Night Sky Under Reconstruction
It came as an unpleasant surprise to Muscovites when the Moscow
Planetarium closed down for repair 15 years ago. There was no avoiding
the closure: The planetarium's staff had not been receiving their
salaries for months; the planetarium had accumulated huge debts on
utilities payments, and its building was in disrepair. Then a conflict
flared up over ownership rights between the city and a certain Tvinz
Company, controlled by Igor Mikitasov, who became the planetarium's
director.
There followed litigations and rallies attended by amateur astronomers
and people who loved the planetarium. They thought that it was lost
forever to the public. Fortunately, their fears were unfounded.
At first, it seemed that the planetarium's new director was going to
turn that scientific and educational center, into a place of
entertainment. After paying a visit to its reconstructed building,
however, MN correspondents affirmed: "It is now certain that the
planetarium will remain a planetarium."
Olga Semyonova, one of the two authors of the reconstruction project,
said while pointing to the white peak of the planetarium: "The façade
was badly damaged in the 1970s; we have restored it. We have also
recreated the original appearance of the windows."
Built in the 1920s and based on the design of architects Mikhail Barshch
and Mikhail Sinyavsky, the Moscow Planetarium is recognized as a unique
monument of constructivist architecture, and it enjoys the appropriate
protected status. One of the goals of the design team engaged in the
reconstruction of the planetarium was to clear the structure of its late
Soviet "improvements." Moreover, the winding staircase that were in the
original blueprints, but were never built for technical reasons, have
materialized.
cont'd....
http://mnweekly.ru/local/20070816/55268643.html