據說2014年8月的五日:周五/周末/禮拜天
每823年才有一次.....
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2013年12月31日 星期二
2014年8月 (每823年才有一次)
據說2014年8月的五日:周五/周末/禮拜天
每823年才有一次.....
倫敦台北談新年焰火
倫敦新年焰火將給慶祝人群帶來嗅覺享受
更新時間 2013年12月31日, 格林尼治標準時間21:08
倫敦市長說，這次焰火展示是世界上「最令人眩目的焰火節目。」
在倫敦市中心慶祝新年的人群將能「品嚐」到美味的空氣。空氣中會有帶有味道的霧氣、「雪花」和碎屑。
約15萬人將觀看在泰晤士河畔的新年焰火展示。屆時空氣中將被放入帶有蘋果、櫻桃味道的霧氣，和帶有桃味的雪花，人們還能體驗各種嗅覺節目和品嚐水果糖。倫敦的氣象預報員沙拉說，在午夜來臨的時候將有零星陣雨。
「偉大的城市」
倫敦市長辦公室發言人說，已經為天氣突變凖備了應急計劃，包括減少焰火發放的種類和數量。屆時將有多達10多萬人在泰晤士河沿岸的主要觀看區，他們將享受新鮮的嗅覺體驗，得到LED腕圈和7種不同味道的糖果。
泰晤士河南岸施放的焰火在大笨鐘敲響午夜鐘聲的時候開始，BBC電視一頻道將現場播放焰火盛況，同時還播放為此特別創作的音樂。
鮑里斯·約翰遜在新年致辭中說，「我們向2013年道別，過去的一年對於倫敦和整個國家來說是令人振奮和值得懷念的一年。」
「讓我們繼續努力並且共同確保倫敦這個偉大的城市在未來成就輝煌。」
在大倫敦地區的公共汽車、地鐵、輕軌、電車和火車將通宵運行，並且大部分服務在23:45到04:30點之間免費。
****
Wintry Wanderings Among Chelsea’s Ghosts
Favorite Place
Wintry Wanderings Among Chelsea’s Ghosts
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
A view of the Thames from Chelsea Embankment.
By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
Published: December 26, 2013
I’ve lived in some historic places over the years — Paris, Greenwich
Village, Washington — but it wasn’t until I spent a winter in Chelsea a
year ago that I felt as if I were inside a diorama. The ur-Chelsea, I
mean: London, not the quarter of Manhattan that provided Joni Mitchell
with inspiration for a song and, in the process, Bill and Hillary
Clinton with a name for their newborn daughter. For historical
voyeurism, London’s Chelsea is hard to beat, especially if you incline
to artist-writer types, or as my late friend Christopher Hitchens would
put it, “people of that kidney.”
Related
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Chelsea Old Church.
Winter, I should add, is an excellent time for dead-celebrity stalking.
In spring and summer, London thrums and buzzes like a hive. Pubs spill
onto the sidewalk, tourists swarm (those Americans!) and the lush city
parks that inspired the spare landscapes of Thomas Gainsborough resemble
Woodstock re-enactments. Even residential Chelsea takes on the look of a
Davos confab or world’s fair.
Immediately next door to our little rental flat on Embankment Gardens, a
sweet little enclave hard by the Thames, was the Chelsea Royal
Hospital. In May, it becomes the site of the annual Chelsea Flower Show.
As splendid an event as it is, the very acme of the floral monde, I was
glad not to have been a collateral part of it. The empty winter
streets, brisk but never too-cold air, and golden afternoon sun made for
superb and invigorating perambulations.
We were in London because my wife was studying for an advanced medical
degree in tropical medicine. Every morning she would bravely tootle off
in the dark to catch her bus and the Tube. I was a stay-at-home spouse,
banging away at a novel, and feeling rather inadequate to the task,
given the density of illustrious literary figures who once lived around
the corner.
Every afternoon, when the day’s banging away was done and the larder of
metaphors and bons mots was finally empty, I’d lace up my sneakers
(trainers, as the British call them) and embark on epic walks,
culminating with a rendezvous with my darling at the oyster bar at
Harrods.
Yes, I know, Harrods: throngs of actual tourists (as opposed to, say,
me) and that weird, creepy shrine to Diana and Dodi. Call Harrods a
cliché if you insist, but the food courts on the ground floor are my
idea of perfect heaven. And sitting at the marble counter with a glass
of Sancerre and a dozen Kumamotos sure worked for my darling, after a
long day of PowerPoint presentations on loa loa and other revolting
filarial nematodes.
Having refreshed, we’d cruise the bright, gaily tiled food courts,
gathering up whatnots for supper at home: Scotch eggs, fish pies,
aromatic salamis and cheeses, dumplings, fresh-shot pheasant. The food
courts are a gastronomic United Nations. On the way out, we’d dip down
to the wine department in the basement for a bottle of claret, sherry,
Chablis or whatever looked good (and cost less than £10,000).
Then came the mile-and-a-half hump back to Embankment Gardens in the
dark, a goodish half-hour, through Hans Place to Pont Street, past
Lillie Langtry’s old residence. You remember the “Jersey Lillie” —
beauty, actress, muse, concubine to the Prince of Wales (among others).
She sat for Whistler and traded quips with Oscar Wilde.
Where were we? Down Pont Street and right onto Sloane Street by the
Cadogan Hotel, where Wilde was arrested by detectives for “gross
indecency.” Down Sloane to Sloane Square, then west on the King’s Road,
epicenter of 1960s Swinging London. Then zigzags down smaller streets
and a tree-lined allée that in the late 17th century was the driveway to
the Royal Hospital, and down St. Leonard’s Terrace toward Tedworth
Square, where Mark Twain lived for a time.
Onto Tite Street, the home stretch, with a brief stop at the corner
Tesco convenience store, for milk and a half-dozen newspapers, including
the guilty pleasure of tabloids shouting “Gotcha!” at the latest
naughty cross-dressing member of Parliament or Prince Philip for telling
some derogatory anecdote about Princess Di. Bliss.
Down Tite, past Oscar Wilde’s house, and a few yards farther, John
Singer Sargent’s, now homes to ordinary folks (no offense meant). We
were groaning now under the weight of our Harrods-heavy backpacks.
Looking down the street and seeing the shimmer of lamplight on the
surface of the Thames brought a sigh. Almost home.
