View From Within: Vertical Submarine:

Room on top

However, experts are far from happy about it. Such sentiments were particularly evident at a seminar devoted to the construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow, held on the sidelines of the ArkhMoskva exhibition of architectural design. Virtually all the participants of the seminar admit that the emergence of skyscrapers in Moscow is predetermined by economic factors, that is, the shortage of land in the city and its ever-increasing value. Moreover, the construction of high-rise buildings is a matter of prestige.

“Not all countries produce supersonic fighters, but the country that is able to produce them immediately conquers higher positions in the world’s cultural, industrial and intellectual rating,” says Andrei Chernikhov, head of the Chernikhov architectural workshop.

There is, nevertheless, a different opinion. Aleksandr Kudryavtsev, chairman of the expert advisory board under the aegis of Moscow’s top architect, believes the fact that there are still no real skyscrapers in the city “a colossal achievement”, because the Stalin-era high-rises as well as the taller buildings erected in recent times are still considered merely multi-storied buildings. In his opinion, Russia has proven its ability in this sphere, having erected the state-of-the-art Ostankino TV tower.

“Moscow has never seen large-scale construction of high-rises; the highest of the Stalin-era buildings – the Moscow State University – is only 26 stories high,” Kudryavtsev says. He recalled that two other projects for the construction of high-rises – a 32-storied building on the site where the Rossia Hotel is situated today and a 400-meter high building of the Palace of Soviets were never implemented. “Fortunately,” Kudryavtsev added.

High-rises will not appear in the city center in the near future. At any rate, this is something the authorities firmly insist on. Construction firms have been given the green light to develop the suburban belt of the city that runs between the Garden Ring and the Moscow Ring Road. This is where the authorities plan to build 60 high-rise compounds before 2015, in line with the city government’s program New Ring of Moscow. Such practice is widespread abroad. According to Allan Hart, the head of OVE ARUP Moscow, in London multi-storied buildings are erected only in the eastern part of the city, which makes the location of office space convenient for those companies who would like to have their offices situated closer to the city center, and on the other hand, does not create an architectural imbalance. There is a rule whereby newly erected high-rises must be in architectural harmony with the surrounding buildings, says Hart.

At the same time, unlike those in London, Moscow high-rises will be used not only as office buildings but also as residential areas. Apart from the New Ring of Moscow project, where most of the houses will be residential, even the Moskva-City business center’s upper floors are expected to be used as residential quarters. As to who will live there is another matter. The participants of the seminar recalled that even before the tragedy of 11 September 2001 the prominent expert on architectural ecology Nikolai Obolensky wrote that high-rises attract, primarily, schizophrenics, suicides and terrorists. Nonetheless, everyone is convinced that there will be a demand for such buildings.

“Investors are not really interested in multi-story housing,” claims Aleksei Dobashin, the general director of the development firm KROST. “My apartments are sold through my own realty directorate and I know that there is no rush for apartments on the top. There are a few apartments, say 20-30 flats, on the top floors. And there are always some 20-30 buyers who for some reason want to live on the top.” In Dobashin’s opinion, in a city with 14 million residents, there will always be someone willing to live on the top.

Enduring edifice

Security has become the crucial issue in the high-rise building sector. The 9/11 tragedy has shown that no one had seriously contemplated the problem before those attacks. Allan Hart admits that OVE ARUP used to quite successfully design buildings up to 90-100 stories high in Central Asia. Today, architects and designers treat such projects with great caution; we have all been taught a lesson, which Russia also has to consider when developing new construction projects, holds Hart.

Apart from the terrorist threat, there is a high risk of man-made disasters. The August 2003 power black-out in New-York, just like the fire that hit the Ostankino TV tower in Moscow in 2000 showed that the plan of emergency evacuation must be thought out to the minutest detail at the earliest stage of the design.

One cannot build high-rises without having any idea about how people can be rescued from them in case of an emergency, holds Vladimir Travush, chief designer of the Moscow International Business Center Moskva-City. “The problems of multi-storied construction are the problem of a submarine, vertically installed. In other words, all the problems are the same – dividing the area into compartments, the difference in pressure, evacuation – all those are problems of a high-rise building,” says Tavrush. Incidentally, this is the reason that the restaurant and the observation deck have still not re-opened on the Ostankino tower after the blaze.

The building must be designed so as to make it “enduring”, with a high margin of safety, so that “once one column is dislodged the whole building does not collapse”. But that brings about another problem – a sharp increase in the cost of the project.

Authorities in many countries have addressed the issue of evacuating people from skyscrapers “on the highest level”. Various means of evacuation, such as escape chutes and helipads, are being developed. Yet, there will always be “a risk group” of people who will be unable to use such means, and this concerns especially high-rise houses, where children and elderly people live. Incidentally, safety issues were also raised during construction of the Stalin-era high-rises in Moscow. At the time foreign experts disapproved of the Soviets’ plans to make two of the seven buildings residential.

Problems

However, human safety is not the only problem that arises during construction of multi-storied buildings. There are a number of major problems, says Aleksei Dobashin. They are: the foundation of the building, the building frame proper and the facade – how to install its heating systems and the materials that need to be used. Other, less serious problems include the speed and height the elevators go, as well as the insulation of windows.

Much depends on the details of a concrete project. For instance, the foundations of the two high-rises – 29-storied and 32-storied – at the residential complex Olimpia are different. “While the first tower stands on a 1.9-meter thick plate, the second building has 118 piles; the load on the plate would be too high,” Dobashin explains. The company also uses its own technology to decorate the facade of the building.

The main problem that arises at the building stage is the wind at a height of over 50 meters – vertical casing can be caught in gusts of wind, which makes it necessary to switch from using a tower crane to a concrete mixer. And there are plenty more problems like this. Each developer solves those problems his way; some use foreign experience, some introduce their own know-how.