respectively and were incorporated into the USSR (as part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). From the very first years after the War, architects and urban planners, who developed regeneration plans for the new Soviet city of Kaliningrad, considered Korolevskaya gora as a key urban planning problem of the whole urban area with regard to its historical context. Its incompleteness gave rise to numerous projects, schemes and concepts (visionary) regarding the development of Korolevskaya gora and its new place in the municipal fabric, but from 1946 to 2009 the problem was never solved completely. As a result, for over 60 years, the city has been building a “blockade” around its former historical, urban planning and administrative centre in attempts to mitigate the problem. 1. Postwar proposals and concepts (1946-1955) In a staff report on the redevelopment and reconstruction of Königsberg dated 24 June 1946 the chief architect of the Municipal Services Regional Department P.V. Timokhin wrote to the head of the Civil Affairs Department of the Königsberg oblast V.A. Borisov: “One of the main architectural tasks in the city is to change the external architectural image of the city. Contemporary monotonously built-up German streets or whimsically Germanized Art Nouveau standing side by side with a pretentious villa cannot, of course, be retained, and the peculiar character of roofs needs to be changed.”
Fig. 7. Detail of city centre general plan (Giprogor), 1946-1949
The first sketch of the general plan for the city of Kaliningrad developed by Moscow’s Giprogor (Russian Institute of City Construction and Investment Development) (pic.7) is of interest, because it retains four bridges on Kneiphof (the island of Kant) and removes the Medovyi Bridge (Honey Bridge). The House of the Soviets is not yet shown on the sketch but the site of the future landmark building Korolevskaya gora: projects and intentions for its development
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