. This solution is in many ways reminiscent of the lowercase building, which was born in the mid-1920s in Germany and introduced into Soviet urban planning practice during the construction of social towns of the first five-year plans ^[5]. In the middle, the residential part was divided in the center by an area with a group of small public buildings: the House of Soviets, the House of Communications and PBX, a department store and a cinema club. On the axis of the square, perpendicular to the direction of the urban structure, a gap was made in the forest plantations of the green zone, through which the prospect of a water tower standing in the research institute area between two buildings of institutes was opened — the only high-rise accent of the town.

Symmetrical compositions and closure of perspectives with high—rise or other accents are characteristic techniques of post-war Soviet urban planning, which continued to be used by architects in the second half of the 1950s. Six months earlier than Pushchino — in early 1956, under the leadership of the same L.I. Batalov, a project was developed for the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Fryazino ^[6], where a 70-meter tower rose in a symmetrical perspective formed by the standard laboratory buildings of the Institute (Fig. 2). As in Pushchino, it It was not built there, but a few years later, L.I. Batalov, who moved from GIPRONIA to the workshop No. 7 of the Moscow Project, became the main architect of the Ostankino TV Tower project ^{[7, p. 68]}.

Fig. 2. The project of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Fryazino, a cross section along the central courtyard, 1956 [Batalov L.I. The Research Institute is being built according to a standard project // Architecture of the USSR. 1957. No. 5. p. 29].

During the examination in the USSR State Construction Committee, the draft was adjusted in response to comments. A.I. Popov-Shaman joined the author's team ^{[Order No. 14 of 11/20/1956 on the HYPRONIUM of the USSR Academy of Sciences // URL: https://goskatalog.ru/portal/#/collections?id=11427547 (date of application: 30.04.2024)]}, appointed the chief architect of this project. The second version of the general plan scheme (Fig. 3) received a more organic outline while maintaining and strengthening the rigidity of the linear structure of parallel zoning. Although the building blocks were still formed from sectional houses with a rectangular plan, in the new project they began to be blocked into L- and U-shaped compositions. Due to this, along the main street (later called Nauki Avenue), residential buildings formed stalls on the axes of the buildings of the institutes, which were now arranged in one line along the green zone.

Fig. 3. Scheme of the general plan of Pushchino, December 1956 — May 1957.
(the position of the water tower is highlighted in red) [PM (Pushchinsky Museum of Ecology and Local Lore) 3563/1 NV].

The tracing of the streets has changed: as they move away from the "cross" of the green zone and the central square, they have become more aligned with the relief, retreating from the orthogonal grid. On the one hand, because of this, the symmetry of the layout of residential areas has become less strict relative to the axis of the central square. But now this axis, which previously rested on the zone of two-storey houses on the slope of the Oka River, continued all the way to the river, including all the planning zones of the town in a symmetrical composition. In the north, it ended with a grand staircase and a river station, and in the south, due to the redesign of the scientific zone, it was now closed not by a water tower, but by the facade of one of the institutes.

The distribution of key urban facilities has changed: buildings that previously stood on the axis of the central square now began to organize the front of its perimeter, giving way to the house of scientists in the center. The height of residential buildings as a whole increased: three-storey houses were completely abandoned in favor of four-storey ones, and the boulevard descending to the river was completely flanked by sections of six floors ^{[ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1 (1958). d. 54. L. 48]}. Thus, the visual corridor from the house of scientists towards the Oka was framed by the rhythm of high-rise accents. Its former place in the western part of the town at the beginning of the green zone was occupied by a square with an unclear purpose object located in the alignment of several alleys and streets converging to it, including the main one — Science Avenue. Probably, the architects decided to place in this place a kind of monument like an obelisk, which would not stand out in size and height, but organized the space around and logically closed the perspective of the ray city, although it rather gave it a start.

Although displaced from the axis of the central square, the water tower does not seem to have lost its dominant role in urban development. Shifted to the southeast, she again found herself in one of the gaps between the buildings of the institutes, but at the same time had to be viewed from the entrance to the city.

Fig. 4. The scheme of the general plan of Pushchino, 1960 (the position of the water tower is highlighted in red)
[TSGAMO (Central State Archive of the Moscow region). F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 461. L. 52].

