Moscow River

The city of Moscow can be seen as a disjointed and disjointed archipelago full of discontinuities, large forests and obsolete industries, many vacant spaces, an inefficient mobility structure. In reality, it is difficult to find a legible structure beyond the three central rings. It is a huge city-collage. To bring about a change, Moscow needs a big project, which can now be done. The Moskova River that crosses the city forming meanders, islands, lagoons and tributaries can be the source of this far-reaching transformation in time. But the river is now inaccessible for the most part, except for the short distance from the city centre, its banks are occupied by huge industrial areas, many of them completely obsolete and abandoned.

The first interventions in the urban development of the former ZIL factory; the second is the re-naturalisation of the Stroginskaya Poima and Mnevnikoskaya Poima meanders and the land on the inner ring road. The project is extraordinarily ambitious and the city of Moscow has already launched a number of important projects in the city centre. We propose to articulate this archipelago and transform it into a mosaic in which each piece has its own meaning, but which simultaneously builds up a coherent image over time. Each piece of the mosaic is a place that responds to different urban conditions, with a different urban potential and an identifiable differentiated landscape, which will accommodate the maximum wealth of uses and which, being, in a certain way, independent of each other, multiply their effects. The Moskova River is the central figure in this mosaic, where we have transformed the city with a major project that has "placed" the river back in its urban heart.