Currently, the airstrip is being dismantled and developed with office buildings on either side of the shopping center. However, its central portion remains untouched and might even be preserved. In the future, the public square initially planned for this site could shift southward, transforming into a public space between three clusters of office buildings and the park.
A decade ago, a new building for the National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) was planned for the triangular site in front of Aviapark, but construction never began. Now, ADM Architects, led by Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, has proposed the AIR business center for the site. The project consists of three towers of varying heights: the tallest, 35 stories high, stands in the center; to the west, a 22-story tower; and to the east, closer to the metro, a smaller 15-story building.
These towers will sit atop a two-level underground parking garage, but there is no podium – allowing free movement around the towers from all sides, including direct access to and from the shopping mall.
Glass-façade towers are the optimal format for office buildings, as they provide the maximum amount of natural light around the core – this is a well-known principle.
However, the project’s main “feature” is not its ergonomic layouts or its glass facades with rounded, molded corners – by now almost a standard convention – but the fact that all three towers spiral around their axes, contributing to the sculptural form that has become increasingly popular in Moscow.
Two towers rotate clockwise, following the sun’s path, while the leftmost one turns counterclockwise. This creates a kind of visual representation of “air currents” – in this case, ascending ones – which aligns well with the name of the office complex, AIR. One might even see a reference to the propellers of the airplanes that once flew here, as well as a dialogue with the nearby Megasport Arena designed by Dmitry Bush and Andrey Bokov.
The sculptural quality is evident in the sleek, reflective contours and the smooth glass “ridge” spiraling upward into the sky. The towers “dance”, engaging in a visual dialogue – or, at the very least, forming a dynamic ensemble. Indeed, this is an ensemble in the truest sense, inherently in motion. They can also be compared to sprouting plants – or, more intriguingly, to a mechanical system that either screws into the ground or, conversely, unscrews itself from it – variations on the concept of the “World Tree”.
Yet, the theme of architecture as a machine is not new, and “frozen mechanisms” can take many different forms.
What sets the AIR towers apart is their contemporary take on a futuristic design. But what defines modern futurism? It does not expose its internal mechanics. Rather, like UFOs or, as Andrey Romanov aptly noted, like an iPhone, it presents a sleek, self-contained form, yet conveys an undeniable sense of latent energy within.
As with ADM’s Twist business center, the defining force here is the energy of rotation. The architectural idea was first explored in Twist, but the two complexes are different from each other. With AIR, the architects refined the concept, elevating it to a new level of precision.
First, in the AIR business center, the outer walls of the service cores on each floor are rotated to align with the glass facades, maximizing the amount of well-lit, usable space inside. The elevator core, of course, remains fixed, but the staircases shift their position, turning in sync with the towers’ structure. They fit neatly into the edges of the central rectangular core – much like, as Andrey Romanov poetically put it, “the staircases in Hogwarts”.
Examining the floor plans, it’s fascinating to observe the framing of the central elevator pattern. The elevators themselves are arranged meridionally – running north to south – in the two larger towers, the western and central ones. In the smaller eastern tower, which features an open-plan layout, they are slightly angled toward the east. As a result, on the first floor, the corridor running through the core is perfectly aligned with the main entrance. However, as we move up through the twisting floors, the lines of the internal corridor and the external core walls shift at different angles relative to each other. It’s as if, on each level, a “mat” of usable spaces is placed over the elevator core, precisely framing the technical “contents” within.
The effect of this framing in the plans is, of course, secondary to the spiraling massing of the towers; here, form takes precedence. Yet, there is something captivating about this graphic interplay – on the edge between a minimalistic yet striking technique and a deliberate functional necessity.
Secondly, the architects developed a special structural node that allows the cantilevered sections to extend without heat loss. It also ensures that the floor slabs are almost invisible from the outside, making each level appear as a continuous band of glass.
Additionally, although modular prefabrication was ultimately not used for the building components, and a mullion-and-transom system was chosen instead, the architects optimized the façade design by developing a single type of glazing unit that could be used across all floors without any significant modification. As Andrey Romanov notes, working with glazing is no simple task: “It’s a craft of its own. A slight deviation – and everything falls apart”.
