Digenis.org

While I’m on the topic of Russian architecture, let me mention something that I ran across in the news today. It was announced at the MIPIM International Realty Fair in Cannes on Wednesday that Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has struck a deal with British architect Sir Norman Foster to build a 600-meter-tall building to be part of the new Moscow-City Complex. The Times reports:

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.
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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.

The 118-story building could quite well be the tallest building in all of Europe when it’s completed in 2010.

The project is being coordinated by Shalva Chigirinsky, a Russian property tycoon whose ST Group is also working on the reconstruction of the Rossiya Hotel and the New Holland Island in St. Petersburg.