Moscow, Russia
Located close to the Moscow metro station Ulitsa 1905 Goda, Zemelnyi Office Building by UNK Project is a building with a total area of 39,000 square meters that stands on a 3-story stylobate, created to resemble a private house within the city line.
For its architectural details and features, the Zemelnyi Office Building has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The building is surrounded by industrial architecture dating back to the last century, while three kilometers away there is the Moscow City business district, with the Zemelny becoming a “green” alternative to it.
The prototype of this structure is based on the hyperboloid creations by the engineer Shukhov, the author of the Shukhov Radio Tower in Moscow.
The new office building will become an ideal place for those valuing not only the functionality of a working space but also its harmony with the surrounding nature.
Its architecture features plenty of glass shaped by a snow-white metal outline.
The balconies have Virginia creeper vines planted, which changes the appearance of the tower depending on the season: bright green leaves in summer, red in autumn, and falling off in winter.
The external mesh-shaped envelope has an uneven rhythm, creating the effect of an “artificial perspective.”
It visually elongates the building making it more elegant. The main volume of the building has the shape of an isosceles triangle, with the lift halls and fire escape stairs located in its core. Each floor is split into six independent blocks.
The fenced territory enjoys a developed recreation area.
The underground level accommodates a parking lot with 370 parking spaces and is equipped with charging units for electric cars.
The original composition of the triangle plan helps to achieve a very high building area usage factor.
A challenging task during the construction was to erect a building along the entire construction site allocated for the office building.
To solve it, the project designers offered the method of top-down underground construction, in which underground levels grow not from down-top, but the other way round, from the surface down.
The office building is located on the three-level stylobate, which accommodates the infrastructure, halls for holding various events, a café, and shops, which can all be used by the offices’ tenants as well as by local residents.
Thanks to its vertical planting, the building returns a green area to the city dwellers, and with the infrastructure available to all, the entire building becomes a new point of attraction in the district.
Project: Zemelnyi Office Building
Architects: UNK Project
Principal Architect: Yuliy Borisov
Design Team: Danilo Vukosavlevich, Mikhail Ivanchenko, Olga Reunova, Oleg Kokin, and Vladimir Rogozhin
Client: Action Development
Photographers: Dmitry Chebanenko