In this form, on May 11, 1957, Gosstroy approved the design assignment for the construction of the town with a number of comments ^{[ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1 (1958). d. 54. L. 27-40]}, which should have been introduced at the next stages of design. But at the same time, the construction of Pushchino was postponed "due to the need to concentrate material and monetary resources on the construction of a scientific town in Siberia" ^{[ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1 (1958). d. 54. L. 75]}, the decision to create which was made at the same time, in May 1957. ^{[Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated May 18, 1957 No. 564 "On the establishment of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences" // URL: http://www.prometeus.nsc.ru/science/sbras50/03.ssi (date of access: 04/25/2024)]}. The next version of the scheme (Fig. 4) of the master plan was created in 1960 in the workshop No. 2 of GIPRONIA by A.I. Popov-Shaman together with D.A. Metanyev and N.M. Filippovskaya. The main changes consisted in updating the standard projects used. The blocks of four-storey houses, while maintaining the general configuration, were straightened, regaining the symmetry laid down in the first version of the general plan (Fig. 1). Although the straightening of streets went against the instructions of Gosstroy on their alignment with the relief, which caused the nonlinear tracing in the previous project, the architects compensated for this decision by abandoning the construction of housing that required significant earthworks on the the site of the ravine in the northeastern part of the town. In general, the project maintained the continuity of the previous version of the master plan: the perspective system and the place of the dominants in it remained the same — the position of the water tower has not changed.

From tower houses to tower houses

By the early 1960s, the architects of GIPRONIA Workshop No. 2 got rid of the trail of urban planning ideas of the 1930s and 1950s that had been trailing behind them until now. In the layout of the residential part of the radically redesigned scheme of the general plan of 1961 (Fig. 5), the microdistrict principle of development was established: the boundaries of the blocks expanded in such a way that the entire necessary set of infrastructure (schools, kindergartens, shops, cultural and consumer services) was located inside each of them. Architects also left the perimeter setting of houses, moving to a free plan. The orientation of the houses was now even more dictated by the requirements of insolation and reduction of earthworks. On the site, previously completely allocated for cottage development, the microdistrict A. Cottages occupied about a quarter of its area, the rest of the territory was given over to apartment buildings and service institutions.

Fig. 5. Scheme of the general plan of Pushchino, 1961 [TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 671. L. 97].

Symmetry has obviously ceased to play such an important role in the composition of the town. The architects abandoned the strictness of the designation of the axis of the central square, and now the boulevard leading from it towards the Oka received a slight bend in the direction of the west. Thanks to this, the contour of the microdistrict B enclosed by the boulevard received some roundness, symmetrically balancing the rounded contour of the microdistrict A. In a sense, the role of the axis of symmetry, which the central square used to have, has now shifted to the passage leading from the beginning of the green zone towards the ancient Pushchino-on-Oka estate located on the slope of the river with the complex of the main house and a park with a cascade of ponds. This decision can be called a symbolic tribute to the history of the place: the architectural ensemble of the estate, which gave the name to the scientific town, was integrated into the system of its spatial compositions.

Fig. 6. Water tower. A fragment of the sweep of the Pushchino development project along Nauki Avenue, 1961.
[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 671. L. 100].

Speaking of dominants, it is worth saying that in this project, setting up objects in critical areas for the first time looks the most meaningful. The beginning of Nauki Avenue was now marked by a roundabout intersection, in the center of which a water tower was located (Fig. 6). The 60-meter structure ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 918. L. 17]} in the form of two truncated cones placed on top of each other, expanding upwards, should have been visible from many points of the town. The main entrance to Pushchino, which was previously supposed to be organized from the south along the territory of the FIAN, by this time it was decided to move to the western part of the town: firstly, active traffic near the radiophysical observatory interfered with research, and secondly, at the western entrance, the architects located a hospital complex designed to serve the surrounding scientific campus area. Thus, the tower was supposed to become a kind of lighthouse, which was viewed from the entrance to the city, throughout the entire Avenue of Science, as well as from the axis of symmetry of the estate, along which the passage between the neighborhoods A and B.

Although the main building of the town still remained four-storey, by the early 1960s architects had the opportunity to include a small number of houses of higher height in it. The vertical of the water tower, according to their plan, was to be supported by a group of six nine-storey single-entrance residential buildings located behind it in the A microdistrict. Having half the height, they did not compete with the tower itself, but indicated its connection with the silhouette of the city due to its slight softening.

In the construction sketch of 1962-1963, developing the ideas laid down in the general plan scheme, the architects stepped into the territories previously designated as reserve (Fig. 7). The number and variety of types of high-rise residential buildings increased. The direction of entry into the city was adjusted in such a way that the territory of the hospital was cut off from microdistrict A, and its front on the site to the water tower was now decorated with trefoil houses. The water tower itself, as far as can be judged from the layout, has become even taller, and its image has been redesigned: The tank now rested on three pylons, tied with rings at the middle and three-quarters of the height.

Fig. 7. Layout of the scientific town of Pushchino, 1962-1963.

