Genesis of Regularity

What will happen if composition and ideas that constitute the basis of the structure of the formal park of the XVIII century are used for designing a low-rise suburban area? The Tsarskoye Selo interpretation of the suburbia theme – respectful, yet at the same time slightly ironic – can be examined at the example of the plan of a new city block in the town of Pushkin.

Written by:
Elena Petukhova
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

07 November 2017

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Keeping the identity

The cities keep on growing and encroaching on their suburbs. In those of them, where the real estate enjoys steady demand, active expansion is on the rise. Dozens of small, yet by no means trivial, towns with a history and a character of their own are absorbed by a wave of standard prefabricated commercial housing construction. These towns keep disappearing and turning into new residential areas, their once-resonant names becoming part of the brand names of new housing complexes – elite and standard ones alike.

For Studio 44, a company that is known for its formidable experience in working with historical heritage sites, as well as for approaching the tasks of introducing new buildings and reconstructing old ones with particular care and responsibility, the commission to develop a planning project of a large residential area at the entrance to the town of Pushkin gave the company an opportunity for demonstrating alternative approaches to commercial and residential construction on the territory of a city with a prominent architectural and town-planning character. The architects at once defined for themselves the main vector of their creative search – applying the characteristic features of the city for creating new construction that would harmoniously complement the existing buildings.

zooming — Residential area in Pushkin. Housing complex 4 © Studio 44

Nikita Yavein phrased the original task in the following way: “To research the planning, housing and park structure that defines Tsarskoye Selo and its genesis. And then to use the results of this research to create modern architecture based on the architectural tradition of the city, in which it will appear. Not the artificial kind, but the kind of architecture that continues the city’s tradition, at the same time developing and transforming it with regard to the requirements of the modern world”.

Pushkin – Tsarskoye Selo

The town of Pushkin is a veritable treasure. It is one of those towns that, very much like a beautiful necklace, appeared around Saint Petersburg springing from the Czar’s palaces and park ensembles. So, it comes as no surprise that UNESCO put this town on its list of “Historic Center of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.” The city was founded in 1710, and until 1918 it bore the name of “Tsarskoye Selo” (“Czar’s Village”). Currently, the people of Saint Petersburg use both names, the former when they speak about its monuments and historical legacy, the latter when it is about today’s issues. The town’s main cultural heritage site is the “Tsarskoye Selo” museum, a monument of town-planning art, and a palace-and-park ensemble of the XVIII – XIX centuries. The museum complex includes the Ekaterininsky Park with the Bolshoi Ekaterininsky Palace (founded in 1717), the Aleksandrovsky Palace (1792–1796), a park bearing the same name, and other buildings as well.

Bosket and pavilion system

One of the features of the planning structure of Tsarskoye Selo is the fact that its residential part utilizes the same planning module as its park part: the center of the town is dissected into orthogonal blocks whose measurements (130–180 meters) repeat the large parterres, curtain walls, and boskets of the Ekaterininsky and Aleksandrovsky parks.

Studio 44 is quite familiar with the principles of regular planning and the opportunities that it presents in terms of being adapted to the tasks of today. Using the regular composition, the company designed and built, back in the 2000’s, the hotel complex “Novy Petergof”. In 2007, while they were doing the contest project of reconstructing the complex of “Apraksin Dvor” in Saint Petersburg (built back in its days on the former territory of a regular park), the architects carefully preserved and accentuated its linear structure. In addition, since 2010, Studio 44 has been doing the project of reconstructing and turning into a museum the Aleksandrovsky Palace in Pushkin.

Thus, it came as no surprise that with such formidable knowledge of the subject and a clear idea of the continuity of Tsarskoye Selo’s historical legacy and Pushkin’s new housing construction, Studio 44 chose, as the prototype and the source of inspiration for the planning project of the new residential area, the structure and the format of a formal park, with all its peculiarities and even architectural vagaries.

The latter are represented by the “style-ish” buildings that are characteristic of Pushkin – park pavilions and their clusters, stylized as exotic ones: Chinese, Egyptian, Turkish, neo-Gothic, a-la-Russ, and so on. The mistress of the Major Palace, Catherine the Great, would call this kind of architecture “educational” because it was meant not only to entertain the guests but also enlighten them in terms of culture and ethnography. In the Nikita Yavein project, this “educational” architecture was used as a source of form making for the new residential buildings. Of course, all of these sources were creatively revised in the recognizable manner of Studio 44.

Regular diversity

The territory allocated for the construction of the new residential area, more than 100 hectares, is situated at the entrance to the town of Pushkin. The trapeze-shaped land plot borders on the Peterburgskoe Highway in the east, the Kuzminskoe Highway in the south, and to the Kuzminka Creek in the north. Running alongside the riverbed, there is yet another land plot meant for the second stage of construction.

The plans of the first stage of construction have a clear-cut structure with a basic span of streets and driveways of 180x180 meters and a whole collection of variations based on this module, which carefully disguise their relationship with it.