A near-perfect approach to the challenge: rational and architectural.
All our workspaces have a proper rectangular shape: the outer contour is always parallel to the core. We have preserved the efficiency of our office layouts. While the buildings acquire an expressive, seemingly free-flowing spiral form, all the floors are geometrically identical.
To design the one and only, yet crucial, structural node in this project, we worked extensively with façade specialists. We refined, tested, and searched for the most effective solutions, spending two months on a single detail. But once that was resolved, everything else became simple. Typically, our buildings require the development of dozens of structural nodes, but here, just one was enough – though it had to be perfect. We needed to achieve “absolute glassness” while ensuring it wouldn’t freeze, leak, or fail, and that it remained both reliable and maintainable. There are no additional clamping strips – just glass extending seamlessly up and down. Inside, the glazing conceals either the floor slab or the ceiling. The system secures the glass unit on three sides. I think it resulted in an elegant detail. And although there’s a central air conditioning system, we also included windows that can be opened – people in offices do like to air out the space sometimes.
Once we finalized this node, we realized that, essentially, nothing else needed to be done–or, rather, everything else became relatively simple and straightforward.
To design the one and only, yet crucial, structural node in this project, we worked extensively with façade specialists. We refined, tested, and searched for the most effective solutions, spending two months on a single detail. But once that was resolved, everything else became simple. Typically, our buildings require the development of dozens of structural nodes, but here, just one was enough – though it had to be perfect. We needed to achieve “absolute glassness” while ensuring it wouldn’t freeze, leak, or fail, and that it remained both reliable and maintainable. There are no additional clamping strips – just glass extending seamlessly up and down. Inside, the glazing conceals either the floor slab or the ceiling. The system secures the glass unit on three sides. I think it resulted in an elegant detail. And although there’s a central air conditioning system, we also included windows that can be opened – people in offices do like to air out the space sometimes.
Once we finalized this node, we realized that, essentially, nothing else needed to be done–or, rather, everything else became relatively simple and straightforward.
The glass is neutral, clear, with no tint – just pure “glassness”. Looking at the renderings, you might think the entire structure is cast from glass, or perhaps even mercury. Only the smooth, almost leisurely rotation of the floor plates breaks the continuity, along with the contours of the structural glazing. The wide spacing of these elements forms a subtle visual “pleating” – something like a basket, highly technological yet also resembling a fine liner drawing, enclosing a mass of glass. This effect is reinforced by the parapets on the upper floors, which conceal technical exits and shield the rooftop terraces – yes, they are accessible to the public – from the wind.
Another challenge was positioning the columns inside the building. Typically, columns are simply vertical, but in this particular instance, the floors twist! “It’s not easy to explain in a few words” says Andrey Romanov “The columns were meticulously calculated – our engineers had a tremendous amount of work to do. They are tilted relative to the façade, with structural capitals in some areas to distribute the load. If the columns followed the spiral, the building would collapse, just as a spring compresses when you press on it. Figuratively speaking, we pierced the three-dimensional spiral with inclined straight spokes”. Looking back at the floor plans, you notice that the columns are not arranged in a regular pattern – this structural nuance is what keeps the spiral movement contained “inside” the buildings.
To me, this explanation is akin to turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction of a skid – a beautifully logical way of achieving balance, far from standard for office buildings.
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There is indeed only one design technique here to be seen: each floor rotates by approximately one and a half degrees – a very slight turn, which, when compounded, creates a sculptural form, like a 3D puzzle. There’s also something reminiscent of biology lessons, where we learn how a plant generates complex, sometimes almost unfathomable shapes through the fractal repetition of similar forms. Labor-intensive yet simple. Simple yet labor-intensive. The key is that true professional skill – both architectural and engineering – was applied here.
The project emerged at the intersection of two strict requirements: the efficiency of office spaces inside and the fluidity of form outside. This is precisely the fine line along which contemporary Moscow architects and engineers conduct their creative explorations.