But already in the same 1963, architects, when developing design assignments for the construction of streets in Pushchino ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 920]}, abandoned circular traffic, in the center of which a water tower had previously been located. Shifted to the green zone, it turned out to be outside the axes of all three streets, in the gates of which it stood earlier. For some reason, the architects did not leave the tower even on the axis of the passage between the neighborhoods leading to the estate: on the 1963 street plan (Fig. 8a) it stands slightly to the east, and on the later updated sketch of the town development (Fig. 8b) it stands slightly to the west. Thus, its importance as a dominant in these projects is no longer so clear.

a) b)
Fig. 8. a) A plan of streets and a green zone with a project of landscaping and landscaping, 1963 [TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 919. l. 31];
b) Sketch of the development of Pushchino, 1964 [TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 1014. L. 54].

At that moment — at the turn of 1962-1963 and up to 1964 — frequent and significant personnel changes took place inside GIPRONIA: Yu.P. Platonov, who held the position of chief architect of the workshop of standard and perspective design, moved to a similar place in workshop No. 2 in 1962 ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 918. L. 1]}, who had been engaged in the design of Pushchino for all previous years. B.A. Saveliev, who headed the workshop where Yu.P. Platonov had previously worked, became the head of workshop No. 4 ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 668. L. 2]}. At this time, part of the projects for Pushchino began to be carried out in parallel with workshop No. 2 in workshop No. 4 ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 668. l. 2]}. And in 1964, Yu.P. Platonov found himself in the position of chief architect of workshop No. 4 — and by that time the design of Pushchino had passed into it completely. Soon in the same 1964, Y.P. Platonov and B.A. Saveliev joined the leadership of GIPRONIA as chief architect and director (initially acting) of the institute, respectively ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, etc. 905. L. 1]}. Their places in the workshop were taken by its former chief engineer M.A. Filyand (initially as acting head) and architect V.M. Kogan ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 1087. L. 2]}. As a result, by that time, in the extensive team of authors who carried out projects for Pushchino, there were no those who worked on the town until 1961, when, under the leadership of A.I. Popov-Shaman, they planned to put a water tower inside the circle at the beginning of Nauki Avenue.

In such circumstances, it is difficult to unequivocally judge the personal authorship of certain decisions, but in general, the described process should have contributed to the abandonment of previous plans, and the dynamics of changes in the projects of 1962-1964 shows how another radical revision of the concept of the entire development was brewing, as a result of which the construction of the water tower was abandoned altogether.

Fig. 9. Sketch of the Pushchino building, 1964 [Voronezh family archive].

The new project (Fig. 9), completed in 1964 in workshop No. 4 under the leadership of Yu.P. Platonov, focused on the microdistricts A, B and B. By the mid-1960s, the construction of the latter was nearing completion, and soon it was necessary to begin developing the territory of the first two. The most important structural change was their unification into one enlarged microdistrict — AB. Most likely, the main factor that played a role in making such a decision was the desire to optimize the service system: microdistrict B was located between the citywide center and the center of microdistrict A. To achieve the standards, the capacity of the latter was increased. However, according to the "Rules and norms of urban planning and development", the complex of residential buildings should not have been cut off from cultural and consumer services institutions that meet the daily needs of the population ^{[8, p. 86]}. Therefore, the street that would have prevented residents from accessing the infrastructure of their neighborhood had to be eliminated. And if earlier the T-shaped intersection at its beginning was marked by a circular motion, now the entrance to the city continuously turned into the Avenue of Science. Along with the street, the axis of symmetry of the ancient manor, designated by it, disappeared — the view of it from the green zone was now blocked by nine-storey single-entrance houses.

Having abandoned the construction of an independent water tower, the architects placed on the axis of Nauki Avenue "an 18-20-storey residential building "trefoil" with technical floors to accommodate urban water reservoirs" ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 1023. L. 11]}. Thus, this object, for which it was planned to develop an individual project, absorbed the functions and imaginative solutions of the water tower and single-entrance houses - "shamrocks" standing earlier in this place. With some adjustments not related to the described solutions, this sketch of the building was approved in 1964 by the State Committee for Civil Engineering and Architecture under the USSR State Construction Committee ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1 T. D. 1023. L. 6-8]}. Among other things, the committee gave the go-ahead for the development of an individual project of a high-rise building-a "trefoil" ^{[TSGAMO. F. 7974. Op. 1, Etc. 1023. l. 23, 25]}. Up until the early 1970s, the project continued to be adjusted while maintaining the general concept unchanged. In the second half of the 1960s, part of the projects for Pushchino began to be carried out by the forces of the project group created at the scientific center. It was subordinated to workshop No. 4, the main architect of which at this stage was V.M. Kogan. The head of the Pushchina group, E.A. Arkhipov, and other architects who worked under him, in addition to the author's supervision of construction and work on linking standard projects, gradually took an increasing creative part in the design of the city. The orientation of the trefoil house at this stage was changed in such a way that the direction of its two "rays" turned out to be co-directed to Nauki Avenue (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Layout of the Pushchino building, the end of the 1960s. [archive of A.V. Gnedovskaya].