On the flight home in March after our happy three months, I made a list
from memory of what names I remembered seeing on the blue plaques
denoting that someone of eminence had once lived there. Some names are
perhaps more boldfaced than others: Bram Stoker (author of “Dracula”);
Handel and Mozart (you know all about them); Jerome K. Jerome (“Three
Men in a Boat”); Dante Gabriel Rossetti (founder of the “Pre-Raphaelite”
school of painting); Algernon Swinburne (poet and very naughty);
Hilaire Belloc (“Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a
Lion”); J.M.W. Turner (painter); Sir Thomas Carlyle (the Sage of
Chelsea, whose manuscript of “The French Revolution” was inadvertently
tossed into the fire by John Stuart Mills’s housemaid); Carol Reed
(directed “The Third Man”); Henry James; T.S. Eliot; Alexander Fleming
(penicillin) and Ian Fleming (no relation, I don’t think); Jacob Epstein
(sculptor); Herbert Beerbohm Tree (theatrical producer of Oscar Wilde
plays); Sir Thomas More; and, what do you know, Henry VIII.
If you search online, you’ll find dozens more Chelsea residents,
including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (something to do with music);
Eric Clapton; Agatha Christie; Ava Gardner — well, it’s endless. There
are some fun sub-themes, such as the two famous fictional spies who
lived there: John le Carré’s George Smiley and Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
The Royal Hospital right next to Embankment Gardens is one of London’s
really, really splendid pieces of real estate. It was commissioned as an
old soldiers’ home in the 1680s by Charles II, and designed and built
by Christopher Wren.
We often glimpsed the “Chelsea pensioners,” old men in scarlet tunics
and military decorations. (Some female pensioners also live there.)
There you’d be, in the checkout line at the Tesco with an armful of
lurid London tabloids and your liter of milk, and suddenly you’d notice
one of them behind you, bent with age, chest clinking with medals won at
D-Day, perhaps, or Operation Market Garden. As an exercise in humility,
this is hard to top.
Other sights in Chelsea give you pause to contemplate your place in the
universe. A few hundred yards from our flat, west along Cheyne Walk, is
Chelsea Old Church. Historians believe it was about here in 54 B.C. that
Julius Caesar’s army found a place to ford the river on their way
north. About 12 centuries later, a church was built here. Two centuries
after that, the church had evolved into the chapel of the local
landowner, one Sir Reginald Bray. Sir Reg is buried here in the family
tomb. It was he who, after the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, is said
to have found the slain Richard III’s crown dangling in a thorn bush.
He conveyed it to Richard’s successor, the Earl of Richmond, who became
Henry VII, first of the Tudor monarchs and father of Henry VIII.
A few decades later (we’re up to the early 1500s now), the chapel had
become part of the estate of Sir Thomas More, chancellor of England. Sir
Thomas’s patron and friend Henry VIII visited him in rustic Chelsea.
The occasion is beautifully and ominously recreated in the film “A Man
for All Seasons.”
His Majesty liked Chelsea so much that he built himself a manor next
door. Part of its wall can still be seen. As you know, Sir Thomas
eventually found himself at odds with the king over certain theological
principles, including wife-dumping. But Sir Thomas had always been
realistic about his relationship with the king. As he told his
son-in-law, William Roper, “If my head would win him a castle in France,
it should not fail to go off.”
Henry did have his friend’s head “go off,” after which it was put on a
spike on London Bridge, as a warning to others who might hold views
discrepant from his majesty’s. Later, it was hurled into the river, and
retrieved by Sir Thomas’s grieving daughter Margaret, wife of Roper. Its
whereabouts is unknown. (Roper and Margaret are buried in the Roper
Vault of St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.) The little enclosed
greensward next to the church, once part of Sir Thomas’s orchard, is
designated Roper’s Garden.
So there, in one tidy spot on the banks of the Thames, is a completed
sequence of English history: the tomb of Sir Reginald, who fought
alongside the future Henry VII, father of the man who chopped off the
head of the later owner of Sir Reg’s chapel.
Chelsea Old Church was almost destroyed during a night of particularly
vicious bombardment in the Blitz. One of those killed that April 1941
night was a young mother, a Canadian named Yvonne Green. Yvonne had
volunteered to stand fire watch in the bell tower. A plaque outside
commemorates her sacrifice.
There are so many plaques. Another notes that the sculptor Jacob Epstein
once had his studio in Roper’s Garden. To complete yet another circle:
Here Epstein carved the sculpture at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris
that adorns the tomb of someone who once lived just a few blocks away,
on Tite Street — Oscar Wilde.
I realize I’ve spent most of the time talking about dead people, like
that kid in “The Sixth Sense.” So let me say for the record that Chelsea
is not a mausoleum. It’s a vibrantly alive place. King’s Road may not
be quite as swinging as it was in the 1960s, but it still hops to the
echoing beat of “happenings” that went on there. Mary Quant sold her
first hem- and eyebrow-raising miniskirts. John Osborne kicked off the
“angry young men” movement of the 1950s when his play “Look Back in
Anger” opened at the theater on Sloane Square. Diana Spencer and her
fellow Sloane Rangers headquartered there.
One evening as my wife and I were lumbering through the gloaming,
backpacks bulging with vittles and bottles of plonk, we weren’t paying
attention and took an errant turn off Tite Street. But getting lost is
one of the joys of wandering in Chelsea.
We found ourselves standing in front of a pub called, rather neatly, the
Surprise. How could we not go in? The Surprise became our regular
hangout, the nook to which we’d repair on cold winter nights, to sit by
the fire and drink Guinness and chortle over the day’s tabloids.
Why don’t I not give you precise directions, so finding it can be your
own Chelsea surprise. It’s there, and with a bit of luck, you’ll get a
bit lost on the way.
AMSTERDAM: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City
The City at the Center of the World
Russell Shorto’s ‘Amsterdam’
Amsterdam Museum
Amsterdam’s Dam Square in 1656, with the new city hall under construction at left.
By PICO IYER
Published: December 26, 2013
The Dutch in the 17th century, Russell Shorto informs us at a
characteristic moment in “Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most
Liberal City,” were on their way to becoming “the greatest shipping
nation the world had ever seen.” Amsterdam’s canal ring was “the
greatest urban feat of the age.” In fact, Shorto says, Amsterdam more or
less gave us the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the
Enlightenment and the stock exchange (though Antwerp’s stock exchange
building is 80 years older). The United East India Company, put together
in Amsterdam, was “unique in world history,” Shorto writes. It “remade
the world.” It “pioneered globalization and invented what might be the
first modern bureaucracy.” It inaugurated “the beginning of consumerism,
which, for better or worse, is surely a component of liberalism.”
AMSTERDAM
A History of the World’s Most Liberal City
By Russell Shorto
Illustrated. 357 pp. Doubleday. $28.95.
Mikel Jaso
Phew! That’s a lot for a city currently as populous as Columbus, Ohio;
many places might pay handsomely to receive such enthusiastic support.
In 2004 Shorto gave us his often eye-opening book “The Island at the
Center of the World,” describing how the Dutch helped create Manhattan;
now he fills in the other side of the story, and tries to show us that
“liberalism was born” in Amsterdam, which “has influenced the modern
world to a degree that perhaps no other city has.” This in spite of the
fact that liberalism, as Shorto admits, “is a diffuse concept” and
carries “seemingly opposite meanings in the United States and in
Europe.” Economic liberalism, after all — the free-market capitalism to
which he alludes above — is almost exactly what social liberals often
deplore. If liberalism means both right and left, making money and not
doing so, individualism and communalism, it’s perhaps no surprise that
all roads in Amsterdam led to it.
