Lakhta center now. The Gazprom Tower broke the height record. Panoramic platform Lakhta Center

Lakhta Center:
what is it worth
for high-rise
boundaries

Partnership project

Skyscrapers are the vanguard of the construction industry. Super-tall buildings always require a special approach from their creators. In 2018, construction of the Lakhta Center will be completed in St. Petersburg, which will become the tallest skyscraper in Europe. What technologies are used to build the St. Petersburg giant?

New height Europe

The Lakhta Center social and business complex is being built in the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg, on the coast Gulf of Finland. Its center will be the headquarters of the Gazprom group and the Gazprom Neft company; the other part of the area will be occupied by public spaces: a scientific and educational complex for children and youth, a planetarium, exhibition spaces, medical and sports centers, a multifunctional transforming hall and others.

The complex consists of four structures: a multifunctional building with an atrium, a stylobate (there will be a parking lot and auxiliary premises), an arch of the main entrance and a skyscraper 462 meters high. It is he who will become the tallest not only in Russia, but throughout Europe. The Lakhta Center supertoll will by 88 meters outgrow the current European record holder - the Federation Tower in Moscow City - and will be in 11th place in the world high-rise ranking.

Construction site in the swamp

There is an opinion that St. Petersburg is built on viscous soils, and it is impossible to build skyscrapers here. Experts answer: you can build anywhere, but you need good planning. The construction of the St. Petersburg supertoll was preceded by a year and a half of engineering and geological research. The authors of the project studied the geological, geodetic, environmental, historical and cultural features of the site.

It turned out that weak soils make up only the top layer. Beneath it lies the Vendian horizon - these are the oldest clays, which are 635-540 million years old. As strong as rock or concrete, these clays are an excellent support for a skyscraper. But getting to them is not easy: in the way of construction equipment there are deposits of the Ice Age in the form of giant boulders and sandy loams with gravel. A set of studies, calculations and full-scale tests became the basis for creating the Lakhta Center design.

Device: base

Piles and protective wall

The foundation is protected from pressure and water in the upper layers of soil by a pentagonal underground structure along the perimeter of the base of the skyscraper. Its height is 30 meters, the length of the walls is more than 300 meters. There are 264 piles installed inside the pentagon, going to a depth of 82 meters. Their diameter is 2 meters. These are the widest piles in the world. The foundation piles of a skyscraper are not driven in, but created right on the spot - in the ground. The shaft is drilled, then a reinforced frame is installed and filled with concrete.

Foundation

The foundation of a skyscraper rests on piles. It consists of three slabs separated by ten radial walls radiating out from the core. The most famous of the slabs is the lower one, 3.6 meters thick. It was she who got into the Guinness Book of Records: builders laid 19,624 cubic meters of concrete at the base of the building in 49 hours. Moreover, the uniqueness of the slab is not in its physical size, but in the technique that provides the necessary load-bearing capacity with optimal dimensions of the structure.

Read more about the record at the Lakhta Center site

Each pile under the tower is a separate complex engineering structure the height of a 30-story building. Control over its construction is a whole system, including video monitoring cameras lowered into the shaft and ultrasonic sensors installed in the reinforcement of the pile frame to determine the density and absence of voids.

Pressure test

The weight of the Lakhta Center tower will be 670 thousand tons, pressing on the ground of a relatively small area. Under pressure, the soil will compact and the skyscraper will settle - just like any other building. The main task is to ensure that this settlement occurs evenly and the building does not deviate from the vertical. To monitor the behavior of the soil, underground structures and their interaction, a geomonitoring system has been created that combines 4,800 sensors.

Sensors are placed both in the ground and in all elements of the tower’s underground structures. Thus, 95 sensors “monitor” vertical movements, 40 – pore pressure of the soil, 336 measure deformations in piles, 10 – pressure under the base of the foundation, 2136 – the dynamics of forces in foundation structures. All sensors are combined into an automatic system. After the construction of every five new floors of the tower, the system provides a full report of what is happening with the soil, piles, and foundation. Such knowledge is useful not only for builders, but also for scientific research.

