The City of the Future

Ever since the phrase "Moscow City" entered the city's vocabulary about two years ago and the complex of skyscrapers -- like an upended cluster of icicles -- became the symbol of the Russian city of the future, there has been no shortage of topics of conversation: the necessity of developing the city's wastelands, the prospects of a monorail line to the airport, the price of shares in the City joint-stock company, the importance of this kind of construction for Russia's future, and so on. Nonetheless, people have stubbornly resisted debating how the complex will figure in the overall plan of the city.


The Moscow International Business Center, or City, is to be built on a virtually undeveloped plot along the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, four kilometers from the Kremlin. It will encompass the already existing Armand Hammer Center and the Expocenter. The new business center is expected to include a park built around a stock-exchange complex, an information center and hotel complex, a multistory office building, residential buildings, sports facilities, water reservoirs, hanging gardens and multi-level parking garages. In addition, the project calls for the construction of three new metro stations and a high-speed monorail line to Sheremetyevo airport.


This enormous project has received a considerable amount of international publicity. The planwas presented to the former U.S. President Richard Nixon on his last visit here and to the Japanese architect Kenzo Tanga. The idea of building a major business center in Russia has also received support from U.S. President Bill Clinton.


All this is being carefully preserved in the archive of the City company in anticipation of the day that investors begin to line up. Specialists estimate that construction of the City will cost no less than $9 billion and may take several decades to complete, considering that transportation problems in this area are only just beginning to be resolved. Moreover, many are dissatisfied with the terms under which the city has agreed to lease the site. This agreement allows the Russian authorities to change the amount of rent virtually at their discretion. In addition, the 49-year span of the lease is obviously too short to attract the necessary investment. The huge scale of the project and the advertised silhouette of super-skyscrapers have done as much to frighten off investors as to attract them.


The lack of success in attracting investment led the Moscow city government to adopt an initiative this spring that will begin construction of the project using city funds. The initiative limits the City joint-stock company to the rental of a small part of the site, while Moskapstroi, the municipal construction company, would take over the rest of the project. In this way, the city authorities have completely taken on the task of creating the necessary infrastructure on the City site. Since virtually all members of the board of directors of the City company are subordinate to the Moscow municipal construction department, the new initiative has met with no opposition.


The matter of financing the project and the question of whether the city is in a position to contribute so much to its development are not the only relevant considerations. The real question is what such a project will mean for the city of Moscow from the architectural point of view. "Moscow can be destroyed in one of two ways: Either blow it up or build the City." This opinion was recently expressed at a meeting with the city's chief architect. It represents an extreme degree of opposition to the "project of the century," but there are grounds for this attitude.


There are two models for modern business centers. The European model develops the horizontal space rather than height, and is intended to preserve the established urban environment around it. Successful examples of this type of planning can be found in Paris, Naples and Berlin.


In contrast, the American model arose in the 1920s, when hundred-story buildings were constructed in considerable numbers in the relatively young cities of the United States. However, it is now generally accepted that piling up architectural elements is not acceptable in a city with a centuries-old history, and that the skyscraper is not the most humane environment for living and working.


Naturally, economics dictate that a modernbusiness center cannot be low-rise when the price of land is high. However, the buildings of the City project are not merely tall, they are gargantuan. The central structure, the Russia Tower, would be 648 meters high -- 95 meters taller than the CN Tower in Toronto, which is currently the tallest structure in the world. The Russia Tower would be more than 100 meters taller than Moscow's Ostankino television tower. The cost of building one square meter of floor space in this building will be between $3,000 and $5,000.


On a clear day, the buildings of the City will be visible from 30 kilometers away. From a distance, the forms of the buildings will melt together into a gigantic multistory scheme, and the simple geometric figure will have an explosive effect on the whole composition. Human perception is such that if our eyes orient themselves to the vertical, all else becomes dead. In other words, the "new dominant" threatens to bury the entire central part of the city, with the ancient Kremlin being the first victim.


Ever since it became fashionable to argue that Russia must be quickly integrated into the world economy, there have been a surfeit of plans for business centers in Moscow. One of the most grandiose, the KNIT Center?Kaluga Gate project, which would have turned Gagarin Square into something resembling Paris's La Defense, died several years ago, having eaten up $20 million in planning costs. At this point, it looks as if a similar fate is the best we can hope for the City project.





Dmitry Gronsky and Dmitry Popov are both Moscow-based journalists. They contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.