Today’s Revolution Square, a historical square next to Red Square in Moscow, hardly feels like a place intended for public use. One of the capital city’s most significant sites, it has become an almost faceless, if busy, point in getting about the city.
Our plan offers a new vision for the area and respects its historic character. The square is to become an exclusively pedestrian zone linked to the popular sites of Red Square, Bolshoi theatre and other tourist sites.
Our objective was to eliminate the illogic and chaos of the small forms that now clutter the site and remove all obstructions that block views of the site’s historical monuments.
We have proposed to restore the visual axes specified in the original OsipBove plan, using plantings and streetlights, and by opening part of OkhotnyRyad as a broad pedestrian corridor, to restore the integrity of the entire square as a place for walking, strolling and getting about the city.
Redesign of the space between the Metropole and Four Seasons hotels Our plan uses symmetrical rows of trees and pedestrian walkways on either side of the square as basic elements of a new, orderly composition. The classical but festive main pattern of the paving speaks to the new spirit of the place. A pattern within the pattern traces the course of the hidden Neglinka River, which flows in a collecting tunnel under Revolution Square. The culturally important monuments of the square – the Karl Marx memorial (by sculptor Lev Kerbel, 1961) and the fountain, important from a civil engineering perspectiveand sculpted by Ivan Vitali in 1835, remain intact, as are the small squares associated with them.
Area at the entrance to the Revolution Square metro stop
The area outside the entrance to the Revolution Square metro stop is the compositional center of the entire square. This is the least built-up section of the whole, thus allowing nothing to impede the existing view of the Kitai-gorod wall and the panorama of old Moscow. The principal decorative element of the space at the entrance to the metro is the ring of lights, which helps define the space with a distinctly positive air.
Voskresenskaya Square
The area between the Four Seasons (former Moskva) Hotel and the Museum of the Napoleonic War (formerly the Historical Museum) is adjacent to Revolution square and technically forms another square called Voskresenskaya. Right now it mainly serves the pedestrian transit function. Thanks to a lane created by streetlights and newly planted linden trees it becomes a place for relaxed strolling and socializing without impeding the habitual function. Comfortable benchessurrounding ventilator openings mask the bulk of the concrete forms. Priority in the floral plantings is given to perennials.
Neglinny Lane
No longer would a portion of the lane between the square and TeatralnyProezd serve as a technical zone for the Metropole Hotel. Instead, the public would have yet another pedestrian area along the Kitai-gorod wall. The onetime truck route becomes a place of streetside cafes and small shops.