The author’s method in his new book is to take us on a very brisk tour
across the highlights of Dutch history, from the Golden Age and tulips
to the legalization of squatting in 1971, from Rembrandt and Spinoza to
John and Yoko staging a bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton. Much of this has
little to do with Amsterdam or with liberalism, but no matter: One
minute we’re reading about the transformation of the herring industry,
and four pages later about Martin Luther, whose theses “set off a tidal
wave that rolled 400 miles due west and crashed head-on into the
medieval town walls of Amsterdam.”
So much has to be packed into so little space that quite often one is
left with the feeling of ingesting an entire turkey with every mouthful.
Charles V, we are told, “had fought off Ottoman encroachments, sailed
the Mediterranean in swashbuckling campaigns to rid the sea of pirates,
personally sent off Magellan, Cortés and Pizarro on their voyages,
managed Spain’s South American colonization, extended his dominion to
the Dutch provinces, through Germany, and across Italy, and in pretty
much every way worked to hold up the pillars of the medieval world
order: monarchic power, domination by the Catholic Church, feudal land
management, divine right, mercantile colonization and obedience to
authority along the strict metaphysical lines of the great chain of
being.”
Three pages later, just as you’re trying to catch your breath, you read,
of Dutch power: “It was in the hands of herring merchants and cloth
traders, men who owned soap works and timber yards and shipyards, the
regents who sat on town boards, who were nominated to their governmental
position by those same wealthy men of business, the members of the
water boards of each community, and the dijkgraaf, literally
‘dike count,’ who had overall responsibility for the never-ending task
of managing the damming and rechanneling of water, and which is still an
important position in the Netherlands.”
The effect, inevitably, is of an old-style documentary, at once sonorous
and excitable, that someone has mistakenly set on fast forward. And the
long sentences are not exactly Jamesian. In a single chapter we have
scales falling from the eyes, “a chiseled visage” and “the glories and
writhings of the individual.” Indeed, in a single clause we get
“chivalrous decorum, thudding hooves and roisterous bonhomie.” The
looseness of the language seems to speak for an imprecision in the
thinking. Philip II, we learn, “was a man of his time, preoccupied with
the trappings of the past yet dealing with forces of the future.” I’m
not sure if any man of any time could be described very differently.
Here and there, we are given interesting tidbits: There’s a nice capsule
summary of Jan van der Heyden, the contemporary of Rembrandt, who
invented streetlamps, founded Amsterdam’s fire department and was a
painter of repute; and, as in his earlier book, Shorto tells us how a
Jesuit visitor to Manhattan in 1643 counted 18 languages and dialects in
a settlement with barely 500 people — though the facts were a little
different before — and describes how the place was then called Amsterdam
in New Netherland and featured gabled townhouses, two windmills and a
canal.
The author grows more confident as he nears the present, when he’s
drawing not from history books but from the testimony of those he’s met,
like an 86-year-old Auschwitz survivor who grew up with Anne Frank.
Besides, he’s wise enough to concede that liberalism and tolerance are
not the same thing, and that maintaining the second “would forever be a
challenge” in the Netherlands. At the heart of his notion of Amsterdam’s
liberalism is the principle of gedogen, which has less to do
with turning the other cheek than with turning a blind eye. Thus
coffeehouse owners must pay taxes on hash they sell, even though their
goods are technically illegal.
This begins to explain how the “Republic of Amsterdam,” as some still
call it, can flourish in what even Shorto calls a “bland monoclass” of
conservatism and bourgeois values; it’s an island in the center of a
nation, perhaps. At his best, Shorto’s primer to the town he’s called
home for more than five years is “a reasonably pleasant combination of
whimsy and stolidness,” to cite his description of the Amsterdam style
of architecture.
The problem is that Shorto’s grand ideas seem to be superimposed upon
his material rather than to flow out of it, as if he had his thesis
before he had any facts. And where in “The Island at the Center of the
World” he gave zesty life to fresh research, here he tries to marry
quite familiar history with some dangerously sweeping contentions. The
core of his argument seems to be the notion that Amsterdam both gave
unique freedom to the individual and patented a rare mix of individual
enterprise and community spirit (though some of us might discover this
in Confucius 2,000 years before). “I do find it compelling,” he writes
of Matthijs van Boxsel, that he “and other Dutch writers see the
historic struggle against water as formative to a cultural ethic of
cooperation that created a society strong enough for it to impel,
curiously, a commitment to value the individual.”
If that sounds confusing, the other formulations of the book’s central
idea are even more so. And much of the reasoning does not repay close
scrutiny: “Amsterdam was an oligarchy,” we’re assured, seven pages
before being reminded of “the egalitarian nature of Dutch society.”
Thomas Jefferson drew from John Locke, we’re told, and Locke spent five
years in Amsterdam, so Amsterdam deserves some credit for our pursuit of
happiness. When we read that “probably more than any other major
philosopher, Baruch Spinoza is looked to as a guide by serious thinkers
today” — would that it were so — and that he was “the first true
philosopher of modernity” as well as “the first and maybe the greatest
philosopher of liberalism,” we may begin to suspect that the
superlatives are a way of repeating, at top volume, the claims that
Shorto has failed to prove, as if quantity of argument could make up for
quality.
The oddity of “Amsterdam” is that it is at once too narrow and too
unfocused. Since Shorto almost never looks outside Amsterdam and the
Netherlands, his claims for their distinctiveness become
self-fulfilling. Throughout the book, there’s no sustained
consideration of any other city — apart from Dutch Manhattan — and when
Shorto ventures as far as Paris, it is to find its “grandiosity” a
“little silly” next to Amsterdam’s canals. It would have been helpful to
acknowledge, however briefly, Bangkok or Beirut or San Francisco or
Havana, none of which, in my experience, is a slouch when it comes to
loucheness, or to looking the other way; if liberalism is taken to refer
not just to a philosophical principle but to the freedom to do what one
likes, there are many places on earth more lawless and wide-open than
Amsterdam.
The deeper problem, for those of us interested in the city from afar, is
that Shorto’s rather rosy take on familiar material has to compete with
much more rounded and unillusioned perspectives of Dutch-born locals
like the veteran journalist and historian Geert Mak. His “Amsterdam,”
from 1995, is far richer and more sophisticated as a narrative — and
more stylish even in translation. It has the wryness to note, on its
very first page, “Our political debate is about as exciting as a wet
sponge” and “Our avarice is legendary.” Much of the city’s liberalism
over the centuries, as Mak argues, was the result of economic
desperation and misery.
