Dynamic Pirouette of Evolution

In an urban ensemble of Moscow-City sites 2 and 3 are featured the most rich and interesting history. The evolution of this truly cornerstone spot (facing towards the historic center of Moscow) on the master plan of the new Russian business district began in the 1990s, stemmed from the urban concept of Boris Thor, specifying for this area an important communication role – here comes linking the two banks of the Moskva River trade pedestrian Bagration Brige, coupled with the new metro line station.

In one of its early concepts American architectural giant SOM offered to put on the site number 3 topped with a sharp spire 600-meter tower Russia, which as the main Chessman then managed to go through many sites and after a series of “castlings”, unfortunately, could not pass through the crisis in its initial bright evocation of Norman Foster. Now, having lost its supertall ambitions, it is implemented as a business project, not carrying the same compositional dominant role of the main high-rise building of MIBC.

The next major figure aroused on the MIBC “chessboard” became a cluster of buildings of the Moscow Government and the Moscow City Duma. In 2003 there was held an international architectural competition for the best concept of a new government complex at sites № 2-3, but winning version of the Kurortproekt very quickly moved on the site № 15, where was began its implementation (but the project did not survive the changes in the City Government, and currently carried out within a completely different program, as an investment one, not a government funding). Nevertheless, the urban planning idea laid down in a groundwork of 2004, to move the government complex from the sites 2-3 to the northern edge of the Moscow-City, provided on the sites № 2, 3 and 6 arrangement of а new urban public space, which was designed to bring together and then distribute pedestrian flows between Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, Bagration Bridge, central hub (now Afi Mall), a cinema complex, the Expo Centre and headquarters of the Moscow Government.

Arrangement of the square threaded on the axis of the Bagration Bridge had to interconnect several large community centres, while also providing access to the subway station (now the station “Vistavochnaya”). Around the same time it was decided to build on the site № 3 the City Wedding Palace and on the site № 2 – a part of a new public square with a shopping mall underneath linking the subway station to the Bagration Bridge (this section has been completed and commissioned in the summer of 2013).

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Text: PHILIP NIKANDROV, Chief Architect of Gorproject CJSC,
Author of the concept and the Chief Architect of the project since 2004