A Foster supertall for Moscow.

[alklay]

Foster wins deal for a vertical city
From Jeremy Page in Moscow

The Moscow City Tower is due to be completed in 2010



MOSCOW’s mayor has endorsed plans to build a tower, 600 metres high, designed by the British architect Lord Foster of Thames Bank. It is expected to be the tallest in Europe when it is completed in 2010.

Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor, approved the plan for the 118-storey Moscow City Tower after meeting Lord Foster in the Russian capital last week.

“He was very enthusiastic about it,†Lord Foster told The Times. “It was very well received. I think everyone wants this to happen very quickly.â€

A spokesman for Moscow city hall said the city government would make its final decision after the plans were reviewed by the construction commission early next month. But Lord Foster said that he expected construction to begin within 18 months.

The tower will be part of Moscow City — a huge development on the banks of the Moscow river, three miles from the Kremlin — which the authorities hope will become the country’s main financial district.

It will be naturally ventilated and use the latest heat exchange technologies to minimise energy use. The building will also collect snow and rainwater to reduce by 30 per cent the volume of fresh water used by lavatories.

City authorities are understood to have wanted a distinctive skyscraper that could become a landmark similar to Lord Foster’s “Gherkin†— the headquarters of Swiss Re — in the City of London. The development includes the 430m high Federation Tower, due to be completed in 2008.

The Moscow City Tower plan was proposed by Shalva Chigirinsky, a Russian property tycoon who has close links to Mr Luzhkov and was ranked 59 on a Russian rich list this year.

He told a property conference in Cannes last week that it would cost $1.5 billion (£830 million) to build the tower, of which his company would provide between

$150 million and $200 million. “We’re not poor people. We will invest as much as it takes,†he said.

Last month Mr Chigirinsky teamed up with Lord Foster to redevelop a 19-acre island in St Petersburg called New Holland. Created in 1719, the triangular island was Russia’s first naval port. It is now to be transformed into a $319 million cultural complex that will include a theatre, a concert hall, a museum, art galleries, hotels, shops and offices.

The Moscow City Tower will be a “mixed-use, super-dense, vertical city†capable of accommodating 25,000 people, according to Lord Foster. It will have nine underground floors of parking and shopping space, a public ice rink on the first floor, an hotel, twenty-four floors of apartments and offices and a public observation deck with cafés and bars at the top.


Here is a link to a pick: www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2097094,00.html

 

[Canuck 36]

skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?17211887

Currently Moscow is constructing 6 buildings over 200m, which coincidently enough will become the Moscow's 6 tallest buildings.

 

[wyliepoon]

 

[adma]

I just can't help thinking of that hotel in Pyongyang

 

[samsonyuen]

I really like it. It reminds me of the Transamerica tower in SF too.

 

[wyliepoon]

Now that the Ryugyong Hotel's been mentioned, Google Maps just loaded a detailed satellite map of Pyongyang. Check out the size of the hotel complex... it's huge!

Link

 

[mysteryman]

Moscow rises to Foster's space-age vision


· City planners approve world's largest building
· UK architect triumphs despite stiff resistance

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Friday January 4, 2008
The Guardian



Moscow planners have approved Lord Foster's design for the world's biggest building - likened by critics to an alien spacecraft and a "dahlia stuck in a string bag". The British architect's £2bn "city within a city", Crystal Island, will be built on the banks of the Moscow river, with a total floor area of 2.5m square metres, making it the largest enclosed space ever to be constructed.
Crystal Island's steel mega frame is to feature a "smart skin" to buffer against extreme temperatures and is expected to contain 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments and a school for 500 pupils. Its 620m-wide base will taper to a spire almost 500 metres high, giving it the form of a vast transparent wigwam.

The design was passed despite stiff resistance in planning meetings. Aleksei Klimenko, a leading member of Moscow's expert council on architecture, said it would overshadow a Unesco-protected church in the nearby Kolomenskoye district. The building was too Oriental-looking and resembled a "dahlia stuck in a string bag", he told Radio Svoboda, adding: "If this goes ahead, all that will be left is to build a gold statue of Buddha 30 metres away." Other problems included the density of heavy metals at the site, leached from nearby factories, he said.
Yuri Bocharov, an arc hitect who voted against the project, said: "This idea of Foster's has been wandering all over the world, why does it have to settle on us? It looks as if extra-terrestrials have landed in a flying saucer." The building "contradicted the spirit of the city", he added.

Many would beg to differ. A Moscow building boom has sent huge steel and glass structures flying up on every skyline. The oil and gas boom has spawned a passion for brash and monumental architecture. Foster is involved in half a dozen big projects in the country, including the Russia Tower - which will be Europe's tallest skyscraper - being built in the new Moskva-Siti business district.

Several city planners praised the Crystal Island development, which will be situated four miles from the Kremlin on the Nagatino peninsula and is due to be finished in 2014. Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, said the innovative design differed from the "cubes and squares" of other foreign architects.

Foster yesterday predicted that the building would become "a year-round destination for Moscow and a sustainab le, dynamic new urban quarter". He added: "It is a paradigm of compact, mixed-use, sustainable city planning, with an innovative energy strategy."

The architect's partnership said daylight would be able to penetrate deep into the interior of the "tent", with external panels opened in summer and closed to preserve heat in winter, when temperatures in Moscow can drop to minus 30C. Terraced on the outside of the building will be a series of gardens, and the whole structure is to be set in a landscaped park. The building will house three theatres, an Imax cinema, offices, a museum, two observation decks and underground parking for 14,000 cars.

"At the beginning I understood I'd been shown some kind of Christmas tree," admitted Alexander Kudryavtsev, president of the Moscow Architectural Institute. "But then I thought that such a splendid construction is a fitting demonstration of contemporary technology and all our achievements. This tower could become the symbol of Moscow in the 21st century."

 

[Bogtrotter]

It seems like a lot of major cities are striving for something supertall and iconic these days. Not sure I like this- although I'm a big Foster fan. I need to see more perhaps.