And Ian Buruma’s “Murder in Amsterdam,” from 2006, is a typically supple
and searching examination of the shadow sides of tolerance, including
all the ways it can lead to its opposite. The flamboyant gay politician
Pim Fortuyn, Buruma notes, was killed in 2002 by an animal-rights
activist; and nearly two years later the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who
made a film with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about the oppression of Muslim women,
was shot and stabbed in the street by a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan
descent. Having spent the first 24 years of his life in his father’s
country — he still carries a Dutch passport — Buruma has a stake in
thinking seriously about whether “freedom of speech” simply leads to
public vilification of Muslims and Jews.
Shorto acknowledges some of this as his book draws to a close and
suggests, for example, that the Dutch could accommodate themselves to
the Nazis in part because for years they’d maintained a “pillar system”
that left Catholics, Protestants, socialists and liberals segregated
from one another. But what he continues to talk about is how his beloved
city enjoys “probably the most sophisticated urban bicycle system in
the world” and became “the spliff center of the universe.” (Take that,
Tangier, Varanasi, Vancouver and, for that matter, Mars!) By the end,
he’s suggesting that the very fact that “a larger percentage of Jews
here were killed than almost anywhere else” during World War II might be
one of the building-blocks of Amsterdam’s contemporary liberalism. One
shudders at the implications.
Two bomb attacks in Volgograd
Volgograd - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VolgogradTop: View of Volgogradsky Bridge across the Volga River, Middle left: Komsomolskaya station of the Volgograd metrotram, Center: Volgograd railroad station, ...
News for volgograd
- RT - 3 hours agoA Volgograd policeman sacrificed his life shielding people from a suicide bomber's deadly blast at the city's train station. The officer was ...
- NEWS.com.au - 4 minutes ago
- The Guardian - 12 hours ago
BBC News - 'Suicide bomber' hits Russia's Volgograd train station
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-2554101915 hours ago - A suicide bomber carried out an attack at a train station in the southern Russian city of Volgograd that killed 16 people, officials say.
Two bomb attacks in the southern city of Volgograd, Russia, within 24 hours have killed more than 30 people, injured over 100 and brought the city once known as Stalingrad into a state of terror. The latest bomb, the third in three months, ripped through a trolley-bus in the morning rush-hour, killing at least 14 people. This came less than a day after a bomb went off at a railway station http://econ.st/Kftg2t
Rana Plaza complex
Aerial view of the building following the disaster
|
|
| Date | 24 April 2013 |
|---|---|
| Time | 08:45 am BST (UTC+06:00)[1] |
| Location | Savar Upazila, Dhaka District, Bangladesh |
| Coordinates | 23°50′46″N 90°15′27″ECoordinates: 23°50′46″N 90°15′27″E |
| Also known as | Rana plaza building collapse |
| Deaths | 1,129[2] |
| Injuries | ~2,500[3] |
|
2013年12月30日 星期一
Jack London tree won't come down as scheduled
Tree that inspired Jack London won't come down as scheduled
BC-CA--Jack London Tree,124
Eds: APNewsNow. Will be updated. GLEN ELLEN, Calif. (AP) -- A tree in Sonoma County that provided shade and inspiration to writer and adventurer Jack London is getting a reprieve from its scheduled removal.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley said this month that the oak tree, though suffering from a fungal disease, is healthy enough to continue standing for another two to 10 years. The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa reports (http://bit.ly/18MT40O) that it was scheduled to come down in November because of concerns that one of its branches could fall and damage London's nearby cottage or injure someone.
The 50-foot tall, 350- to 400-year-old tree sits on a ranch site in Glen Ellen that served as London's home from 1905 until his death in 1916. It is now a state park.
Jack London tree won't come down as scheduled
Thursday, December 26, 2013
GLEN ELLEN, Calif. --
A centuries-old oak tree that provided shade and inspiration to writer
and adventurer Jack London when he lived in Sonoma County will be
allowed to stand for a little longer after lab tests showed it is
healthier than California park officials originally thought.
The end was so close that park rangers hosted several events this year to honor the tree, including a Native American blessing ceremony, a dramatic storytelling and having children harvest its acorns for replanting elsewhere.
But park boosters sought a reprieve, turning to a University of California, Berkeley expert in forest pathology who concluded that "Jack's Oak" had another two to 10 years before it would have to be removed as long as it was regularly monitored. Three arborists had determined earlier that the tree was beyond saving.
"We couldn't be more thrilled," said Jack London Park Partners executive director Tjiska Van Wyk, whose group manages the 39-acre park that includes the cottage and the ruins of a house that was destroyed by fire in 1913. "In the season of joy, we consider this a great gift."
To protect the public and the cottage, the park has instituted new parking restrictions near the tree and plans to inspect and prune it regularly.
"We're not out of the woods. We're in a gray area where the risk needs to be assessed," said Matteo Garbelotto, the Berkeley adjunct associate professor who conducted the most recent tests.
The 50-foot tall, 350- to 400-year-old tree sits on the former Beauty Ranch, the property "The Call of the Wild" author bought in 1905 to be close to nature. London could see the oak from the window by his desk in the cottage and drew inspiration from it that surfaced in his later work, California State Parks senior archaeologist E. Breck Parkman said.
"I think everyone is going to be pleased that this tree has a little more time," Parkman said.
