MOSCOW | Mercury City Tower | 339m | 1112ft | 75 fl | T/O

[Dr Drums]

That city is going to look great in 2010, and the Russia Tower will be colossal

[Skyman]

The model is nice but the top of RT looks not like on the renderings

[Herr Lind]

Wow

[MetalliTooL]

Originally Posted by Gamma-Hamster

Mercury is unfortunately obscured by other buildings...

Yeah, these buildings are too close together. There needs to be more breathing space in between.

[Mr. Alloy]

Originally Posted by MetalliTooL

Yeah, these buildings are too close together. There needs to be more breathing space in between.

I think once it's built, it's gonna be quite a complex. When you're standing in the middle, I don't think you'll have any trouble seeing everything.

Or when you're looking down from Russia Tower.

[floridian-will]

Woa, are all those buildings gonna be built? Or are some of them already there? If thats all new its amazing, thats like raising a whole new skyline, that project is something even Dubai can be jealous of.

[MetalliTooL]

Originally Posted by floridian-will

that project is something even Dubai can be jealous of.

Nah. Not even close.

[floridian-will]

Im not saying its bigger or better than most of the projects in Dubai, but its certainly a project that ANY city would want. I think even Dubai can look at this project and have a little bit of wow in it.

[ZZ-II]

agree, that is a damned big complex with much supertalls in it. that would be also something special for dubai

[Mr. Alloy]

Threat to Dubai's "tallest block?"

[Gendo]

Well if these are all built, Moscow is going to have a cutting edge 21st century skyline.

[Skyman]

One more interesting render from www.citynext.ru
The picture shows how the tower is gonna look like with cladding

[Dr Drums]

Wao, great, this building is gonna look awesome together with all the megatalls of Moscow

[James R. Hawkwood]

Damn man this building like all neo russian scrapers look damn slick indeed

Go Go Go!! and build this nice piece off scraper!

[Xander]

I love this tower, one of the less talked about of the Moscow City skyscrapers

[coth]

12 june 2007


Looks like pile's field is almost completed

[AM Putra]

To the next phase, then.

[hkskyline]

INTERVIEW-US architect designs Moscow's first eco-building

MOSCOW, June 29 (Reuters Life!) - It took a New York architect to design the first environmentally friendly building in the capital of Russia, a country swamped with energy resources and the world's third-largest polluter.

Harvard-educated Frank Williams is building the 70-storey Mercury City Tower as part of Moscow's most ambitious construction project -- a new business complex Moskva City.

"Moscow's oil and natural gas make it seem, right now, that it would be respectful to do a sustainable building," Williams told Reuters. "It's quite good when you are blessed with such natural resources, to also conserve them."

Williams has designed the 1,246 feet (380 metres) tower to use less water and electricity. One of his ideas is to melt the snow gathered on the building's sloping levels and to let it trickle down into special containers.

A tenth of the construction material will come from a 300 miles (483 km) radius to cut pollution by transport, and all but a quarter of the inside spaces will receive daylight. There will also be room for storing recyclable material.

TAMING THE ENVIRONMENT

Just as Williams is working to lessen the impact of the colossal structure on the environment, he has to make sure the environment in its turn does not damage the building.

"The wind is more powerful than anything on a large building -- more than an earthquake," he said, adding that on a normal day the skyscraper will move eight to 12 inches (20 to 30 cm) in each direction. "If it doesn't move it cracks."

The white-haired architect, who has designed skyscrapers across the world, says "a building this large and this tall" has to be built in a wind tunnel to minimise the impact of wind.

"We get information on the 200-year history of wind in Moscow and we put all this into our computers."

Builders then install mass dampers -- large heavy blocks -- at the top of the building to control its movement.

"When the wind is blowing on one side of the building, this mass damper is computerised to move in the opposite direction to slow the movement down so that you don't perceive it."

In places where the wind presses the hardest on the skyscraper's surface, builders will also use stronger glass.

Moscow's soft soil is another headache for Williams.

"Moscow has all these rivers that it tends to make the soil not so strong," he said.

Caissons are the answer: "These are these very long tubes of steel and concrete that go down into the soil to anchor your building."

MOSCOW ROOFS

For Williams, who talks about architecture more in terms of an art form than an engineering feat, the appearance of his building is no less important than its technical specifications.

A computer model on www.archfwa.com shows a skyscraper composed of four sloping levels and topped with a spire. The three bottom levels have the shape of steps and are covered by a sheet of glass so that they contain triangular spaces akin to loft apartments.

"I have designed this to have a kind of context with Moscow. See, when you walk around Moscow because of the snow loads, most of the older buildings...have sloped roofs," Williams said.

This design is also behind some of the tower's "green" features: "In those sloped roofs you have skylights, and these are going to be vertical winter gardens."

At the same time, Williams wanted to incorporate into the building a reference to Russian constructivism by giving it a "very strong vertical thrust".

The New Yorker says that in his hometown, demand for sustainable buildings is rising fast. But by designing Moscow's Mercury City Tower, Williams is not just paying lip service to fashion.

Is he a bit of a tree-hugger?

"Absolutely," the architect replied with a smile -- after asking for an explanation of the humorous nickname for environmentalists.

[great184]

Great tower, too bad it won't be as prominent as its design would justify it to have.

[Herr Lind]

No