In the rest of the construction of the new AB microdistrict, the architects finally abandoned the use of typical 3-section four-story buildings, which were a characteristic and almost the only urban planning unit in the projects of the early 1960s. The authors of the new project dared to put extended four-story houses across the hill so that they descended from it in steps-sections. From the previously fragmented into many free-standing volumes of residential development, the contours of courtyards facing the river gradually began to emerge, as in the very first version of the general plan of 1956.

"The Kremlin crowning a high hill" — complication of the three-dimensional composition of Pushchino

By the early 1970s, GIPRONII had earned a reputation as an "elite" and "inviolable" design institute ^{[9, pp. 26, 39]}, in which architects had real opportunities to realize their creative potential. Indeed, apart from the Academy of Sciences, perhaps only the Ministry of Medium-sized Mechanical Engineering had a bunch of design and construction organizations subordinate to one department-the customer, capable of creating cities on their own, but the work of its design organizations, despite their highest quality and degree of implementation by Soviet standards, was mostly classified ^{[10, p. 185-187; 11]}.

Therefore, along with the Moscow workshops of GIPRONIA, talented architects were attracted to work in design groups in research centers near Moscow: Pushchino, as well as the current Chernogolovka and Troitsk ^{[12, p. 101]}. Over the years, the Pushchinsky design group of Workshop No. 4 was engaged in an increasingly wide range of tasks, and as a result, in the early 1970s, an independent workshop No. 9 was formed on its basis. It began to develop not only projects of individual facilities, but also all new master plans. A key role in this activity belongs to V.S. Voronezhsky, who came to Pushchino after ten years of work in Irkutsk: he had many urban development projects of cities and towns of the Irkutsk region, as well as districts of Irkutsk ^[13]. Under his leadership, the development of a new detailed planning project with a sketch of the Pushchino development began.

a)
b) c)
Fig. 11. Detailed layout project of Pushchino, 1971:
a) City development scheme [PM 3564 NV];
b) Sketch of the building [Istomin S.A. System formation of the functional and planning structure of the scientific complex: dis. ... cand. architecture. M., 1980. Vol. 2. p. 6];
c) A fragment of a sketch of a building with a high-rise residential complex [Voronezh family archive].

The construction of Pushchino in the early 1970s was approaching the planning horizons of previous years. There were only two full—fledged sites for Institutes in the scientific zone - behind them, the territory of the FIAN station approached almost closely to the green zone. In 1965, scientists of the Institute conducted research and found out that the cruciform radio telescope is especially sensitive to radio interference in the north of it ^{[Appeal of the FIAN to the Commissioner of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences for Construction K.N. Chernopyatov and Director of the GIPRONIA of the USSR Academy of Sciences B.A. Saveliev // Document from the Voronezh Family Archive]}. As a result, the linear scheme of spatial and functional zoning, which seemed initially inexhaustible, had to be revised (Fig. 11a): the strip of the green zone made a bend towards the river, and through the resulting fracture the city was symmetrically reflected in such a way that the residential zone in its new half turned out to be located on the south side, and the scientific one on the north. The place of the city's break took on the importance of its eastern subcenter, and in contrast to the beginning of the green zone, it was now turning into the western one. Both subcentres were marked with circular areas, which are better read on the building layout (Fig. 12).

a) b)
Fig. 12. Layout of the Pushchino building, early 1970s.: 
a) (Voronezh family archive); b) (Platonov Yu.P. Spatial organization of scientific research laboratory complexes: dis. ... cand. architecture. M., 1973. Vol. 2. pp. 1-2).

Located at the entrance to Pushchino hill, which was best viewed from the side of the Oka, the architects sought to build up in the most expressive way. Despite the significant growth of the project area of the city, the AB microdistrict with a high-rise dominant at the beginning of the green zone was still thought of as a key ensemble in its development (Fig. 12). On the site of the 18-20-storey trefoil house, a complex complex appeared, consisting of three L-shaped residential buildings with differently tall "wings" - the composition of them was placed on a stylobate with a public center several floors high (Fig. 11b, 12). The importance that the architects attached to this object is evidenced by the fact that it, as part of the city center, was designated in the Pushchino development scheme (Fig. 11a), where otherwise only the outlines of functional zones and microdistricts are present. Thus, the position of the high—rise dominant was consolidated among the most important and upper-level urban planning solutions, along with the general structure of the city's ribbon development and the axis of the main square with the house of scientists - another, although it did not change its functions and position, but a long-suffering object that was never realized.

In different photographs of the layout of the building, made in accordance with the described project, you can observe a different number of elements of the house (Fig. 12), which may indicate both an adjustment of the plan and a banal loss of them over time.