2013年12月29日 星期日
Gazprom’s 403-metre Okhta tower in St. Petersburg proposal and film
Gazprom’s 403-metre Okhta tower in St. Petersburg proposal and film
在國美管看到 2010年俄國拍的影片
© 俄羅斯新聞社 (RIA Novosti)。俄羅斯新聞社
對於俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司 (Gazprom) 的摩天大樓來說，規模重要嗎？
發佈於 2010年6月7日 21:29
| Lakhta Center | |
|---|---|
Лахта центр | |
 Lakhta Center in March 2020 | |
 | |
| Record height | |
| Tallest in Russia and Europe since 2017[I] | |
| Preceded by | Federation Tower |
| General information | |
| Status | Complete |
| Location | Lakhta, Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Country | Russia |
| Coordinates | 59°59′13.7″N 30°10′37.3″E |
| Construction started | 2012 |
| Completed | 2019 |
| Cost | US$1.77 billion[1] |
| Owner | Gazprom |
| Height | |
| Architectural | 462 m (1,516 ft) |
| Observatory | 357 m (1,171 ft) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 87 above ground 3 below ground[2] |
| Lifts/elevators | 40[3] |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | RMJM-Tony Kettle (until 2011), GORPROJECT |
| Architecture firm | RMJM (until 2011), GORPROJECT[4] |
| Structural engineer | Gorproject, Inforceproject |
| Main contractor | Rönesans Holding |
| Other information | |
| Parking | 1935 spaces |
| Website | |
| www | |
| References | |
| [2] | |
自2006年以來，俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司在聖彼得堡建造的403公尺高的「奧赫塔」大廈一直令這座城市陷入分裂，如今就連俄羅斯執政聯盟也站在了對立的兩派。
總統德米特里·梅德韋傑夫站在聯合國教科文組織（聯合國教育、科學及文化組織）一邊，呼籲停止建設，因為這可能會損害聖彼得堡市中心在聯合國教科文組織世界遺產名錄中的地位。
但現代主義陣營的建築師則認為，這座玻璃摩天大樓象徵聖彼得堡作為經濟中心的未來，足以與莫斯科停滯不前的商業區「莫斯科城」相提並論。
「奧赫塔中心將成為聖彼得堡的現代化商業區，也是這座城市的新地標，」該塔樓的總建築師菲利普·尼坎德羅夫告訴《莫斯科新聞報》。 “目前，聖彼得堡有28座高達310米的工業建築，但它們沒有任何歷史價值——因此，這座城市需要一座比它們更高的標誌性建築。”
在俄羅斯執政聯盟內部罕見的分歧中，總理弗拉基米爾·普丁一直支持這座塔樓的建設，稱其將有助於在危機期間重振聖彼得堡的經濟。
「由於俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司（Gazprom-Neft）的總部將遷入，每年將為聖彼得堡帶來約200億盧布（約6.31億美元）的稅收，該公司還將直接投資約600億盧布（約19億美元）用於塔樓的建設，」尼坎德羅夫說道。
文化項目
該計畫——被一些人戲稱為「俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司城」——已獲得聖彼得堡市長瓦倫蒂娜·馬特維延科的支持，將包括辦公大樓、酒店、商店、音樂廳、美術館、圖書館、溜冰場和公園。
批評者指出，這座塔樓與周圍沙皇時代的建築風格格格不入，聖彼得堡建築師協會和國際建築師聯盟都對此表示反對。
「該地區允許建築物的最高高度為48米，因此這座塔樓將完全破壞城市的全景，並且會使位於對面堤岸的拉斯特雷利設計的斯莫爾尼修道院相形見絀，」當地建築師協會副主席奧列格·羅曼諾夫說道。
“聖彼得堡擁有其獨特的個性，並因其在沙皇時代高超的建築標準而獲得了歷史價值。我們不會效仿倫敦或紐約。”
反對派抗議
梅德韋傑夫如今已與反對黨保持一致，例如共產黨、弗拉基米爾·日里諾夫斯基的極端民族主義自由民主黨、公正俄羅斯黨和“亞博盧”黨，這些政黨此前已對這座高塔採取了堅決反對立場。
自由派「亞博盧」黨已就市政廳無視城市標準法並拒絕就此問題舉行全民公投一事提起訴訟。
「（政府）往往無視市民和專業人士的意見，而且無視禁止該地區任何建築物高度超過40米的法律，」該市「亞博盧」黨分部負責人馬克西姆·雷茲尼克表示。 “毋庸置疑，這座高塔將破壞城市的古老建築和全景視野。推動這個項目的人只是想通過建築賺錢。”
反對者強烈譴責
奧赫塔大廈的支持者駁斥了反對者的指控，聲稱該項目合法——已於2009年9月舉行了公開聽證會。這座大廈將建在距離市中心5公里的工業區內。
「該計畫將與城市天際線完美融合，不會與任何歷史遺跡相衝突，」尼坎德羅夫說。 “站在瓦西里島市中心的人看來，這座大廈甚至比彼得保羅要塞還要低。”
他還補充說，該計畫的反對者利用此機會進行自我宣傳，他們經常使用不專業或虛假的圖紙和篡改過的照片來製造人們對該項目的誤解。
這對旅遊業有利嗎？
該市的旅遊業也對這座摩天大樓表示支持，並指出倫敦在現代建築改變其歷史景觀後幾乎沒有受到任何負面影響。
俄羅斯旅遊產業聯盟副主席謝爾蓋·科爾涅耶夫在奧赫塔中心網站上評論道：“我沒聽說旅遊業代表對奧赫塔中心的建設表示擔憂。倫敦去年成為世界領先的旅遊目的地，他們對老城區周圍林立著包括諾曼·福斯特設計的著名建築在內的多座現代摩天大樓感到非常高興。”
奧赫塔塔將為遊客提供一個全新的城市景觀視角，目前最高的觀景台位於聖以撒大教堂，高度僅42公尺。
該項目目前正在接受國家審批，預計明年開工。如果專案順利進行，建設和營運將耗時四年。
雖然該計畫有望創造就業機會，但反對者們相信，梅德韋傑夫總統的高調支持將徹底粉碎這座塔樓的計畫。
「我不認為這座巨型建築最終會建成，」亞布洛科藝術中心的雷茲尼克說。 “最近，越來越多的高級官員、部長以及傑出的藝術人士都對該項目提出了批評。”
俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司，歌劇
俄羅斯維權組織「怎麼辦？」（Chto Delat）以歌聲反對俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司（Gazprom）的奧赫塔塔項目，並製作了一部名為《塔：歌劇》（The Tower: A Songspiel）的蘇聯風格音樂電影。演出場景設定在俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司的會議室。
一邊是負責推廣此計畫的公關經理、一位地方政治人物、公司保全主管、一位牧師、一位即將成為公司當代藝術博物館館長的畫廊老闆，以及一位時尚藝術家。
另一邊則是俄羅斯弱勢的縮影。知識分子、工人、退休人員和無家可歸者等各色人等齊聲吶喊，反對建造這座塔。
© RIA Novosti. RIA NovostiFor Gazprom’s tower, does size matter?
The construction of Gazprom’s 403-metre Okhta tower in St. Petersburg has been dividing the city since 2006, and now even Russia’s ruling partnership is lining up in opposing corners.
President Dmitry Medvedev has weighed in on the side of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), calling for a halt to construction since it could harm the city centre’s place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
But in the modernist’s corner the architect argued that the glass skyscraper was a symbol of St. Petersburg’s future as the economic capital to rival Moscow’s stalled business district, Moskva-City.
“The Okhta Centre will become St. Petersburg’s modern business area and a new symbol of the city”, the tower’s chief architect, Philip Nikandrov, told The Moscow News. “Now there are 28 industrial structures in the city that are up to 310 metres and they do not have any historical value – so the city needs a dominant feature higher than them.”
In a rare sign of differing viewpoints from Russia’s ruling tandem, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has consistently supported the tower, saying it will help revive the city’s economy during the crisis.
“Since the main office of Gazprom-Neft is moving in, it will bring annually around 20 billion roubles ($631 million) in taxes to the city budget and some 60 billion roubles ($1.9 billion) will be invested by the company in the construction directly,” said Nikandrov.
Cultural projects
The project – dubbed by some “Gazprom City” – has received the backing of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and will include offices, hotels, shops, a concert hall, an art museum, libraries, a skating rink and a park.
