Tuesday, 31 July 2018

A Brief Look At Europe's Tallest Building,

with a twist,


 it is the Lakhta Centre, situated nine miles from the centre of St Petersburg on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the 400,000 square metres of the Lakhta Centre complex also includes a 24-metre-tall entrance archway, a separate boomerang-shaped multi-storey building, and a covered car park, two thirds of the office space at the Lakhta Centre will be occupied by Gazprom's new headquarters, the company is the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe and Turkey, the building will employe 8,000 workers on the site, a third of the complex will be given over to public spaces, including a science and education centre, a spherical planetarium, a concert hall, amphitheatre and several squares, 

 British architect Tony Kettle designed the tower during his tenure at RMJM, before handing the project over to Russian architects Gorproject to complete, tapering to a point, the spire has a 90 degree twist from foundation to tip, making it the most extreme twist on a tower after the Shanghai Tower's 120 degree twist,

piles were driven 82 metres deep into the city's soft ground in order to anchor the supertall tower and provide stable foundations, wind speeds at an elevation of 400 metres in St Petersburg can reach 87 miles per an hour, necessitating a specialised structural system to resist the strong winds, its smooth glass facade is formed of 16,500 pieces of curved glass, with a system of automatic shutters and valves to make it energy efficient, energy recuperating elevators, a vacuum waste disposal system and cold accumulators are some of the other technologies employed by the tower to make it more sustainable, a publicly accessible observation deck will be located at the 360-metre point, a planned restaurant will be Europe's highest panoramic restaurant, photographs by Viktor Sukharukov and Slava Korolev, would we like to go there? Well yes for the view and no for the fear of heights!


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