Gazprom has appointed the Edinburgh-headquartered RMJM to design the new Gazprom Group headquarters and business centre in St Petersburg with the iconic tower at its centre. A recent announcement by RMJM clears up confusion that has prevailed over the status of the firm in the development following St Petersburg city planners giving Gazprom the green light on the tower.
The original central city location of the tower, planned as the new headquarters for Gazprom Neft, the gas giant’s oil arm, was slammed by St Peterburgers led by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as risking the city’s world heritage status.
The $3billion project on a new location in Northern St Petersburg will transform a 17-hectare brownfield site at Lakhta, on the outskirts of the city, into a pioneering environmentally-friendly development that will meet the highest standards of sustainability and energy efficiency.
RMJM was chosen for its proven track record for delivering landmark low energy projects and its expertise in master planning and tall building design.
Led by Tony Kettle, International Design Principal at RMJM’s European Studio in Edinburgh, and drawing on the talents of RMJM’s St Petersburg practice, the centre piece of the project will be one of Europe’s tallest towers, housing Gazprom’s new headquarters. One of the options being considered is a 462m tower. The 330,000m² complex will also include commercial office space as well as retail, leisure and residential developments.
Gazprom and the international architectural practice have forged a strong relationship over the past five years since RMJM was first appointed to design its new headquarters, originally proposed for the Okhta district of central St Petersburg.
Kettle and his team have spent more than three months revising their original design to create an iconic building and masterplan that will revitalise an area of former industrial land 12kms from the city centre on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.
The proposed Okhta development, which was to feature a 396m tower, was ranked among the 10 most environmentally-friendly skyscrapers by Consumer Energy Report. The new headquarters are expected to deliver equal, if not greater, energy efficiency.
The masterplan design for Lakhta Business Centre draws upon the landscape around St Petersburg as inspiration, including the historical landscapes of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo at Pushkin. Both 18th century palaces are set within extensive landscaped grounds famed for their fabulous water gardens, cascades and fountains. The Lakhta development is located on a brownfield site consisting partially of reclaimed land, used for the industrial storage of sand.
Combining a tower and a 300m long base structure, the complex will create a balanced, organic composition inspired by the movement and energy of water, the natural element that led to the foundation of the city of St Petersburg.
The Lakhta Centre tower will feature a pioneering ‘intelligent’ double outer skin which will minimise heat loss during the extreme Russian winters and deliver energy savings of 50% on buildings constructed using conventional technology. The Lakhta complex will also feature a state-of-the art mechanical, electrical and plumbing system that minimises energy and water usage and reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
Energy-saving design features will be incorporated throughout the masterplan and sustainability will be enhanced through the use of light rail and water transport. In addition, the new design is sympathetic to the local environment and will create an urban development ideally suited to business, residential and leisure use.
The design stage of the project will be completed in 2012 and the first phase of construction will be funded by Gazprom Group. Investment for further phases of the project will be shared between the Gazprom Group and private investors. It is hoped that the complex will provide a blueprint for future sustainable design across Russia.
Tony Kettle said: “We are delighted that Gazprom has chosen RMJM to develop such an iconic and pioneering project that promises to revitalise a brownfield site on the outskirts of St Petersburg and attract a huge amount of new investment to the city.
“The tower design is the natural evolution of the RMJM concept previously proposed for the Okhta site, a design inspired entirely by the city of St Petersburg with its baroque architecture and water filled canals, with the changing form of water to ice, from soft organic freeform to angular crystaline geometry.
“The tower is a city-scale landmark that is designed to complement the historical spires of Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Admiralty. The form and silhouette has evolved from that proposed for Okhta to make it thinner and more elegant when seen as a distant spire from the southern Neva embankment of the city.”
RMJM is a UK-based international architectural firm with offices throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA.
Today RMJM is one of the world’s largest architectural practices in 17 international offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Cambridge, Dubai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, Moscow, New York, , Princeton, Shanghai, Singapore, St Petersburg, Vladivostok and Washington D.C.
RMJM’s expertise and design-led approach is successfully demonstrated in on-going projects in more than 20 countries spanning a wide range of key sectors, from corporate headquarters and waterfront residential developments to major public buildings, university campuses and large-scale regeneration programmes. RMJM is also completing the world’s most leaning building – The Capital Gate Tower in Abu Dhabi.
The company currently has over £10 billion worth of construction projects on its drawing boards, including some of the world’s most high profile and ambitious projects.