Critics say the tower contrasts with the surrounding Tsarist-era buildings and both the St. Petersburg Union of Architects and the International Union of Architects have gone against their peer.
“The maximum permitted height of buildings in the area is 48 metres, so the tower will completely ruin the panoramic view of the city and will dwarf Rastrelli’s Smolny Monastery, which is right on the opposite embankment,” said Oleg Romanov, vice president of the local organisation.
“St. Petersburg has its own character and has gained an historical value because there were high standards of architecture in Tsarist times. We are not going to resemble London or New York.”
Opposition protests
Medvedev has now come in line with opposition parties, such as the Communists, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia and Yabloko, who had already taken a firm stand against the tower.
The liberal Yabloko have already launched a lawsuit against City Hall for overlooking the law on city standards and their refusal to hold a referendum on the issue.
“[The government] tends to ignore citizens’ and professionals’ opinions and, moreover, ignores the law prohibiting any building in the area to be higher than 40 metres,” said Maxim Reznik, the head of the city’s Yabloko branch. “It goes without saying that the tower will spoil the ancient architecture of the city and the panoramic view. By promoting the project people just want to earn money on construction.”
President Dmitry Medvedev has weighed in on the side of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), calling for a halt to construction since it could harm the city centre’s place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
But in the modernist’s corner the architect argued that the glass skyscraper was a symbol of St. Petersburg’s future as the economic capital to rival Moscow’s stalled business district, Moskva-City.
“The Okhta Centre will become St. Petersburg’s modern business area and a new symbol of the city”, the tower’s chief architect, Philip Nikandrov, told The Moscow News. “Now there are 28 industrial structures in the city that are up to 310 metres and they do not have any historical value – so the city needs a dominant feature higher than them.”
In a rare sign of differing viewpoints from Russia’s ruling tandem, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has consistently supported the tower, saying it will help revive the city’s economy during the crisis.
“Since the main office of Gazprom-Neft is moving in, it will bring annually around 20 billion roubles ($631 million) in taxes to the city budget and some 60 billion roubles ($1.9 billion) will be invested by the company in the construction directly,” said Nikandrov.
Cultural projects
The project – dubbed by some “Gazprom City” – has received the backing of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and will include offices, hotels, shops, a concert hall, an art museum, libraries, a skating rink and a park.
Critics say the tower contrasts with the surrounding Tsarist-era buildings and both the St. Petersburg Union of Architects and the International Union of Architects have gone against their peer.
“The maximum permitted height of buildings in the area is 48 metres, so the tower will completely ruin the panoramic view of the city and will dwarf Rastrelli’s Smolny Monastery, which is right on the opposite embankment,” said Oleg Romanov, vice president of the local organisation.
“St. Petersburg has its own character and has gained an historical value because there were high standards of architecture in Tsarist times. We are not going to resemble London or New York.”
Opposition protests
Medvedev has now come in line with opposition parties, such as the Communists, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia and Yabloko, who had already taken a firm stand against the tower.
The liberal Yabloko have already launched a lawsuit against City Hall for overlooking the law on city standards and their refusal to hold a referendum on the issue.
“[The government] tends to ignore citizens’ and professionals’ opinions and, moreover, ignores the law prohibiting any building in the area to be higher than 40 metres,” said Maxim Reznik, the head of the city’s Yabloko branch. “It goes without saying that the tower will spoil the ancient architecture of the city and the panoramic view. By promoting the project people just want to earn money on construction.”
Opponents decried
Okhta’s defenders reject their opponents’ allegations, claiming the project is legitimate – having undergone public hearings in September 2009. The tower is to be built in an industrial area 5 kilometres from the city centre.
“The project will be constructed to fully balance with the city’s skyline and isn’t at odds with any historical place,” said Nikandrov. “For a person standing in the city centre on Vasilievsky Island, the tower will seem lower than the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
He added that opponents of the project use it as an opportunity to promote themselves and often use unprofessional or false plans and doctored photographs to create a misconception of the project.
Plus for tourism?
The city’s tourism industry has also plumped in favour of the skyscraper, pointing out that London has suffered little backlash after modern architecture changed its historical cityscape.
“I have not heard of representatives of the tourist industry being concerned about the construction of the Okhta Centre,” Sergei Korneyev, vice president of the Russian Tourist Industry Union, commented on the Okhta Centre’s web site. “In London – which last year became the world’s leading tourist destination – they are absolutely happy about the fact that there are several modern skyscrapers, including famous buildings by Norman Foster, around the old city.”
The Okhta tower will give tourists a new vantage point to view the city, with the highest viewing platform currently only 42 metres high in St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
The plans are currently undergoing state verification and construction is slated to start next year. If the project goes ahead it will take four years to build and create employment opportunities but its opponents are confident the high-profile support of President Medvedev will deliver a knock-out blow to the tower.
“I do not think the giant will be finally built,” said Reznik, of Yabloko. Recently more and more top officials and ministers, and outstanding art people have criticised the project.”
Gazprom, the opera
Russian activist group Chto Delat (‘What is to be done?’) have sung out against Gazprom’s Okhta tower, producing a Soviet-style musical film called ‘The Tower: A Songspiel’. The performance is set in Gazprom’s boardroom.
On one side there is the PR manager who promotes the project, a local politician, the company’s security chief, a priest, a gallery owner who is set to become the director of the corporation’s contemporary art museum and a fashionable artist.
Pitted against them is a microcosm of Russia’s voiceless minority. The intelligentsia, workers, pensioners and the homeless among others strain their vocal chords to shout down the tower.
