Lord Foster’s Moscow City Towers, a tripartite skyscraper 118 floors high, has been called “horrible” by Alexei Komech, Moscow’s foremost architectural historian.
“I have nothing against the building itself, but I am dead against it being built in Moscow,” said Komech, who campaigns for the Russian capital’s cultural heritage.
“This is a city with a low skyline and hardly any skyscrapers. Foster’s building will change Moscow’s landscape for ever because it will dwarf everything else. It will be so massive that when people are standing off Red Square it will stick out from behind the Kremlin. No one is thinking about the effect it will have on the old Moscow.”
Nearly 2,000ft high, Foster’s £830m skyscraper will be more than 500ft taller than the Empire State Building in New York. It will go up in the heart of the financial district, which is being developed less than three miles from the Kremlin in a project cherished by Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor. Foster’s will be the tallest of 60 skyscrapers to be built there in the next few years.
Described by the architect as a “vertical city”, it will contain luxury apartments, a hotel, shops, offices and a public ice rink on the first floor under a pyramid-shaped atrium.
Advertisement
Foster, 71, denied that the tower would ruin Moscow’s skyline. “The city authorities have a clear planning policy of developing tall buildings in one particular area. Many, including myself, would argue that the building will be respectful of the city’s low- rise nature. This will be a slender structure so it will have less impact than a lower but bulkier building,” he said.
“But the main point is that because of its strong economy Moscow is a city in transition. If people are saying that a city cannot adapt they are flying in the face of reality. You can’t freeze a city just because it’s low rise and I am confident that we can highlight the city’s beauty and not spoil it.”
Moscow City Towers is the latest of Foster’s projects in Russia, where he is fast becoming a household name. He has been asked to turn a small artificial island in St Petersburg into a complex of theatres, concert halls, hotels and restaurants, and to redevelop a site next to the Kremlin where the Rossiya hotel, once Europe’s largest, is being dismantled.