If before the urban dominant was supported by the rhythm of nine-storey buildings along Nauki Avenue, then in the new project the second and third rows of towers of 14 and 16 floors towered above them. In this way, the architects sought to emphasize the natural relief of the built-up area, which disappears with dense monotonous buildings. This is how the project was described by its chief architect, V.S. Voronezhsky:
"In terms of volume, space and art, the project aims to create an image of the Kremlin crowning the high Pushchinsky hill. This is facilitated by the need to take into account natural and climatic data (the height of the place, the absence of forests, strong winds in winter and in the off-season). Therefore, the development of the residential area is designed in the form of cozy residential groups, protected from the wind, but facing the Oka and the recreation area with wide lanes — boulevards, providing a wide view of high proportions.
The building is supposed to be 3-4-9-storey along the edge of the Oka slope and 14-16-storey at the top of the hill, where the main vertical accent of the city is a 20-25-storey building for visiting scientists. This accent symbolizes the entrance to the city and merges the street of the city — Prospekt Nauki with the expansion of the green zone" ^{[Description of the Pushchino detailed layout project // Document from the Voronezh family Archive]}.

The silhouette of the fortress in the new project really loomed very clearly: continuous walls of 9-storey buildings encircling the perimeter of the neighborhood along the edge of the hill, and 16-storey towers in the gaps between them created the desired image. The aspiration of Soviet architects in search of ideas to the past is a characteristic trend for the 1970s and 1980s.. So far, it has been expressed only in such a very abstract way, without directly affecting either the architecture of buildings or general approaches to the organization of the urban environment, so it is not necessary to talk about postmodernism yet. In this case, there was clearly a symbolic connection with Serpukhov, located on the opposite bank of the Oka, 10 km upstream, whose Kremlin was dismantled in the 1930s. At the same time, the Pushchino-on-Oka estate did not receive any urban planning emphasis, remaining in the role of something like an architectural whim in landscape parks of the late XVIII century.

a) b) 
Fig. 13. Sketch of the building for the detailed layout of Pushchino, 1976. [Voronezh Family Archive]:
a) A fragment of the city plan; b) A fragment with a 16-22-storey panel residential building with service on the 1st floor.

Five years later, in 1975-1976, a new detailed city planning project was completed (Fig. 13). In fact, work on it has not stopped since the completion of the previous version. When designing individual architectural objects in the workshop, they were necessarily considered in conjunction with the surrounding buildings — the architects went through a lot of options to find the best solution, sometimes contradicting earlier ideas and changing them. The high-rise core of the AB microdistrict has generally retained its former structure. The rows of 14- and 16-storey residential buildings that used to stand in ascending order behind the 9-storey ones along Nauki Avenue have been reversed. Thus, the contrast in the perception of their height from the green zone and the entrance to the city increased, and the silhouette of the hill from the river side, on the contrary, became smoother.

From the obvious likening of the microdistrict to a fortress with a closed perimeter wall of houses, the architects moved towards a more balanced imaginative solution. The towers around the perimeter remained, but the gaps between them along the edge of the hill were now occupied by blocked 2-3-storey buildings. The bulk of the volumes were concentrated in radial directions, diverging from the unchanging center in the form of a high-rise complex at the beginning of Nauki Avenue. On the one hand, this also worked to accentuate the relief, and on the other hand, it opened courtyards with expressive facades of cascading houses to the Oka distances. In the numerous sketches of the layout of the AB microdistrict made by V.S. Voronezhsky, their orientation, unusual against the background of "official" general plans, is noteworthy: north from below. The architect paid a lot of attention to the river facade of the city, the key role in the formation of which was to be played by the development of this territory, so such a coup is logical.

a)
b)
Fig. 14. The unfolding of facades to the sketch of the Pushchino building, 1975 [Voronezh family archive].
Views from: a) the Oka River; b) the Avenue of Science.

The main high-rise dominant in the new project received a new solution: abandoning the idea of organizing circular squares near urban subcenters, the architects combined two figures that had previously been adjacent on the plan and gave the commercial stylobate of the residential complex the shape of a circle (Fig. 13). The complex itself now represented the intersection of three plates of different heights: the longest of them stood perpendicular to Nauki Avenue, symmetrical to its axis; the other two, offset to the north, crossed the first, asymmetrically projecting to the west and east. In the explication to the sketch of the building, the commercial stylobate is designated as one—story, and the height of the "large-panel residential building" is 16-22 floors. In fact, the architects clearly planned more: on the scans of the facades from the Oka and Nauki Avenue, the complex is more than twice the height of the 16-storey towers standing next door (Fig. 14). The stylobate here has a height of about seven floors, and the giant plates of the residential complex do not rest directly on it, but stand on columns, so that a horizontal gap is formed between them. With the same gap, the architects divided the huge residential plates at about three quarters of their height. This technique, while preserving the expressiveness and monumentality of the image, somewhat facilitated the bulky nature of the three-dimensional composition of the high-rise dominant, adding to its cosmic aspiration to the sky.