The center of the first stage is occupied by four city blocks. With a charming sincerity, these blocks take on the role of the buildings that pay homage to the parterre of the Aleksandrovsky Park. The fixed dimensions of the city blocks allow for placing yet another building in the middle of the block. This adds some difficulty to the task of the designer but at the same time this gives the composition a certain likeness to a landscape, in which curtain walls are turned into houses, while lawns and flowerbeds – into yards and playgrounds. According to Nikita Yavein, “from the multilayered pattern of the bosket, a housing structure is made. The scale, the character, and the very pattern of the new housing construction are so much at one with their context that, when one looks at the plan of this residential area superimposed on the aerial photos, it looks practically the same as the historical part of the city and its parks”.

The principle of planning the central apartments is a single one – a perimeter with breaks plus a central block with a small inner yard. The easily read likeness to military fortifications is not accidental. This is a paraphrase of “poteshny” or “toy” fortresses or towns with round or square towers on the corners. For the sake of achieving a likeness to boskets, the architects indulged in the luxury of using the plans of the buildings with corners slashed at 45 degrees and diagonal sidefills of the yards – the beauty of the composition and the purity of the idea comes at a price.

These four “model” boskets are surrounded by their variations. In some instances, the module is reduced by half, forming a corner composition of four diagonally dissected houses, in some instances, it is the other way around – the module grows half again as big turning into a semblance of Kvarnegi’s ideal quarter, with a square in the middle, surrounded by a labyrinth of L and T-shaped buildings.

On the opposite side of the land site, along the slanted sure of the trapeze, there is a ledge-like row of English-style block-based cottages.

The square module is also applied to designing the public buildings; standing along the northern border of the area, there is a school, a few kindergartens, a medical center, a fitness center, and a cultural center; next to the south border, there is a marketplace.

Their volumetric solution can be traced back to yet another decorative motif which was popular in the XVIII century – the Egyptian theme, which, of course, came in the form of the most obvious image of a pyramid. As coverage, the architects use roofs with four sloping surfaces and volumetric structures with most diverse pyramidal elements.

Next to the boskets, the architects have placed yet another unusual “arch object” – a multi section residential building that forms a ring. In this specific instance, prototypes are hard to trace. It could be the legendary “bottle” from Saint Petersburg’s “New Holland” or some amusement park figures. In any case, this would hardly be the Moscow’s famous “ring” houses built for the 1980 Olympics. Against the overall background of the master plan, this prominently “non-square” thing looks pretty provocative – as if the designers initially announced the rules of the game, and then broke them deliberately and with great pleasure – but only once. The main construction rules have been defined and they stay the same.

Norms and rules

The territory planning project makes clear provisions for the structure and main functional zones of the new residential area, layout of the driveways, locations, the measurements of the blocks, and their specific configuration, referring us back to the “amusement” and “educational” prototypes, as well as other parameters, which in the future will define the quality of the environment, and will be observed by the designers who will develop individual blocks. Under the standard construction density, the height of the buildings is strictly limited. The main bulk of the housing construction, which occupies 32% of the territory, is formed by four-story houses with elevators (plus a mansard floor) with pitched roofs. The height of the buildings is 18 meters.

Under the buildings and some of the yards, there is a single-level underground parking garage, which provides a sufficient number of car stalls that slightly exceeds the number of the apartments. The large ceiling height – about three meters – allows small trucks to drive in for unloading, thus freeing the yards from the unloading operations and the long presence of the truck transport.

The architecture is only roughcast, which leaves the future designers a lot of space for creative work, both in terms of stylizations, and in the choice of decoration materials. Nikita Yavein comments on this point in the following way: “The image of each block is defined individually. The decoration can be based on most diverse materials, the important thing being that they correspond to the chosen style. We would like to see here a stone-white town in the Russian style, a red-brick English city block, a reserved northern Scandinavian / Saint Petersburg Art Nouveau, multicolored Mediterranean houses, and gray-and-white constructivism. In our planning project we set the general guidelines, the parameters, and the character of the construction, as well as a range of options for their realization. The specific architectural solutions will be defined by the designers of individual buildings and complexes which will constitute this residential area”.

Parks and recreation zones

In the north of the territory, along the bank of the Kuzminka River, and in the east, along the Peterburgskoe Highway, the architects placed green recreation zones. And, although their design significantly differs from one zone to another, demonstrating different landscaping traditions, they form a single recreational system with bicycle and walking trails, recreation areas, and sports fields. The river part is designed in a landscape style, or, rather, in its modern interpretation, which implies preserving the picturesque clusters of trees and lawns gradually bleeding into the beach zone. Along the highway, runs a grand esplanade two hundred meters wide, at the beginning of which, i.e. at the entrance to the town of Pushkin from the side of Saint Petersburg, there will be built a church. For the time being, the planning of this zone is done by the architects of Studio 44 in full accordance with the rules of a formal parterre park, with boskets and geometric tracing of the trails, like a paraphrase of the historical prototypes situated nearby. In the future, after this territory is transferred to the property of the municipality, the question of planning and decorating the park running along the highway will be considered by the city council.

