The administrative building is being built near the town of Uglegorsk. On the scale of the entire territory of the cosmodrome (and more than 600 hectares have been allocated for the implementation of the project), it, of course, will take a very modest place, but its importance cannot be overestimated - it is here that the management of the construction of the future "Vostochny" will be located, and representatives of the "civil" services. This explains the location of the building on the general plan of "Vostochny" - it is being built not far from the entrance to the territory of the cosmodrome and is conceived as a kind of outpost that meets its employees and guests.
“The architectural image of the building was born almost immediately,” says Andrey Airapetov, chief architect of the IPROMASHPROM institute. - We proceeded from the fact that we should put at the entrance a kind of volume-stele, a vertical dominant, and at the same time place more than 13 thousand square meters of office space in it. Designing too high an object at the cosmodrome is impractical for security reasons, which means that our dominant inevitably had to become quite "plump". This is how the form of the ship arose, a kind of cruiser, on the lower "decks" of which were located public and communication areas, and in the central upper part - offices."
In many respects, it is the location that dictates the dynamic elliptical shape of the building - clearly visible from the outside and at the same time completely self-sufficient, and by its plasticity it is also unmistakably identifiable as "space". However, the architects had not only aesthetic reasons, but also quite practical ones, to put the ellipse as the basis for the plan of the complex. In particular, according to the requirements of maintenance, loading and safety of such buildings, it was necessary to make a circular detour around it, provide the possibility of access from two roads at once and organize two-way parking.
However, a closer look at the master plan reveals that the architects have complicated the egg-shaped oval a lot: in particular, conference blocks shaped like open fans are cut into the ellipse on both long sides. On the contrary, small segments of the same shape have been removed - here the entrances to the building, decorated with metal pergolas, are organized. The latter are designed as a plastic continuation of the semi-dome, partially covering the stylobate part of the complex, due to which the whole composition acquires a certain intrigue and dynamism - there was just a tightly stretched transparent fabric, and now only a bare frame remained in its place. The embedded volumes of public blocks (in addition to conference rooms, they also contain cafes, meeting rooms, and recreation areas for employees) have flat roofs, each of which is cut through by five round "hats" of light lanterns. These elements are not obvious from the ground level, but when viewed from the central office part of the complex they bring the landscape to life. It was this effect that the architects hoped for, including numerous plastically active elements in the overall composition - an industrial base for providing construction and industrial complexes would be built around the building, as long as the eye could see, from which a wide variety of shapes and colors should not be expected.
The actual high-rise part of the complex, which grows out of the middle of the ellipse and is occupied by offices, is more laconic. It also has an oval shape, more precisely, it consists of two semi-ovals, forcedly moved apart to accommodate communication blocks with vertical transport and ladder blocks between them. The faceted facades, as well as the staircase blocks, are faced with glass, and the upper border of each of the floors ("decks") is marked with the help of strict aluminum sun visors, emphasizing the business purpose of the central volume.
The building, which is destined to become the first construction of the cosmodrome, does not resemble either a landmark or a symbol of the entire project - however, such a task was not set for the architects, since work on the iconic objects is still ahead. The complex, from which the work on the creation of the cosmodrome will begin, exactly corresponds to its function and designates a zone of entry to the large-scale territory of "Vostochny".