In earlier drawings of the detailed layout project, made in 1975 (Fig. 15a), as well as in photographs of the layout of the city development, which was created at the same time (Fig. 15b-c), you can see some variations of the described image: the number of orthogonal plates changes, they move relative to each other, forming in the plan either a simple right angle with equal sides, or complex cross-shaped schemes. Now the model is on display at the Pushchinsky Museum of Ecology and Local Lore, but only the stylobate remains of the high—rise complex - some elements have been lost. The solution depicted on the scans also differs from the others, although they do not give a complete picture of the three-dimensional composition, since we see only two of its projections. And yet, until the end of the 1980s, work on regular rethinking of individual architectural and general urban planning solutions continued, while maintaining the position and general image of the key dominant found in the projects of the first half of the 1970s (Fig. 15).

a) b) 
c) d)
Fig. 15. High-rise complex in Pushchino projects of different years:
a) A fragment of the Pushchino layout project, 1975 [Voronezh Family Archive]; 
b-c) Layout for the Pushchino building project, 1975 [Voronezh Family Archive]; 
d) A fragment of a rough sketch of the development of the AB microdistrict in Pushchino, the 1980s. [Voronezh family archive].

From promising to "paper-based" design

The increased pace of construction in the 1970s and the "liberties" allowed to Pushchinsky architects in the process of linking and processing standard projects, as well as completely individual design of some objects, promised the steadily growing team of the workshop hope for the realization of their bold ideas, albeit postponed for the "future". However, in the 1980s, the situation began to change. In 1980, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution ^{[GARF. F. R5446. Op. 1. D. 935. L. 183-184]} prohibiting the construction of administrative and public buildings in 1981-1985 — now overcoming the already complicated procedure for coordinating the design and construction of facilities like the house of scientists became almost impossible. But the ban was only a statement of the general economic decline for the country, which soon hit housing construction in Pushchino: by the mid-1980s, the implementation of projects of complex residential complexes in brick, of which the AB microdistrict was to consist almost entirely, came to a pause. Since then, panel and large-block houses have been mainly built in the city, and rare batches of bricks were used for extensions to them and independent buildings that housed service institutions.

The protective sentiments of the Soviet society of the 1980s, expressed in large cities in an effort to preserve their historical heritage, in the young Pushchino were aimed at protecting nature ^[14]. The demiurgic plans of urban planners, who saw the benefit for their city in the implementation of ensembles laid down in the general plan and further growth due to the emergence of new enterprises, began to conflict with the desires of other residents of Pushchino. If the designers saw free spaces as sites for the "delayed" implementation of their projects, then for the rest, the glades that had been empty for several decades became part of the familiar environment, in place of which they did not want to see grandiose complexes. This local conflict between urban planners and urban defenders is demonstrated in a somewhat exaggerated form in the documentary "Does the City Need Beavers" (1983, directed by G. Pchelyakova, USSR). But the situation cannot be called unique: in a more global way, this contradiction was described back in 1974 by A. Lefebvre, introducing the concepts of "Representations of space" (ideas about the space of those who make decisions about what it will be — in this case, architects) and "Representational space" (space perceived by residents) ^{[15, p. 38-39]}. The philosopher argued that architects often see space abstractly and functionally, while residents perceive it through their personal and social experiences, which inevitably led to conflicts and discontent throughout history. In a similar, but more specific way, in 1961, Jacobs criticized precisely modernist approaches — for the utopian nature of their social ideas and ignoring the real needs of residents ^{[16, p. 374-375]}.
In 1984, the improvement of Pushchino became the theme of the work of the Central Experimental Studio of the Union of Artists of the USSR ^{[17, p. 185]}. Artists and architects from all over the country studied the city's environment for a month and a half and completed a design program for its development ^{[18, pp. 200-209]}. The work of the Swedish researcher T. Kubbin is devoted to the activities of the Senezh Studio, in which the researcher interprets the studio's approach as critical of modernism ^{[19, p. 172-176]}. The artistic director of the seminar held in Pushchino, M.A. Konik, compared the result of his work with "a branch that "sprouted" from the existing master plan": indeed, the studio's work can be interpreted as an attempt to deconstruct the GIPRONIA project and build a new semantic layer in the fabric of the city, highlighting its cultural and ecological beginnings.

