About $12 billion will be invested in the Moscow City MMDC by 2018.

The center of Moscow's skyscrapers is the Moscow City Shopping Center. So far, its tallest tower is the 339—meter Mercury City Tower, which architects and developers call the Golden Tooth. A new record holder has been announced in the area of skyscrapers. The multifunctional center planned for completion in 2018 on site No. 1 should rise to 405 m. The 612-meter Rossiya tower, declared before the crisis (investor — Shalva Chigirinsky) It remained a paper project of Sir Norman Foster — there were no funds for its implementation. The average height of the business district is 220-250 m.

The Celestial economy

How much a skyscraper will cost a developer depends primarily on which country he is building it in: whether it is a seismic zone or not, how difficult the soils and weather conditions are, and whether the city authorities support high-rise construction, says Raymond Fadel, regional director of AECOM, Russia. Felino Palafox, chief architect of Palafox Associates, who worked in the UAE, said that, for example, in Dubai, 20% of the costs of a skyscraper investor are for the purchase of land and 80% for the actual construction. According to architect Alejandro Stochetti (who participated in the design of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in the UAE), "high-rise buildings can transform space, and the development of the territory around them increases the ability of cities to attract talent and capital.": "In the Middle East, we worked with developers who built up huge tracts of territory. For them, skyscrapers were the core and the greatest value of the project, as such buildings increased the value of the land around them."

"Skyscrapers have a fairly long payback period," says Mikhail Yakubov, head of consulting for development projects at JLL. — The cost of designing and building any skyscraper is always a priori higher than a standard building, after 16-17 floors it starts to grow." An investor engaged in high-rise construction, the consultant believes, should set himself up for a long-term return on investment. The payback period depends on the functionality of the high-rise, Yakubov describes: the money invested in hotels returns longer than invested in offices. On average, a traditional business center pays off in 6-8 years, office skyscrapers — from 10 years or more. Plus, the profitability of the project is affected by the competitive environment: at the same time, a large amount of space is being brought to the market, which are being rented out more slowly.

If a megacity is interested in growing upwards, this is reflected in various administrative preferences for developers, ranging from the allocation of land and connection to networks and ending with assistance in approving the project. The idea of the aforementioned MIBC "Moscow City" appeared in the early 1990s of the last century at the metropolitan city hall. As the former deputy mayor of Moscow, Iosif Ordzhonikidze, told Vedomosti in an interview, the city invested its own funds, and also came up with various schemes to attract investments, the minimum amount of which "for the dwarfest object" at that time was $ 150 million. Now the MMDC, the completion date of which has been postponed again — this time until 2018, is estimated at $12 billion, most of it is investor funds. "At one time, the project was simply called the ambitions of the city leadership, and [the bridge] Bagration (the first object of the MMDC, commissioned in 1997 — Vedomosti) was called a "bridge to nowhere," Ordzhonikidze admitted. 60 hectares were allocated for building in the west of Moscow, they were divided into 20 plots. Initially, it was supposed to build 2.5 million square meters here. The project then grew to 4.15 million square meters. m. At the beginning of November 2014, 11 facilities (total area — about 1.9 million square meters), including nine high-rise towers, were commissioned. All except the steel Eurasia are concrete.

Load at height

When the Moscow City project began, B-30 grade concrete was used in the construction, the Empire business complex (commissioned in 2011, height — 239 m), for example, was already being built from B-60 (2 times stronger), the new IFC (228 m high) is currently being designed on Site 20 is planned to be made from B-100, says Nikolay Chebotarenko, Director of the Technical Customer Department of JSC City. The stronger the concrete, the thinner the load-bearing structures and, therefore, the greater the yield of useful areas, which can ultimately benefit the investor. Provided, of course, that he manages to turn them in and sell them. So far, the number of vacant spaces in the MMDC is the largest in the office market of the capital: according to CBRE, at the end of the third quarter it was 34%. If the Oko business center (115,000 square meters) is put into operation by the end of the year, the number of available offices will exceed 40%, predicts Claudia Chistova, head of Office Market Research at CBRE. The developer, Capital Group, is nevertheless optimistic about the prospects of filling offices in Moscow City. "Common areas will occupy only 10% in Oko, which is rare for a business district where the normal loss rate is 12%, and effective layouts will allow companies to rent up to 20% less space, thus saving on rent," says Maria Sergienko, director of the company's commercial real estate department.

Common areas are one of the main eaters of high—rise areas. Meters go under load-bearing structures, risers for utilities, elevator shafts. "There are so many pipelines in the Empire alone that they can encircle the Third Transport Ring 4 times," says Alexander Naumov, a leading engineer for industrial safety and labor protection at City Management Company. — There are more than 7000 heating devices." A significant part of the skyscraper is given over to technical and outrigger (colloquially — connecting) floors — as a rule, this is every 20th floor of the building. The designers did not choose this place by chance. The technologically optimal height for efficient operation of heating / water supply / ventilation systems is just at the level of about the 20th floor, explains Chebotarenko. At a height, water and heat are "thrown" by the cascade principle, in the "Empire", for example, starting from the 22nd floor, and then every tenth, adds Naumov. Otherwise, the equipment would have to be made too bulky and it would consume a lot of electricity. Although, he notes, the capacity of the pumps installed in only one "Empire" is such that they can "draw the entire Moskva River into themselves."

The ideal shape of a skyscraper from the point of view of designers and builders is a streamlined cylinder or rectangle. But constructive and engineering solutions are driven by architectural thought. "The unusual shape of the building complicates calculations," admits Chebotarenko. However, no matter how avant-garde the project may be, it may become outdated.

At this year's Venice Biennale, an interesting solution for retired skyscrapers was proposed by designers from the architectural bureau Laboratory for Visionary Architecture. They created a special shell called Tower Skin: it is a grid consisting of metal cells covered with a composite fabric. The new "skin" is screwed to the facade, literally "wrapping" it like a candy wrapper. Photovoltaic cells "collect" daylight, the "fabric" captures rainwater to ensure the vital activity of the building. At night, the shell becomes a glowing multimedia screen. Thus, with minimal costs (the building does not need to be demolished or reconstructed), maximum renovation of the existing structure is achieved. A similar innovative solution is expected to be used in Sydney for the renovation of the University of Technology. In Moscow, the use of foreign technologies, as well as the invitation of renowned foreign architects, developers who build high-rise buildings, in the old-fashioned way are considered as a marketing ploy.

A source: vedomosti.ru