Published on Archi.ru (https://archi.ru)

04.02.2010

Mountain speaking to the mountain

Anna Martovitskaya
Architect:
Sergey Kisselev
Studio:
Sergey Kisselev & Partners

Architectural studio “Sergei Kiselev & Partners” took part in the open international contest on the best business center project with the hotel Intercontinental in Yerevan. In their design the architects interpreted it as a new Armenian capital height dominant, which begins a dialogue with the famous Ararat mountain.

The contest brief required turning the mixed-use complex into “the most important part of the city”. The Competitors could freely arrange office spaces, but the hotel was to be placed in the western part of the site (in order to provide maximum number of rooms viewing the city) and become a dominant with the height limited to 101m. Well, this is a great figure for Yerevan without sky-scrapers and actually the city really has nothing to match against it. There is only silhouette of Ararat mount seen in the horizon. In the coordinate system of the city Ararat is the datum point and the center attracting all the visual axes. Plan of Yerevan was influenced by the mountain – it resembles a giant fan, unfolded to the sun and Ararat. Sergei Kiselev did not have to think of something new, the master plan of the designed complex is exactly the same fan but smaller, it’s top is a manmade mountain range, turned toward it natural "origin". The hotel complex consists of the three prisms with alike shapes but different heights grouped around the inner square. Two buildings the largest and the smallest house hotel rooms, and the third is an apart-hotel. The volumes are joint only on the level of the stylobate and ground floor: the central hotel lobby is the entrance to any building and the underground shopping and sports area. Since the main advantage of the new hotel is its location and the scene from windows, all the buildings front facades are glasses, and the side facades are designed emphatically brutal and are finished with volcanic tuff.

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