Unlike the late, but still deeply modernist plans of the architects of GIPRONIA, who saw Pushchino as an unfinished project in which all the misfortunes of the inhabitants had to disappear with the onset of the project "perspective", the basis of the proposed team of 30 authors of the Pushchino — Artopolis program was a contextual and largely postmodern approach, as described by Ch. Jenks: This is not only an ideological opposition to modernism, but also stylistic eclecticism ^{[20, p. 127]}. The project proposals did not consist in detailing or another adjustment of the master plan, but proceeded from the existing situation of the city and the moods of its residents. That is, returning to the concept of A. Lefebvre, we worked with the "Representative space".

A new look at the problems of the city that had blurred the eyes of local architects bore fruit: for example, the central square, or rather the clearing, instead of building a grandiose complex of the house of scientists on it, it was proposed to leave it almost untouched, sinking public buildings into the ground. Instead of turning the AB microdistrict into a Kremlin designed for an abstract outsider, the participants of the Senezh Studio seminar, like the architects of GIPRONIA in the early 1960s, put forward the idea of including the Pushchino-on-Oka estate into the urban space system - it turned out to be at the crosshairs of an ecological trail laid along the coast and a route leading from the main square to the river. In the proposed program, one can also notice the desire to abandon the strict zoning of urban spaces, which in 1961 became the subject of criticism by J. Jacobs ^{[16, p. 115, 239]}. The recreational function, according to the general plan assigned to the bank of the Oka, was now dispersed among housing and in the green zone.

It is natural and understandable by the same theories ^{[20, p. 132]} that the architects of the Pushchina workshop of GIPRONIA, faced with a proposal radically contradicting their plans, were in no hurry to abandon their views. Being employees of a scientific institute in the truest sense, they personified the philosophical essence of modernist architecture as a "total institution" like no one else: Although by the 1980s architects rarely declared their mission to form a new person, they still claimed an exclusive monopoly in defining their environment. In this regard, the behavior of modernist urban planners can be explained by comparing it with T. Kuhn's view of scientists: "... members of the scientific community consider themselves and are considered by others as the only people responsible for developing a particular system of goals they share" ^{[21, p. 228]}. Therefore, Soviet architects almost did not perceive criticism coming from outside the professional community, which, moreover, questioned their elite role ^{[20, p. 12]}. "... the rejection of science in general... reflects ... on the scientist. He will inevitably be condemned by his colleagues as "a bad carpenter who blames tools for his failures" ^{[21, p. 114]}. Postmodernism generally rejected the positivism underlying the work of GIPRONIA and other Soviet design institutes. The Senezh Studio functioned within the framework of the Union of Artists, and although a large number of architects took part in its seminars, their proposals were almost not seriously considered, since they lay outside the "scientific" field. The development of Pushchino projects continued in line with previous ideas.

A new round of their creative searches took place already during perestroika and the early 1990s. - At this time, architects continued, on the one hand, to look for solutions for "promising" territories and objects, and on the other hand, they participated in the search for new drivers for the development of the city in which they themselves lived. The creative searches of V.S. Voronezhsky belong to this time, who, a decade and a half after the approval of the 1976 sketch of the building, decided to revise the project of the AB microdistrict. The archive of his works contains a lot of cripples with sketches of both the layout of the western subcenter and the prospects of the high—rise complex in it - the analysis and understanding of these materials is a task for a separate study. But still, the real state of affairs at that time forced the leadership of Pushchino and the Academy of Sciences to talk rather not about development, but about the preservation of the city:
"...the state policy in the field of science financing today is such that it actually leads to the impoverishment and destruction of historically established scientific centers, including world-class ones like Pushchinsky. Huge funds and efforts of the state and the Academy of Sciences were invested in their creation at the time, modern scientific directions were developed here, widely known scientific schools were created. Nowadays, the Pushchinsky Scientific Center is reducing funding for scientific research, the level of remuneration for specialists is falling, and young employees are leaving abroad. The updating of equipment, the supply of reagents, and the receipt of literature have practically stopped, without which scientific work is impossible. Insufficient funding of academic institutions affects all aspects of city life: employment, social programs, construction, maintenance of housing and urban infrastructure" ^{[22, p. 4]}.

At the same time, the pace of construction did not ensure the implementation of even a fifth of what was planned: in the general plan of the mid-1970s, the architects proceeded from the forecast of the city's population growth to 51 thousand people by 1990; in 1980, a new calculation gave a more modest estimate of 32 thousand inhabitants, and the design "perspective" was removed by 2000. In fact, by 1990, Pushchino did not even reach 20 thousand, after which the growth almost stopped. But even so, the construction of the infrastructure accompanying housing lagged behind the normative indicators, so that all large citywide structures, which included the house of scientists, a shopping center, a sports core with a stadium, as well as a high-rise apartment building with a stylobate at the entrance, remained on paper.