Gazprom’s 403-metre Okhta tower in St. Petersburg proposal and film
在國美管看到 2010年俄國拍的影片
© 俄羅斯新聞社 (RIA Novosti)。俄羅斯新聞社
對於俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司 (Gazprom) 的摩天大樓來說，規模重要嗎？
發佈於 2010年6月7日 21:29
自2006年以來，俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司在聖彼得堡建造的403公尺高的「奧赫塔」大廈一直令這座城市陷入分裂，如今就連俄羅斯執政聯盟也站在了對立的兩派。
總統德米特里·梅德韋傑夫站在聯合國教科文組織（聯合國教育、科學及文化組織）一邊，呼籲停止建設，因為這可能會損害聖彼得堡市中心在聯合國教科文組織世界遺產名錄中的地位。
但現代主義陣營的建築師則認為，這座玻璃摩天大樓象徵聖彼得堡作為經濟中心的未來，足以與莫斯科停滯不前的商業區「莫斯科城」相提並論。
「奧赫塔中心將成為聖彼得堡的現代化商業區，也是這座城市的新地標，」該塔樓的總建築師菲利普·尼坎德羅夫告訴《莫斯科新聞報》。 “目前，聖彼得堡有28座高達310米的工業建築，但它們沒有任何歷史價值——因此，這座城市需要一座比它們更高的標誌性建築。”
在俄羅斯執政聯盟內部罕見的分歧中，總理弗拉基米爾·普丁一直支持這座塔樓的建設，稱其將有助於在危機期間重振聖彼得堡的經濟。
「由於俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司（Gazprom-Neft）的總部將遷入，每年將為聖彼得堡帶來約200億盧布（約6.31億美元）的稅收，該公司還將直接投資約600億盧布（約19億美元）用於塔樓的建設，」尼坎德羅夫說道。
文化項目
該計畫——被一些人戲稱為「俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司城」——已獲得聖彼得堡市長瓦倫蒂娜·馬特維延科的支持，將包括辦公大樓、酒店、商店、音樂廳、美術館、圖書館、溜冰場和公園。
批評者指出，這座塔樓與周圍沙皇時代的建築風格格格不入，聖彼得堡建築師協會和國際建築師聯盟都對此表示反對。
「該地區允許建築物的最高高度為48米，因此這座塔樓將完全破壞城市的全景，並且會使位於對面堤岸的拉斯特雷利設計的斯莫爾尼修道院相形見絀，」當地建築師協會副主席奧列格·羅曼諾夫說道。
“聖彼得堡擁有其獨特的個性，並因其在沙皇時代高超的建築標準而獲得了歷史價值。我們不會效仿倫敦或紐約。”
反對派抗議
梅德韋傑夫如今已與反對黨保持一致，例如共產黨、弗拉基米爾·日里諾夫斯基的極端民族主義自由民主黨、公正俄羅斯黨和“亞博盧”黨，這些政黨此前已對這座高塔採取了堅決反對立場。
自由派「亞博盧」黨已就市政廳無視城市標準法並拒絕就此問題舉行全民公投一事提起訴訟。
「（政府）往往無視市民和專業人士的意見，而且無視禁止該地區任何建築物高度超過40米的法律，」該市「亞博盧」黨分部負責人馬克西姆·雷茲尼克表示。 “毋庸置疑，這座高塔將破壞城市的古老建築和全景視野。推動這個項目的人只是想通過建築賺錢。”
反對者強烈譴責
奧赫塔大廈的支持者駁斥了反對者的指控，聲稱該項目合法——已於2009年9月舉行了公開聽證會。這座大廈將建在距離市中心5公里的工業區內。
「該計畫將與城市天際線完美融合，不會與任何歷史遺跡相衝突，」尼坎德羅夫說。 “站在瓦西里島市中心的人看來，這座大廈甚至比彼得保羅要塞還要低。”
他還補充說，該計畫的反對者利用此機會進行自我宣傳，他們經常使用不專業或虛假的圖紙和篡改過的照片來製造人們對該項目的誤解。
這對旅遊業有利嗎？
該市的旅遊業也對這座摩天大樓表示支持，並指出倫敦在現代建築改變其歷史景觀後幾乎沒有受到任何負面影響。
俄羅斯旅遊產業聯盟副主席謝爾蓋·科爾涅耶夫在奧赫塔中心網站上評論道：“我沒聽說旅遊業代表對奧赫塔中心的建設表示擔憂。倫敦去年成為世界領先的旅遊目的地，他們對老城區周圍林立著包括諾曼·福斯特設計的著名建築在內的多座現代摩天大樓感到非常高興。”
奧赫塔塔將為遊客提供一個全新的城市景觀視角，目前最高的觀景台位於聖以撒大教堂，高度僅42公尺。
該項目目前正在接受國家審批，預計明年開工。如果專案順利進行，建設和營運將耗時四年。
雖然該計畫有望創造就業機會，但反對者們相信，梅德韋傑夫總統的高調支持將徹底粉碎這座塔樓的計畫。
「我不認為這座巨型建築最終會建成，」亞布洛科藝術中心的雷茲尼克說。 “最近，越來越多的高級官員、部長以及傑出的藝術人士都對該項目提出了批評。”
俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司，歌劇
俄羅斯維權組織「怎麼辦？」（Chto Delat）以歌聲反對俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司（Gazprom）的奧赫塔塔項目，並製作了一部名為《塔：歌劇》（The Tower: A Songspiel）的蘇聯風格音樂電影。演出場景設定在俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司的會議室。
一邊是負責推廣此計畫的公關經理、一位地方政治人物、公司保全主管、一位牧師、一位即將成為公司當代藝術博物館館長的畫廊老闆，以及一位時尚藝術家。
另一邊則是俄羅斯弱勢的縮影。知識分子、工人、退休人員和無家可歸者等各色人等齊聲吶喊，反對建造這座塔。
© RIA Novosti. RIA NovostiFor Gazprom’s tower, does size matter?
The
construction of Gazprom’s 403-metre Okhta tower in St. Petersburg has
been dividing the city since 2006, and now even Russia’s ruling
partnership is lining up in opposing corners.
President Dmitry Medvedev has weighed in on the side of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), calling for a halt to construction since it could harm the city centre’s place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
But in the modernist’s corner the architect argued that the glass skyscraper was a symbol of St. Petersburg’s future as the economic capital to rival Moscow’s stalled business district, Moskva-City.
“The Okhta Centre will become St. Petersburg’s modern business area and a new symbol of the city”, the tower’s chief architect, Philip Nikandrov, told The Moscow News. “Now there are 28 industrial structures in the city that are up to 310 metres and they do not have any historical value – so the city needs a dominant feature higher than them.”
In a rare sign of differing viewpoints from Russia’s ruling tandem, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has consistently supported the tower, saying it will help revive the city’s economy during the crisis.
“Since the main office of Gazprom-Neft is moving in, it will bring annually around 20 billion roubles ($631 million) in taxes to the city budget and some 60 billion roubles ($1.9 billion) will be invested by the company in the construction directly,” said Nikandrov.
Cultural projects
The project – dubbed by some “Gazprom City” – has received the backing of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and will include offices, hotels, shops, a concert hall, an art museum, libraries, a skating rink and a park.
Critics say the tower contrasts with the surrounding Tsarist-era buildings and both the St. Petersburg Union of Architects and the International Union of Architects have gone against their peer.
“The maximum permitted height of buildings in the area is 48 metres, so the tower will completely ruin the panoramic view of the city and will dwarf Rastrelli’s Smolny Monastery, which is right on the opposite embankment,” said Oleg Romanov, vice president of the local organisation.
“St. Petersburg has its own character and has gained an historical value because there were high standards of architecture in Tsarist times. We are not going to resemble London or New York.”
Opposition protests
Medvedev has now come in line with opposition parties, such as the Communists, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia and Yabloko, who had already taken a firm stand against the tower.
The liberal Yabloko have already launched a lawsuit against City Hall for overlooking the law on city standards and their refusal to hold a referendum on the issue.
