The Alcon tower, which is now called the "eighth sister", is being built at the intersection of the Third Transport Ring and Leningradsky Prospekt. This extremely significant crossroads on the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg is now intensively developing. Moscow is growing rapidly here. Opposite the section of the tower to the north, VTB Arena Park is almost completed, behind it looms the pixelated “cap” of the reconstructed Dynamo stadium, which now bears the name “VTB-Arena”. Diagonally to the north-west - completed RC "Tsarskaya Ploshchad", the capital scale of which is supported by a careful drawing of various facades, among which are dominated by brick, but angular - made of light stone decorated with ornamental carvings, salutes Andrei Burov's "Openwork House" on the opposite side of the Third Transport Ring … Behind which, along the route, rises the first high-rise dominant here in time - the "Aviator House" by Andrey Meerson, the best of Moscow "houses on legs", decorated with oval brutalist towers. A little closer to the center behind them is the reconstructed Bolshevik factory with a metal can of the Impressionism Museum on its territory. In a word, the context is exceptionally lively, and it is not even worth talking about future views from the windows of the tower - the list of visually accessible attractions tends to infinity.
In a word, the context here is extremely dynamic, only the area southwest of Novaya Bashilovka, built up with five- and nine-story residential buildings, does not change at all. The site on its corner, at the intersection of the main Moscow highways, has been empty since the time when the estate of the owner of the Yar restaurant was demolished here in the 1960s. In 2013, a closed competition was held: the ABD bureau project won, which, however, was rejected by the Arch Council (see the message on
the website of the Arch Council and our report). At a meeting in November 2013, it was formulated that a tower, a new urban dominant, would be more suitable for an important intersection; the chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, coordinated this decision with the mayor of the city, Sergei Sobyanin. The bureau of Evgeny Gerasimov was invited to prepare the concept; in case of a convincing proposal, it was decided to change the altitude regulations of the site.
Evgeny Gerasimov
presented the design of the tower in 2014, and was then the first Petersburger to speak at the Moscow Architectural Council. The chosen direction - in the spirit of Stalinist architecture - has been studied by the bureau for a long time and consistently, its features prevail or can be traced among the most notable projects - the Pobedy 5 residential building, the Futurist complex, the Verona houses and the Art View House.
The idea to turn back to the era preceding the fight against excesses came from the name of Leningradsky Prospekt, which "refers to Leningrad and Moskovsky Prospekt with its famous Stalinist architecture." To an equal degree, however, it fits into the long Moscow search for a "new version of Stalin's Art Deco" - as the trend is sometimes called, which is extremely popular with metropolitan buyers, and after them - with marketers. Moscow has been looking for its own version of Art Deco for 20 years, if not all 25 years, balancing on the brink of nostalgia for the life of the Soviet elite, sung in Mikhalkov's films, and for New York of the delirious version, sung by Rem Koolhaas, and Donald Trump's charisma, dear to the hearts of fans. In this light, the capital's skyscrapers attract everyone's attention - both tourists and customers of new buildings. And the Triumph Palace, located three kilometers along Leningradka - one of the first examples of a "new Moscow skyscraper", will also be perfectly visible from above.
So, the skyscraper of Evgeny Gerasimov was far from the first in a series of general searches for art deco suitable for modern Moscow - and, unlike all the previous ones, in some way by exchange, from St. Petersburg to Moscow, as a variant of propyla between two capitals. So the task was more than difficult and responsible.
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zooming 1/6 Sketch of the main version. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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zooming 2/6 Preliminary options. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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zooming 3/6 Preliminary options. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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zooming 4/6 Preliminary options. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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zooming 5/6 Preliminary options. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
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zooming 6/6 Variants of the volumetric solution of the tower. Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Evgeny Gerasimov and partners
In an effort to find the correct proportions, the architects conducted a study comparing the morphology of Moscow and New York skyscrapers from different periods. Common features were revealed: a tiered structure with a gradual narrowing and lightening of the masses, a spire on a high "drum", a Gothic vertical division of volumes, a light facing material. From the visuals it can be seen that the Alcon Tower in silhouette is closer to the American "slender" prototypes, which, as a rule, needed to fit into dense and already high-rise buildings. The details and decor, which are based on the context, give the tower a truly Moscow spirit - it is difficult to present it in New York or anywhere else.
