Crystal Island: Foster + Partners

One of the most ambitious projects in the world

One of the most ambitious projects in the world, Crystal Island has received preliminary planning permission. It will be built in Moscow included within a mega-structure covering an area of ​​2.5 million square meters. The scale of the project is unprecedented, but at 450 meters it will also be one of the tallest structures in the world.

Foster's project presented in Moscow by the public architecture council was conceived as a city within a city, full of different uses, including museums, theaters and cinemas.
Crystal Island is a new and extremely advanced project, located on the Nagatino Peninsula, on the Moskva River, only 7.5 km from the Kremlin, it will offer panoramic views over the entire Russian capital.

Crystal Island will have a series of cultural and exhibition buildings, there will be cinemas and a hotel with 3000 rooms, 900 apartments, as well as offices and shops, an international school for 500 students is also planned. Designed to maintain dynamic and lively economic and social activities throughout the day, the residents will live and work within a densely designed area where distances will still be on a human scale. The intervention is also a strong example for the balance in which energy will be consumed, with individual components that will use energy at different times, helping to strengthen the importance of the economic and social activity of the area.

The building, moving in a spiral shape, emerges majestically from the urban profile of Moscow. At the base the geometry of a diagonal grid extended to the whole new surrounding park, will offer a series of activities throughout the year, and ski slopes and skating in winter.
The internal steel structure will be covered with large triangular cornices inclined to form an external glass skin and the formation of terraces with a series of winter gardens, which with their microclimate will form a second layer of protection for the internal spaces, from the summer climate and the strong winter cold.

The glazing of the internal vertical facades will have appropriate screening to ensure the privacy of the individual apartments. The total expenditure will be 2.5 billion euros.