The City of Capitals ( rus, Город Столиц, r=Gorod Stolits) is a mixed-use complex composed of two skyscrapers and an office building located on plot 9 in the

Moscow International Business Center The Moscow International Business Center (MIBC), also known as Moscow-City, is an under-construction commercial development in Moscow, the capital of Russia. The project occupies an area of 60 hectares, and is located just east of the Third ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

with a total area of . The two skyscrapers are named after the two historical capitals of Russia: Moscow and

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. Construction of the complex began in 2005, with the office building completed in 2008 and the two skyscrapers completed in 2009.Official site
Moscow Tower is the taller of the two skyscrapers, with a height of and 73 stories, surpassing the

Naberezhnaya Tower Naberezhnaya Tower ( rus, Башня на Hабережной, r=Bashnya na Naberezhnoy, literally means Tower on the Embankment) is an office complex composed of two skyscrapers and a high-rise located on plot 10 in the Moscow International Busi ...

as the tallest building in Russia and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

in 2008, until it was surpassed by

The Shard The Shard, also referred to as the Shard of Glass, Shard London Bridge, and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 72-storey skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter dev ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

in 2012. St. Petersburg Tower has a height of and 65 stories while the office building serves as a

stylobate In classical Greek architecture, a stylobate ( el, στυλοβάτης) is the top step of the crepidoma, the stepped platform upon which colonnades of temple columns are placed (it is the floor of the temple). The platform was built on a level ...

with a height of with 18 floors. As of 2022, Moscow Tower is the eighth-tallest building in Russia and the 21st-tallest residential building in the world.

History

Construction of the complex was first proposed in 2003. Due to the Capital City complex needed to be built in a quick schedule, a design team was gathered from a span of 11

time zones Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

from

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

to Moscow. An obstacle for planning of the skyscraper was the absence of applicable local building codes since the current codes dated back to 1950 did not apply for tall buildings. As a result, codes of the complex were modeled off after British standards, which established high standards for fire safety, such as 4-hour structural fire resistance and the use of 30-minute fire-rated glass. According to the schedule,

NBBJ NBBJ is an American global architecture, planning and design firm with offices in Boston, Columbus, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Pune, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C.. NBBJ provides services in arch ...

and the

Arup Group Arup (officially Arup Group Limited) is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London which provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services across every aspect of the built environment ...

are to focus on completing the structural design while the architectural design is being worked on. After this is completed, the design team worked with the Moscow government to fulfill the building codes for the complex. Construction of the complex started in 2005. The office building which served as a

for the complex was completed in 2008. In July 2008, the Moscow Tower surpassed the

as the tallest building in Russia and Europe. In 2009, construction of the complex was completed. In 2012,

surpassed Moscow Tower as the tallest building in Europe, but only held that position for a few months as the Capital City complex's neighboring

Mercury City Tower Mercury City Tower ( rus, Меркурий Сити Тауэр, r=Merkuriy Siti Tauer) is a supertall skyscraper located on plot 14 in the Moscow International Business Center (MIBC), in Moscow, Russia. Occupying a total area of , the mixed- ...

surpassed The Shard's height.

Design

According to Yuri Starodubtsev of the Capital Group and Joey Myers and Larry Goetz of the

, the design complex of the Capital City complex was inspired after Vladimir Tatlin's "Corner Counter Relief" (1914). Tatlin's work in the early 20th century was to redesign the project in order to accommodate more space. One concept approached by Tatlin was a tightly-drawn interstitial shape through the orthogonal geometry of a typical room. The Capital City complex uses this concept by the offset rotation of the tower segments to create a dynamic departure from the square's stability. This rotational effect, achieved through a slight cantilever on only two façades of each vertical segment, does not compromise the regularity of the towers’ structure.

Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

is to be used for the foundation due to its abundance in the region. Despite this, construction of the complex was carried out in atypical conditions. The tower pile caps were each installed during continuous, 33-hour mid-winter pours in temperatures ranging from -32 to -34°C (-25 to -30°F), under a large heated tent to keep the concrete from freezing. Running five meters deep and measuring 6,500 cubic meters (230,000 cubic feet) and 6,000 cubic meters (212,000 cubic feet), the foundation utilized a relatively standard

rebar Rebar (short for reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or reinforcement steel, is a steel bar used as a tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid the concrete under tension. ...

cage and wooden form work. The design team collaborated with German curtain wall specialist Schüco to create a dynamic facade for the towers and podium building. The towers are enclosed in a unitized panel system with four-sided structural-silicone glazing. The aluminum panels compose a shifting super grid that resonates with the towers’ shifting blocks. The panels also shift in plan, some protruding outward while others are slightly inset to accommodate vertical

LED lighting An LED lamp or LED light bulb is an electric light that produces light using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). LED lamps are significantly more energy-efficient than equivalent incandescent lamps and can be significantly more efficient than mos ...

. The City of Capitals is to serve as a mixed-use complex, featuring apartments, office space,

retail Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

, restaurants,

fitness center A health club (also known as a fitness club, fitness center, health spa, and commonly referred to as a gym) is a place that houses exercise equipment for the purpose of physical exercise. In recent years, the number of fitness and health ser ...

, and a garden. The complex also features a six-level basement that includes more than 2,200 parking spaces, electrical equipment and enlarged fire compartments. Each tower is separated into several levels. For the Moscow Tower, the top four levels which served as residences are named from bottom to top: Beleveue, Sky, Star, and Galaxy. The same applies to St. Petersburg Tower, except it only has three levels rather than four. As a result, it does not have a level named Galaxy. Apartments cover floors 18-72 of Moscow Tower and floors 18-61 of the St. Petersburg Tower.

Construction gallery

File:Город столиц 2.jpg, 2005 File:Город столиц строится.jpg, 2006 File:Фото1227.jpg, November 2006 File:Huvudstaden 5 oktober 2007.jpg, 5 October 2007 File:Moscow, City of Capitals, 16.05.2008 (7).jpg, 16 June 2008

Awards

* In 2010, Moscow Tower was awarded by

Emporis Emporis GmbH was a real estate data mining company that was headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company collected data and photographs of buildings worldwide, which were published in an online database from 2000 to September 2022. On 12 Sept ...

the Emporis Skyscraper Award for aesthetic appearance and compatibility with the urban environment.

References

External links