Eat your heart out Dubai! So you think you can build a big building? Moscow is sending a message to the world with preliminary planning permission having just been granted to build the World’s largest building.
Crystal Island will cover a staggering 2,670,000 square meters, stand 450 meters tall and will cost an estimated $4 billion.
The tower, designed by renowned British architects Foster + Partners, will be multi use containing 3000 hotel rooms, 900 serviced apartments, a business centre, office spaces, a sports centre, entertainment centre and shopping mall as well as an international clown school, restaurants and cafes. Visitor numbers are expected to be high and there is a planned 16,500 space car park to accommodate them.
According to the designers: “The building’s spiraling form emerges majestically from a newly landscaped park, rising in converse directions to form a diagonal grid. This distinctive geometry extends throughout the project into the park. The result is that the scheme is seamlessly integrated into a new park landscape, which provides a range of activities throughout the year, including cross country skiing and ice skating in the winter.
The internal built volumes assume a staggered formation within the triangulated steel mega frame, extending flush against the sloping facetted glazed outer skin. This terracing creates a series of wintergardens, which form a breathable second layer and thermal buffer for the main building, shielding the interior spaces from Moscow’s extreme summer and winter climates. A vertical louvre system sheaths the internal facades to ensure privacy for the individual apartments.
Dynamic enclosure panels slotted into the structural framing allow daylight to penetrate deep into the heart of the scheme and can be controlled to modify the internal environment – closed in winter for extra warmth and opened in summer to allow natural ventilation. Energy management is at the heart of the design, with additional strategies to include on-site renewable and low-carbon energy generation.”
The plan is to have this twenty seven million square foot construction completed within five years. While that might sound ambitious, Lord Foster has a reputation for getting things done and this is not his first large scale project in Moscow. The structure will be lit up at night, and some have already dubbed the project Moscow’s “Christmas Tree,” although it looks more like Billy Smarts Glass Circus tent to us – Bring on the Clowns.
