Moscow is re-establishing its reputation as a modern and ambitious city. It is currently constructing a Russian version of the Tower of Babel, the 420- meter high Federation skyscraper.
Built in the shape of a sail out of glass and super-solid concrete, it will be the tallest skyscraper of Europe. It will be consist of two towers with 84 and 57 floors relying on a common multilevel platform on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment with views on the Government House. The Federation will be the centerpiece of the Moscow-City project business center. The latter project is proceeding extremely slowly despite the great attention it has generated.
The Federation involves architects from all over the world: Germans handled the design, American's have taken control of the management and construction is the responsibility of Germans, Russians and Turks. Asia and Europe have shared their technological experience with Moscow. The Federation is a mini-city offering a wide range of services. It will be a compact model of a new Moscow proud of its achievements and ready for consumers. The skyscraper will accommodate banks, supermarkets, restaurants and cafes, TV studios, fitness clubs, a cinema, conference halls, airline offices, a hotel, and a car parking next to it. In short, this wonder of the world, which is highly attractive for investors and very economical in terms of land use, will reinforce Moscow's status of one of the main construction sites in Europe.
The Russian capital seems to be serious about the architectural race. Moscow is experiencing a construction boom - it boasts a huge variety of ideas and plans. This architectural race, be it real or imaginary, has become an impetus for Moscow. The capital's government has not begrudged any funds and has invested heavily in "Europeanizing" Moscow in the past decade. In the final count, the city has become cleaner, more modern and comfortable for people to work and live in. Like most cities today, Moscow is changing its landscape and literally reaching for the skies. A city program, Moscow's New Ring, envisages the construction of 60 high rises with up to 50 floors.
However, this approach to city development is nothing new for Moscow. In the 1930s, plans were in place to build a 420-meter-tall Palace of Soviets with a gigantic figure of Lenin at the top. That Tower of Babel was meant as a symbol of "great achievements" and as an architectural equivalent of the impeccable and grandiose future. But it remained only on paper. However, this role was taken up in the 1940s-1950s by the capital's famous seven high rises with 26-32 floors. These were "the Stalin skyscrapers" that marked a new stage in Moscow's development. At 240 meters, the tallest of the seven sisters, the main building of Moscow State University, continues to tower over Vorobyovy Gory (or Sparrow Hills) in the southwest of the city.
Following the Stalinist era, Moscow found it difficult to come up with any stunning architectural masterpieces. Everything was modern and commonplace. New buildings were not in harmony with the historical part of the city, and many of them have already been razed for being out of date and without any useful purpose. Foreigners are proactively developing the city today, using unique technologies and heavy equipment. For example, the wasteland around the Central House of Artists in Krymsky Val, the modern Tretyakov Gallery, has been entrusted to a Dutch expert in towers, Erick van Egeraat. He will build three towers called Kandinsky, Malevich and Tatlin in honor of Russia's avant-garde artists whose defiance at the time drove Russian art, and particularly architecture, far ahead of the West.
However, the time of Vladimir Tatlin's genius is gone, and the architecture of Moscow now carefully copies the Western style but in such a way as to catch up and outdo the originals in terms of height, functions and abundance of office space. But will this race recoup its costs? Every year, available office space almost doubles, but leaseholders do not seem to develop all the available sites because of high prices. Of course, the market is hardly facing a devastating collapse, but this is something to think about.
The Federation will certainly find leaseholders if prices are not exorbitant. Russia's Tower of Babel may well be commissioned by 2007 as scheduled, but it somehow seems inappropriate to regard it as a new symbol of Moscow. Hopefully, it will just be a piece of "transitional" architecture between imitation and originality.
