High-Rise Moscow: City

For several centuries Moscow skyline silhouette was formed by numerous churches and bell towers emphases dominated by the Kremlin ensemble and various monastic complexes above them. The city was constantly growing and absorbing a greater number of former selfsupporting settlements, which had their own major high-rise landmarks. The post-fire reconstruction of the capital at the beginning of the 19th century created a broad holistic scheme for high-rise dominants within the city and continued its surging development in the second half of the century. By the beginning of XX century Moscow came up with a great potential to perceive something new, which met the similar search for contemporary artistic expression in the architecture of the majority of the firstrate European countries and the USA.

Starting from the 1990s, urban development of Moscow has experienced quite dynamic and vigorous growth. Contrary to conventional lamentations about the secondariness and provinciality of modern domestic architecture, in the past three decades this movement shows a consistent and purposeful development in the mainstream of the most advanced international trends. Of course, in quantitative terms, we cannot compete with China, South Korea, Japan or India, where with enviable regularity grow new supertech high-rises and even entire cities of skyscrapers.

Speed of erection of exclusive towers in the UAE or their neighboring countries is also too high for a steadygoing Russian character. However, in a reasonable European terms our pace and scale of the erected buildings, especially in Moscow, can be called intense and rather impressive. During the two years in the mid-2000s the tallest building in Europe was the Triumph Palace (264.1 m), which still remains amongst those residential complexes. But today the leadership amongst the tall buildings of continental Europe also belongs to our skyscraper – the Mercury City Tower (338.8 m).

It is obvious that the epopee of the construction of the Moscow business center towers rendered and continues to exercise the most salutary influence over the development of high-rise construction in Russia as a separate branch. In the early 1990s, inspired by rapid social transformations and breaking of habitual behavioral stereotypes, architects began to try myself in many styles and trends not available for them before for various reasons. Courage and even grotesque were actively welcomed, at least in project developments.

But high-rise construction - is extremely time-consuming, technically challenging and costly branch of architectural activity. As a consequence, in the first instance all the “crazy” ideas were realized in the construction of private suburban housing, and for the formation of a balanced approach to the erection of new urban skyscrapers took a little longer. But the idea of construction of a new business center, similar to the Paris La Defense, was enthusiastically perceived, as in a professional environment, as well in a broad society in general.

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Text: MARIANNA MAYEVSKAYA,
Photos: ALEXANDER MUKHIN