“Light-minded” manifesto

Analyzing the project of planning the residential area in the town of Pushkin, one cannot rid of a feeling that this is an academic research or perhaps an experimental concept in the spirit of an “ideal town”. The geometry laid as the basis of the construction looks too correct and thought-out too well, and the houses installed in it are too fancy. One cannot help but feel some sort of architectural irony in all of this, which is inevitable when a modern master who is quite at home with historical samples, and at the same time has a recognizable professional lexicon of his own, creates a paraphrase project, or, if you will, stylization to the architectural monuments of the days past.

One cannot help wondering just how relevant and sustainable this system created by the architects is. What was good and relevant in the plans of formal parks in the XVIII century – will these techniques help answer the demands of the modern housing market?

In any other case answering these questions would have been difficult – but not with Studio 44. This team has a tremendous experience of working with historical legacy, filling the forms of the past with new energy and functions, and breathing new life into them.

When asked about the irony and idealism of this project, Nikita Yavein said: “Tsarskoye Selo is basically a getaway place. And I think that this place requires such slightly ironic and literary approach. It presents a whole range of solutions which we deliberately endowed with some fairy tale quality, and some “light-mindedness” in the best meaning of this word. The very local environment dictates the project solutions that take into account the history and the legends of this place. The whole planning project is full of such allusions and direct associations. And in this sense, the project of this residential area in the town of Pushkin can be perceived as our manifesto showing the ideology and methodology of our design. It in a pure unalloyed form, it shows the connection between the prototype, the source of inspiration and the original project that we created”.

07 November 2017

Headlines now

Overview

On the Dynastic Trail

The houses and townhouses of the “Tsarskaya Tropа” (“Czar’s Trail”) complex are being built in the village of Gaspra in Crimea – to the west and east of the palaces of the former grand-ducal residence “Ai-Todor”. One of the main challenges for the architects at KPLN, who developed the project, was to respond appropriately to this significant neighboring heritage. How this influenced the massing, the façades, and the way the authors work with the terrain is explored in our article.

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A New Path

The main feature of the Yar Park project, designed by Sergey Skuratov for Kazan, is that it is organized along the “spine” of a multifunctional mall with an impressive multi-height atrium space in its middle. The entire site, both on the city side and the Kazanka River embankment, is open to the public. The complex is intended not to become “yet another fenced enclave” but, as urban planners say, a “polycenter” – a new point of attraction for the whole of Kazan, especially its northern part, made up of residential districts that until now have lacked such a vibrant public space. It represents a new urban planning approach to a high-density mixed-use development situated in the city center – in a sense, an “anti-quarter”. Even Moscow, one might say, doesn’t yet have anything quite like it. Well, lucky Kazan!

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Beneath the Azure Sky

A depository designed by Studio 44 will soon be built in Kenozersky National Park to preserve and display the so-called “heavens” – ceiling structures characteristic of wooden churches in the Russian North, painted with biblical scenes. For each of these “heavens”, the architects created a volume corresponding in scale and dimensions to the original church interior. The result is a honeycomb-like composition, with modules derived directly from the historic monuments themselves, allowing visitors to view the icons from the historically accurate angle – from below, looking upward. How exactly this works is the subject of our story.

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The Power of Lines

The building at the very beginning of New Arbat is the result of long deliberations over how to replace the former House of Communication. Contemporary, dynamic, and even somewhat zoomorphic in character, it is structured around a large diagonal grid. The building has become a striking accent both in the perspective of the former Kalinin Avenue and in the panorama of Arbat Square. Yet, unfortunately, the original concept was not fully realized. In 2020, the Moscow ArchCouncil approved a design featuring an exoskeleton – an external load-bearing structure, which eventually turned into a purely decorative element. Still, the power of the supergraphic “holds” the building, giving it the qualities of a new urban landmark with iconic potential. How this concept took shape, what unexpected associations might underlie the grid’s form, and why the exoskeleton was never built – all this is explored in our article.

News

Resort on the Kama River

Wowhaus has developed a project for the reconstruction of Korabelnaya Roshcha (“Mast Grove”), a wellness resort located on the banks of the Kama River.

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Nests in Primorye

The eco-park project “Nests”, designed by Aleksey Polishchuk and the company Power Technologies, received first prize at the Eco-Coast 2025 festival, organized by the Union of Architects of Russia. For a glamping site in Filinskaya Bay, the authors proposed bird-shaped houses, treehouses, and a nest-shaped observation platform, topping it all with an entrance pavilion executed in the shape of an owl.

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The Angle of String Tension

The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.

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How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future

Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.

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St. Petersburg vs Rome

The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.

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On the Wave

The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.

Interview

Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”

The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.

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The Keystone

Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.

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Perpetuum Mobile

The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.

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Water and Light

Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.

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Champions’ Cup

At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.

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Semi-Digital Environment

In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.

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History never ends

The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.

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A Deep, Crystal Shine

A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.

Interview

Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”

Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.

Overview

A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists

Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.

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Perspective View

CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.

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Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech

The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.

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Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!

After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.

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Materialization of Airflows

The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.

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The City as a Narrative

Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.

A Garden of Hope for Freedom

In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.

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A Laconic Image of Time

The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.

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The Flower of the Lake

The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.

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Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue

The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.

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An Interior for a New Format of Education

The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.