New Romantic: Moscow's fairytale transformation

As symbols of Russia’s enduring potential for aesthetic greatness, the dazzling Red Square and magnificent onion-domes of St Basil’s Cathedral have left a far more enduring place in the world’s imagination than the dismal concrete of so many Soviet-era façades. What is more remarkable is that these splendid monuments withstood the seemingly endless ravages of the twentieth century: almost a hundred years of periodic cultural and political revolutions, punctuated by brief periods of entrenched tyranny, three world wars (two hot, one cold), and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In retrospect, it seems a miracle that Russia made it through at all, so the fact that her architecture survived is really something special.

In the new century, Moscow is adding some new fantastical characters to the storybook, with several world-famous architects thinking up new and dazzling ways to whisk us away into the dark beauty of a Muscovite fairytale.

The first of our New Moscow ‘storytellers’ is Foster + Partners, with a tale of several projects, the first of which – Russia Tower – has already begun. The first stone was laid on June 12 last year: Russia Day, a day of national unity commemorating the adoption of the country’s constitution. In 1990, the date symbolised the laying of strong foundations for Russia’s new cultural and political future. In 2007, it meant the beginning of fresh and aspirational architectural beginnings. When finished, Russia Tower will be the tallest naturally ventilated tower in the world: a mixed-use, super-dense vertical city for 25,000, with 600 vertical metres and 118 occupied floors of hotel, office space, shopping, and apartments with private gardens. Because of its energy credentials and its shape – a trio of tapering ‘arms’ with a central void – it is the physical and ideological ‘green core’ at the heart of Russia Tower that has gained the most attention. To begin with, the slender pyramidal form means shallow floorplates, maximising daylight penetration and increasing natural ventilation. In an effort to defeat the icy grip of Jack Frost, the glass façade is not double- but triple-glazed, and energy recycling will reduce heating demands by up to 20 per cent. Snow and rain water harvesting will store what nature provides, cutting by a third the consumption of fresh water in internal amenities, while photovoltaics will supply the Tower’s energy needs and feed power back into the grid. And in the true spirit of soaring fantasies, the higher you go, the more outlandish the fairytale becomes. Ground level begins with shopping centres and an ice rink; the higher apartments boast double- and triple-height volumes and sky garden access; and the spectacle truly takes flight at summit level, with a public viewing deck, cafés and bars.

On the topic of spiralling glass skyscrapers, it seems appropriate to mention that Foster + Partners is not alone in restoring Moscow to its romantic architectural heyday. British architects RMJM and Scottish artist Karen Forbes have just celebrated the launch of their 46-storey City Palace Tower, to be built in Moscow’s international business district, 4km from Red Square. Inspired by Rodin’s The Kiss, its two twisting facades coil upwards in a unifying embrace, like the immutable structure of DNA, or the overlapping strands of a Russian wedding ring. Its creators describe City Palace as “sensuous” and “organic”, a fusion of art and architecture that absorbs historical and contemporary inspiration from the city around it to form a powerful, romantic symbol of future prosperity, replete with office spaces, restaurants, a museum, underground shopping precincts and a landscaped piazza.

But it is the tower’s modern “Wedding Palace” that forms the heart of the project, hoping to overcome decades of austere civil marriage ceremonies. Two luxurious marriage halls are decorated with sunlight refracted by the tower’s diamond-cut fenestrations, and from a top-floor reception ballroom, 200 guests share in the glorious vista across to Red Square. It is through these symbolic fusions of traditional culture and radical architecture that RMJM hope to transform Moscow once more into a city of structural beauty.

