RUSSIA:A huge new development is set to reshape our traditional image of Europe's largest city, writes David Holley
For centuries, Red Square and the Kremlin have been the heart of Moscow. But now a 21st-century downtown is rising, with skyscrapers set to reshape the image of Europe's largest city.
The $10-billion Moskva-City complex of offices, hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops and entertainment centres will feature about 25 high-rises, including at least seven buildings taller than any others in Europe.
Dominating the site will be the 2,008-ft Russia Tower, which will be one of the tallest buildings in the world and is due for completion in 2012. By comparison, New York's Empire State Building is 1,454 feet tall, including its lightning rod. The rest of the centre is scheduled to open in 2009 and 2010.
City officials have been working on the Moskva-City project since 1990, but few took it seriously until the turn of the century. Fuelled by an oil-based boom in Russia's economy, the 148-acre site now is a place of frenzied construction.
"When I started doing this in 1990, Moscow shops had nothing on their counters," deputy mayor Iosif Ordzhonikidze says. "The country lived very poorly. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, hot spots emerged and refugees came to Moscow. In 1991, when I said we will be building this Moskva-City and showed the first drawings, nobody would believe it."
One purpose of the project is to keep the demand for office space from driving other activities out of central Moscow, says Gennady Sirota, head of the city agency that designed the complex situated on the banks of the Moscow River four kilometres from the Kremlin.
"Russia is very rapidly getting integrated into the outside world," Sirota says. "Naturally the living function of the centre of the city began gradually to be replaced by office functions ... Moscow was faced with the task to create a business centre analogous to La Défense in Paris or Canary Wharf in London."
The site is divided into 20 plots, where Russian and foreign investors are putting up buildings designed by their own architects but co-ordinated with Sirota's office.
"The design level of the entire complex is very high level. It's good. It will be at a much higher level than La Défense or Canary Wharf," says Frank Williams, a New York-based architect whose company is working on the 1,246-ft Mercury City Tower.
The Moscow city government is to move to the site, which will also boast an aqua park with an indoor beach usable even in the bleakest winters.
"Until 1998, not a single investor believed it was possible," Ordzhonikidze says. "Now one space plot in the complex costs a minimum of $300 million. So the idea was materialised. Naturally, everybody who took part in it, including myself, feels really great satisfaction."
"We tried to create a situation where after 6pm this will not become a dead city like many business centres in the world, where doors get locked, people leave and the buildings stand there dark," says Ordzhonikidze. "We wanted our Moskva-City to work nonstop. A big number of shops will be open round-the-clock, and the aqua park will work until late. In summer, the Moscow River will be a transportation route practically the whole night."
Direct rail lines will link the centre with two of Moscow's airports, with one line due for completion in 2009 and the other in 2010. An eventual link to the third main airport also is planned.
"You will be able to come here, check in your luggage, park your car, get through customs, get on the train and end up on the airplane," Ordzhonikidze says.
An underground tunnel will link the complex to a nearby port on the river. Goods will be unloaded there from barges, railway cars or trucks and loaded onto unpiloted capsules set on rails to be brought through the tunnel, which links to elevators opening in the basements of all the high-rise towers.
The design and scale of Moskva-City reflects the wealth Russia currently enjoys from oil, natural gas and other resources, says Williams: "The energy of cities goes through cycles. This is Moscow's time."