The architects' plans, against their will, moved from the category of real to the category of "paper" design. It was impossible to realize this fact, being inside the process, because in the minds of urban planners, one part of the ensemble was inseparable from the other. And development has not stopped yet, although it went much slower than planned, and was expressed in the construction of mostly panel residential buildings. If the work of architects in the same GIPRONIA, but in Moscow, was associated with the periodic change of objects and design locations, then the employees of Pushchina workshop No. 9 turned out to be hostages of their own project. Their creative ambitions rested on the realities of the time, and their love for the city as the only creation did not allow them to compromise and forced them to wait for better times. So, not wanting to "spoil" the unfinished ensemble of the AB microdistrict with panel houses, the architects gave rise to the D microdistrict, remote from the previous development ^[23]. But none of the large-scale creative ideas in the 1980s and 1990s was ever implemented, naturally satisfying the aspirations of residents who defended the preservation of meadows and ravines. To this day, the clearing at the entrance to the city, which was intended in projects since the early 1960s to accommodate the high-rise dominant, remains empty (Fig. 16), as well as the space saved by the architects for the construction of a citywide center with a house of scientists.

Fig. 16. Pushchino city. In the foreground is a clearing intended for the construction of a high—rise complex. 2021 [photo by the author].

Conclusion

V.S. Voronezhsky, analyzing the history of urban development of Pushchino, noted that with the rigidity of the main provisions of the first general plan of 1956, a very large degree of freedom was then incorporated into the structure of the city, so that even two decades later the design followed the path of developing its solutions, and not "breaking" ^{[Formation and transformation of the planning structure of the city of Pushchino — abstracts // Typewritten document from the Voronezh family archive]}. Continuity is immediately read when looking at the sequence of the general plans of the city of different years: in maintaining the linear structure, developing the transverse axis of the main square… But considering the history of nomadism from project to project and the associated transformation of high-rise dominants allowed us to see continuity at a more mundane level, where it is not so expected at all.

Personnel changes in GIPRONIA and the transfer of Pushchino design from one workshop to another against their background were processes that had a direct impact on the architecture of the town. The rotation of the author's teams involved in the design of Pushchino in the first two decades gave a regular influx of fresh ideas, but did not always lead to consistent decisions. Since the complete transfer of all work, including on urban development projects of Pushchino, to the local workshop No. 9 of GIPRONIA, rotation has stopped, work has become more consistent and there are no such drastic changes of concepts in projects as it was before. At the same time, the architects continued to improve and refine their ideas, and were not afraid to abandon some of them, which for some reason had lost their relevance.

Starting from the very first scheme of the Pushchino master plan, when architects were maximally limited in the variety of types and height of buildings, they gave the role of emphasis to the water tower. In the early years, it was still relatively small, moving freely in the projected space of the flat low-rise buildings of the town. In the following months and years, the contours of neighborhoods and neighborhoods were adjusted, the variety of standard projects used expanded and opportunities for individual design appeared — the high-rise dominant moved in the space of the constantly changing utopian Pushchino and modified itself: its height increased, volumes and functions transformed… The importance of the tower grew and the surrounding buildings became increasingly linked to it. In the mid-1960s, having turned into an apartment building, the dominant was fixed at the beginning of Nauki Avenue at the entrance to the city. And in the projects of the 1970s, the house turned into a multi-volume complex with a developed stylobate and finally subdued the surrounding buildings: the high-rise accent, still standing out against the background of the city, became a logical continuation of its stepped silhouette. And the path to this solution is consistently traced in all previous concepts, despite the fact that the architecture of water towers and residential buildings could radically change from project to project.

Although none of the plans were implemented, each of them was conceived as an accent in a virtual architectural ensemble or "Representations of space" of its era, and in this sense, for each of them, it expressed the architects' understanding of solutions that were extremely coordinated with supervisory authorities, and therefore potentially feasible in some perspective. Of course, in reality, the first did not follow the second in any way, and from the perspective of today, the faith of architects may seem naive. The utopian designs of the architects have already come into conflict with the wishes of the residents and their "Representative space". Although this, at first glance, local confrontation had its roots, peculiarities and nuances, it turned out to be quite easy to fit into the picture of the global crisis of modernism, the causes of which were described by both architectural theorists J. Jacobs and Ch. Jenks, and the philosopher A. Lefebvre.

Thus, the existing Pushchino development is revealed and understood much better, being correlated with the projects and ideas left on paper, one of the key among which was the idea of a high-rise dominant. The prospect for future research remains the consideration of the remaining spaces and buildings of the city, the correlation of its architecture with other scientific centers of the USSR Academy of Sciences, designed by the same GIPRONII, and ultimately the formation of a broad and in-depth understanding of the process of their creation, of their architecture.