Not so romantic, but just as fanciful is Foster + Partners’ second tale: that of the Crystal Island. Images of the proposed project have been doing the rounds for a while now, since the designs were first released back in 2007. But it wasn’t until January this year that what Norman Foster calls “one of the world’s most ambitious projects” finally gained preliminary planning permission from the Moscow Public and Architectural Council. At 450m high, Crystal Island is certainly never going to be the world’s highest building; but with a total floor area of 2.5 million square metres, it will certainly aim to be the biggest by volume. Inside the vast superstructure, its single spire needling skywards, Crystal Island will be a city within a city: an urban destination with a rich mix of entertainment, residences and office space collected under one tent-like glass skin. The building’s diagonal grid spreads out into a newly landscaped park, which will host cross country skiing and ice skating in the winter and serve as a dynamic, mixed-use open space in the warmer months. Inside, approximately 3000 hotel rooms and 900 serviced apartments will be positioned within walking distance of various cultural, exhibition and performance facilities, as well as offices, shops and an international school with capacity for 500 students. Each of these internal volumes will assume its position in a staggered formation against the outer ‘smart skin’, creating the space for the building’s ascending series of winter-gardens. This inner layer will serve to buffer the interior spaces from the highs and plunging lows of Moscow’s climate, complementing operable enclosure panels, which when closed will block out the cold, and when open in summer will admit cooling breezes. With on-site renewable and low-carbon power generation, Crystal Island embodies the energy policies of a country where electricity has often been in high demand and short supply, while also satisfying the eco-conscious attitudes of today’s global building scene.

Foster + Partners has several more impressive projects on the Moscow horizon, including a masterplan for the extension of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, not to create more space for the Monets and Gaugins, but rather to transform the museum into a vibrant cultural quarter. Construction on a new gallery, library, cinema and administrative centre, as well as two new underground pedestrian “winter routes” is due to begin in 2009, and conclude in 2012, just in time for the no-doubt splendid bicentennial celebrations of what is the city’s largest European art museum.

The next page in Foster + Partners’ Moscow chapter is their planned Zaryadye Project, a 13- acre mixed-use development on the site of the demolished Communist-era Hotel Rossiya, once the largest hotel in the world. Set among the Red Square’s enduring architectural delights, the development will graft itself to the existing main streets and colonnades, converging on three halls – concert, philharmonic and banquet – plus a variety theatre, four hotels, retail spaces and a local musem. With an estimated cost reported at $1.5 billion, it surely harks back to the bygone era of opulence in Russia’s imperial past.

But even that is not the final page in Foster + Partners’ unfolding Muscovite portfolio, nor its most dramatic. That award would have to go to Project Orange, inspired by the eponymous fruit, a traditional Russian symbol of opulence and plenty. With a museum of contemporary art surrounded by five residential and hotel “segments”, its 15 storeys will curve in on one another, huddling against the biting winter, a series of apertures piercing the mass to provide light in winter and respite in summer. Fading from a deep orange colour at the base to silver at roof level, Project Orange is an absolute counterpoint to the dark, dismal architectural legacy of the past century. It is a reawakening of the longdormant Moscovite fairytale preserved in the buildings of the Red Square, and about to be retold in the new romantic architecture of the 21st century. +

1 Russie Tower: As sure as night follows day, Foster + Partners’ Russia Tower harkens the return of romance and the beginning of a new chapter in the tale of Moscow’s grand, everlasting architecture. 2 PTowering over a winter wonderland, the triple-glazed façade of Russia Tower will keep out the worst of the fierce Moscow freeze, capitalise on scarce sunlight, and thus reduce. 3 Foster + Partner’s Zaryadye Project will be a powerful symbol of the new Moscow, taking over the site of the now-demolished Hotel Rossiya on the flanks of Red Square, and within a stone’s throw of The Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral. 4 Architecture for a fruitful future. It is not difficult to see the thematic and structural inspiration behind Foster + Partners’ Project Orange concept: oranges are a traditional Russian symbol of opluence and plenty. 5 The collaboration of architect (RMJM) and artist (Karen Forbes) has produced a riverside landmark of future prosperity, as beautiful as it is monumental: exactly what the client, ST Group (City Palace LLC) ordered. 6 Framed in the sights of its own main ceremonial staircase, dramatic views of City Palace Tower create a sense of theatre designed to send the heart fluttering and the spirits soaring.

IMAGES courtesy and copyright of Foster +Partners and RMJM