Reconstruction of the hotel "Rossiya", Moscow

Architects: Mikhail Krymov, Timur Bashkaev

Project Development: 2005

 

-Hotel rating                                                                      *****,****,***
-Hotel type                                                                        tourist, business
-Number of rooms                                                              1900                           
-Number of parking spaces                                                  1500 
2 concert halls with auxiliary facilities 
Shops, restaurants, clubs, etc.

 

The international experience of working in a historic environment shows that creating a pseudo-historic development is not always the best practical decision, especially in the districts with a large number of architectural monuments. The modern urban fabric of a city’s historic center is always eclectic. This means that it is imperative to protect the surviving architectural legacy. What is lost cannot be replaced by the remakes. However, it is possible to design in a historic environment, fully utilizing edgy style solutions and modern materials. The historic environment, meanwhile, provides severe restrictions when it comes to maintaining important viewpoints and the scale suitable for the area under construction.

The network of streets and side-streets, which for centuries have been forming the Moscow look, retains a very important historic value. Meanwhile, for many Muscovites the Russia Hotel (under deconstruction) remains a spatial visualization of this particular location. Thus, in this project we tried to unite the historic parcelation of this site (by means of establishing a network of streets below the plaza level) with the total space of the hotel. In addition, we tried to make sure that this space remained as transparent as possible and would not obstruct the views of the Kremlin, the Cathedral of St.Basil the Blessed and other important buildings.

The solution for the hotel space is determined by the contrast between the existing monolithic space and the new, dispersed air-filled structure, which “hovers” over the plaza and the network of pedestrian walkways and is vertically divided into the blocks of the size of a two-storey building.
The number of stories increases towards the north-east of the parcel, that is, from the embankment into the area of the heightening of the exterior ground level. Thus, with its maximum number of stories, seventeen, the complex does not destroy the scale of the surrounding development. The core of the complex is formed by a drop-shaped space, which contains two halls: one classical and one transformable, the latter being in particular demand in a modern city. Simultaneous use of both halls is possible.

The access to remote parts of the hotel is provided through the system of travelators heading towards the main lobby of the hotel. The hotel space is formed with the horizontal “tubes”, which contain 2 floors with rooms on both sides.

Constructive solutions:

The Russia Hotel housing and entertainment complex consists of three functional elements: the hotel, the garage, and the egg-shaped space of the concert halls.

The hotel block is a spatial construction formed by 2-storey-high girders. Their geometric rigidity is secured by the diaphragms placed at every 48 meters. Spatial stability and rigidity is provided by the stairway and elevator halls made of monolithic reinforced concrete and by the bundles of inclined columns rigidly incorporated into the foundation plate. The facade is formed by the bent perforated Alucobond plates with bent metal ribs.

The enclosing structure is made of selective glass with metal binders joined through thermal liners. 
The cover over the plaza is a structural girder filled with polycarbonate.