Moscow

In the minds of many, the tower is a distant and unattainable form—an architectural presence that rarely belongs to the people of the city. Rather than fostering coexistence, it often evokes a sense of exclusion and quiet longing.

This project, a 300,000-square-meter mixed-use development located in an industrial district of Moscow, was conceived as a response to that very notion. The central idea was to suspend and set the massive residential volume above the city in a way that acknowledges and engages with its industrial surroundings—both through materiality and geometric language drawn from the site’s character.

Although the form appears to float above the urban fabric, the design seeks to blur the conventional boundaries between public, commercial, cultural, and residential spaces. In contrast to the typical vertical towers that are often detached from the city below, this project aims to create a layered and continuous spatial experience—from the ground plane to the elevated mass of living spaces.

The transparent, crystalline volumes—at times lifting away from the ground, and at others reconnecting with it—play deliberately with ideas of access, belonging, and participation. More than simply a place to live, the project poses a larger architectural question: How can we reimagine the relationship between people and the monumental forms that dominate our urban landscapes?