Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
RMJM was appointed to design the Lakhta Center, formerly known as the Gazprom Group Headquarters and Business Centre, on a 17-hectare brownfield site at Lakhta, St Petersburg. The 330,000 m² complex includes commercial office space as well as retail, leisure and residential developments.
The Lakhta Center occupies a unique position on St Petersburg’s landscape, both for its striking ‘barbed’ design and sleek curved façade. Set 12 km from the city centre on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the Headquarters’ distance from the historic city centre allows it to act as an architectural centrepiece to the Central Business District. The Tower’s organic ‘spire’ shape symbolises the power of water, while the special glass façade allows the building to change colour depending on the position of the sun, giving the impression of a ‘living object’.
The tower design is the natural evolution of the RMJM concept previously proposed for the Okhta site, a design inspired entirely by the city of St Petersburg with its baroque architecture and water filled canals, with the changing form of water to ice, from soft organic free-form to angular crystalline geometry.
The building’s design incorporates several innovative efficiency features, including an ‘intelligent’ glass façade that provides both natural ventilation and thermal insulation and specially designed micro-climate air conditioning. The design includes the use of the largest volume of glass ever used on a high-rise building. The high-rise tower incorporates 86 aboveground and 3 underground floors, making it one of the tallest in Russia upon completion. The foundation is so large the foundation will require the longest continuous pouring of concrete ever attempted, or around 20,000 cubic metres.