The tower is endowed with a rather complex tectonics: the three main tiers are visually multiplied to six due to the perpendicularly intersecting rectangular volumes of different heights. The stepped structure thus appears on all four sides of the building, but two facades are flatter, while the other two have a more pronounced plasticity.
The upward movement set by the masses is enhanced by the facade mesh: if the peripheral parts of the building are deaf and resemble powerful buttresses, then the windows become larger towards the center, the glass area increases, and the piers receive a vertical orientation. This is one of the signs of modernity - panoramic windows did not exist in Stalin's skyscrapers. In the upper tiers, the horizontal divisions gradually come to naught, the surfaces become smooth, the forms crystallize. Instead of a star, there is a shard of ice, as if marking a decrease in temperature in the upper atmosphere, to which the spire reaches.
Unlike the upper tiers, the texture of the lower ones is very rich - it should be interesting to look at them both when passing by, and while standing in a traffic jam. A stylized portico, rustic stone, pronounced horizontal divisions - all this is a response to the surrounding buildings, which on a street scale gives the building a bit of intimacy and warmth.
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zooming 1/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 2/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 3/10 Alcon Tower Apartment Complex and Alcon III Multifunctional Complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 4/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 5/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 6/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 7/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 8/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 9/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 10/10 Alcon Tower apartment complex and Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
The height of the tower with a spire is 168 meters: among the seven Stalinist skyscrapers, it would be the fifth highest after the Moscow State University, the Ukraine Hotel, the house on Kotelnicheskaya and the Foreign Ministry building. Apartments start from the fifth floor, on the last 28-31 floors there are penthouses with an area of up to 255 m2 overlooking all directions of the world. The fourth floor is technical, and the first three have a spacious lobby, a restaurant, a fitness center, meeting rooms and other infrastructure that turns the building into a small town.
The size of the business center, located closer to the crossroads, is consonant in scale with both the Brezhnev nine-story buildings along Novaya Bashilovka and the building of the Sovetsky Hotel, which was built in the early 1950s as a government hotel on the site of the famous Yar. The lamellar volume and paneled facade of the business center refer us more to the post-constructivist experiences of Ilya Golosov in the 1930s than to the post-war skyscrapers - it is somewhat more restrained than the tower.
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zooming 1/3 Alcon Tower Apartment Complex and Alcon III Multifunctional Complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 2/3 Alcon Tower Apartment Complex and Alcon III Multifunctional Complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 3/3 Alcon Tower Apartment Complex and Alcon III Multifunctional Complex © Alcon Group
Thanks to the choice of high-rise typology in the northern part of the territory, from the side of residential buildings on Bashilovka, it was possible to free up space for landscaping: a boulevard and a pedestrian alley, possibly with a fountain, are planned along the axis of the portico of the Sovetsky Hotel.
The Archcouncil approved the project and even recognized it as the best public object of 2015. Sergei Kuznetsov described the council's decision as follows: “We should not hesitate to continue the Moscow traditions. Both the high-rise volume and the proposed composition are quite appropriate. Marking the boundary of the Third Ring Road, Alcon Tower will become one of the high-rise dominants of Moscow - and in this sense it will be analogous to the City and the Big City, which also gravitate towards the Third Ring, almost like the high-rise buildings of the early 1950s.
On the other hand, the experience of Evgeny Gerasimov in the design and implementation of buildings in this style, as well as the bureau's ability to achieve high quality work, leaves no doubt that the tower, despite its scale, will enrich not only the city silhouette, but also the street space. …
By now, the underground part has been fully erected, the first two floors are almost finished. The construction is planned to be completed in 2022.
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zooming 1/3 Construction of the Alcon Tower apartment complex and the Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 2/3 Construction of the Alcon Tower apartment complex and the Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
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zooming 3/3 Construction of the Alcon Tower apartment complex and the Alcon III multifunctional complex © Alcon Group
