Triumph for Swanke Hayden Connell Architects in Moscow

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- This year's completion of the 2.2 Million sf Eurasia Tower, designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (Swanke), represents the successful culmination of a decade-long immersion in the development of the "New Russia", and expands the firm's international architectural expertise to include high-rise, mixed-use design. This 72-story tower—the first mixed-use, steel tower in Russia—is located within the new, 30 Million sf, 148-acre Moscow International Business Center (MIBC) or "Moscow City".

The complex and the tower are based on futuristic development standards of a world class financial center and intermodal hub. Using the best of the 21st century's innovative technologies, the center intends to rival those of New York City and London and be one of the most desirable locations in Russia and Europe. It was recently designated the fourth tallest skyscraper in Europe by Emporis, the international provider of building data.

The Eurasia Tower is the second Swanke-designed building rated by Emporis. It also rated the Is Bankasi Towers Complex (the largest of its kind in Europe at 2.5 Million sf), among the top ten innovative and imposing designs of notable bank buildings around the world. The Is Bankasi design brought Swanke to the attention of Summa, a Turkish international contractor/developer working for Russian investors, and led to the Eurasia Tower commission in 2007.

Eurasia Tower is 1,013 feet (309 meters) high. Within it are 50 floors of Class "A" office space and 20floors of luxury residential apartments with their own gymnasium and pool on the 50th floor.  The tower sits on a retail and entertainment podium that includes boutiques, restaurants, bars, a 149-room hotel, and parking.

As one of the more refined towers in the MIBC complex and the third tallest, the architectural skin of the building reinforces the purity of the tower volume over the complexity of the program within. The unitized curtain wall allows the transition from the office floors of fixed windows to operable windows on the residential floors. The overall architectural form is developed as a pure glass, curving, curtain wall tower with its broad faces versus its tripartite ends sitting on a multi-volume podium. 

The success of Eurasia Tower led directly to Swanke's re-commission last year to design a tower complex, Project Silver, in Moscow. It will be a 1,437-unit, upmarket, residential complex with three 52-story towers, on a two-story, above-grade, mixed-use podium of residential amenities, office, retail, and parking. Much attention is being given to seamlessly integrate this 3.2 Million sf complex into the surrounding neighborhood adjacent to a public park.

Swanke is the continuation of an architectural practice founded in 1906 (Walker & Gillette). Headquartered in New York, Swanke provides integrated design services in five core areas of practice—architecture, master planning, interior design, workplace consulting, and historic preservation—within the key market sectors of corporate/commercial, healthcare and health sciences, residential, government and institutional, and education.

SOURCE Swanke Hayden Connell Architects