“[The government] tends to ignore citizens’ and professionals’ opinions and, moreover, ignores the law prohibiting any building in the area to be higher than 40 metres,” said Maxim Reznik, the head of the city’s Yabloko branch. “It goes without saying that the tower will spoil the ancient architecture of the city and the panoramic view. By promoting the project people just want to earn money on construction.”
Opponents decried
Okhta’s defenders reject their opponents’ allegations, claiming the project is legitimate – having undergone public hearings in September 2009. The tower is to be built in an industrial area 5 kilometres from the city centre.
“The project will be constructed to fully balance with the city’s skyline and isn’t at odds with any historical place,” said Nikandrov. “For a person standing in the city centre on Vasilievsky Island, the tower will seem lower than the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
He added that opponents of the project use it as an opportunity to promote themselves and often use unprofessional or false plans and doctored photographs to create a misconception of the project.
Plus for tourism?
The city’s tourism industry has also plumped in favour of the skyscraper, pointing out that London has suffered little backlash after modern architecture changed its historical cityscape.
“I have not heard of representatives of the tourist industry being concerned about the construction of the Okhta Centre,” Sergei Korneyev, vice president of the Russian Tourist Industry Union, commented on the Okhta Centre’s web site. “In London – which last year became the world’s leading tourist destination – they are absolutely happy about the fact that there are several modern skyscrapers, including famous buildings by Norman Foster, around the old city.”
The Okhta tower will give tourists a new vantage point to view the city, with the highest viewing platform currently only 42 metres high in St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
The plans are currently undergoing state verification and construction is slated to start next year. If the project goes ahead it will take four years to build and create employment opportunities but its opponents are confident the high-profile support of President Medvedev will deliver a knock-out blow to the tower.
“I do not think the giant will be finally built,” said Reznik, of Yabloko. Recently more and more top officials and ministers, and outstanding art people have criticised the project.”
Gazprom, the opera
Russian activist group Chto Delat (‘What is to be done?’) have sung out against Gazprom’s Okhta tower, producing a Soviet-style musical film called ‘The Tower: A Songspiel’. The performance is set in Gazprom’s boardroom.
On one side there is the PR manager who promotes the project, a local politician, the company’s security chief, a priest, a gallery owner who is set to become the director of the corporation’s contemporary art museum and a fashionable artist.
Pitted against them is a microcosm of Russia’s voiceless minority. The intelligentsia, workers, pensioners and the homeless among others strain their vocal chords to shout down the tower.
President Dmitry Medvedev has weighed in on the side of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), calling for a halt to construction since it could harm the city centre’s place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
But in the modernist’s corner the architect argued that the glass skyscraper was a symbol of St. Petersburg’s future as the economic capital to rival Moscow’s stalled business district, Moskva-City.
“The Okhta Centre will become St. Petersburg’s modern business area and a new symbol of the city”, the tower’s chief architect, Philip Nikandrov, told The Moscow News. “Now there are 28 industrial structures in the city that are up to 310 metres and they do not have any historical value – so the city needs a dominant feature higher than them.”
In a rare sign of differing viewpoints from Russia’s ruling tandem, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has consistently supported the tower, saying it will help revive the city’s economy during the crisis.
“Since the main office of Gazprom-Neft is moving in, it will bring annually around 20 billion roubles ($631 million) in taxes to the city budget and some 60 billion roubles ($1.9 billion) will be invested by the company in the construction directly,” said Nikandrov.
Cultural projects
The project – dubbed by some “Gazprom City” – has received the backing of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and will include offices, hotels, shops, a concert hall, an art museum, libraries, a skating rink and a park.
Critics say the tower contrasts with the surrounding Tsarist-era buildings and both the St. Petersburg Union of Architects and the International Union of Architects have gone against their peer.
“The maximum permitted height of buildings in the area is 48 metres, so the tower will completely ruin the panoramic view of the city and will dwarf Rastrelli’s Smolny Monastery, which is right on the opposite embankment,” said Oleg Romanov, vice president of the local organisation.
“St. Petersburg has its own character and has gained an historical value because there were high standards of architecture in Tsarist times. We are not going to resemble London or New York.”
Opposition protests
Medvedev has now come in line with opposition parties, such as the Communists, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia and Yabloko, who had already taken a firm stand against the tower.
The liberal Yabloko have already launched a lawsuit against City Hall for overlooking the law on city standards and their refusal to hold a referendum on the issue.
“[The government] tends to ignore citizens’ and professionals’ opinions and, moreover, ignores the law prohibiting any building in the area to be higher than 40 metres,” said Maxim Reznik, the head of the city’s Yabloko branch. “It goes without saying that the tower will spoil the ancient architecture of the city and the panoramic view. By promoting the project people just want to earn money on construction.”
Opponents decried
Okhta’s defenders reject their opponents’ allegations, claiming the project is legitimate – having undergone public hearings in September 2009. The tower is to be built in an industrial area 5 kilometres from the city centre.
“The project will be constructed to fully balance with the city’s skyline and isn’t at odds with any historical place,” said Nikandrov. “For a person standing in the city centre on Vasilievsky Island, the tower will seem lower than the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
He added that opponents of the project use it as an opportunity to promote themselves and often use unprofessional or false plans and doctored photographs to create a misconception of the project.
Plus for tourism?
The city’s tourism industry has also plumped in favour of the skyscraper, pointing out that London has suffered little backlash after modern architecture changed its historical cityscape.
“I have not heard of representatives of the tourist industry being concerned about the construction of the Okhta Centre,” Sergei Korneyev, vice president of the Russian Tourist Industry Union, commented on the Okhta Centre’s web site. “In London – which last year became the world’s leading tourist destination – they are absolutely happy about the fact that there are several modern skyscrapers, including famous buildings by Norman Foster, around the old city.”
The Okhta tower will give tourists a new vantage point to view the city, with the highest viewing platform currently only 42 metres high in St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
The plans are currently undergoing state verification and construction is slated to start next year. If the project goes ahead it will take four years to build and create employment opportunities but its opponents are confident the high-profile support of President Medvedev will deliver a knock-out blow to the tower.
“I do not think the giant will be finally built,” said Reznik, of Yabloko. Recently more and more top officials and ministers, and outstanding art people have criticised the project.”
Gazprom, the opera
Russian activist group Chto Delat (‘What is to be done?’) have sung out against Gazprom’s Okhta tower, producing a Soviet-style musical film called ‘The Tower: A Songspiel’. The performance is set in Gazprom’s boardroom.
On one side there is the PR manager who promotes the project, a local politician, the company’s security chief, a priest, a gallery owner who is set to become the director of the corporation’s contemporary art museum and a fashionable artist.
Pitted against them is a microcosm of Russia’s voiceless minority. The intelligentsia, workers, pensioners and the homeless among others strain their vocal chords to shout down the tower.