Vertical management

The precipitation can proceed evenly. But the building itself can be built with a slope. This would not be surprising at a height of almost half a kilometer: an uncorrected deviation of 1 mm at the bottom would result in a deviation of 1 meter at the top. “Lakhta Center” cannot afford a strong deviation: a skyscraper is stable “in an inclination” only if it is specially designed this way (like, for example, Capital Gate - the building with the largest inclination in the world: at 160 meters in height - 18 degrees of inclination). The maximum deviation of the Lakhta Center core allowed by the project is 6 millimeters over the entire 462 meters. And the goal is to shift the deviation delta to zero, although in world practice no one has yet succeeded in achieving absolute zero.

How can the St. Petersburg supertoll not turn into Leaning Tower of Pisa?

There are examples of buildings in the world that successfully exist in a state of deviation from the vertical by meters. For example, a church from 1382 in Bad Frankenhuasen: the deviation of the spire from the vertical is 4.45 meters with a “height” of 25 meters.

Device: design

A skyscraper cannot simply be built “as long as there are enough bricks.” There are different systems that provide super stability tall buildings. At the Lakhta Center tower it consists of a core, outriggers and load-bearing columns along the perimeter of the building.

It is a “pipe” with a diameter of 24.5 meters with a reinforced concrete wall thickness of 0.8 meters. Responsible for vertical stability.

Outriggers

Outriggers located on technical floors consist of a ring beam around the core and diagonal metal trusses and columns extending from it. These elements transfer forces from the core to the outer columns and reduce the supporting moment at the bottom of the building, and also impart horizontal rigidity - for example, they dampen the sway of the tower from the wind. There are five outriggers in the Lakhta Center tower, of which four have the form of double floors, and the fifth is atypical, in the form of a powerful reinforced concrete “puck”

Made of composite materials - steel core with reinforced concrete shell. This solution was used for the first time in civil engineering in Russia. Thanks to it, the cost of columns is significantly reduced, and the construction period

is reduced by 40%, all other things being equal.

Twisted form

According to the creators, the Lakhta Center tower was conceived as a modern interpretation of the high-rise dominant, standing out against the background of the traditional horizontal development of St. Petersburg. Its “brothers” are the spire Peter and Paul Cathedral, the Admiralty Needle, the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral - decorate the city center, while the new supertoll will become an organizing element in the rapidly developing Primorsky district. The new skyscraper will play the role of the main accent of the business space that will appear along the “sea façade” of the city.

“The shape of the building symbolizes the energy of water, the flow of spaces, openness and lightness,” explain the authors of the project. “The effect of weightlessness and maximum merging of the future complex with the environment will be enhanced through the use of a special type of glass, thanks to which, depending on the time of day, the high-rise building will change color, which will create the feeling of a “living object.”

Device: facade

The Lakhta Center tower twists around its axis by 90 degrees. There are certain features in the construction of such a building. For example, due to expansion, contraction and “torsion”, all 189 thousand components of the tower’s metal structures differ from each other (strictly speaking, only two are the same). The facade elements also differ in shape and curve: 16,505 panels cover an area of 72,500 square meters, while 71% of the double-glazed windows differ from each other in size and geometry. The size of each double-glazed window is 2.8 by 4.2 meters, weight is 740 kilograms. To maintain such a demanding structure, a special facade maintenance system (abbreviated SOF) has been developed. With its help, the facades will be kept clean and, if necessary, repaired.

How to collect 189,000 parts and never make a mistake?

Reserve for the future

Conquering heights is always a matter of having the appropriate technology. Elevator, ventilation, electricity - at one time, high-rise buildings were the first to experience all these “new products”. After a successful start, the production of technologies became widespread: from the category of exclusive benefits, they moved into the category of minimum standards for the construction of standard housing and public buildings.

The construction of skyscrapers led to the development of modern lifting construction equipment, the invention of building stability structures, the introduction of new fire safety technologies, and modern high-strength building materials. High-rise construction is an area where orders for high-tech solutions are formed, which will then be transferred to other areas of our life.

"Walking" mechanisms for building a skyscraper

The St. Petersburg “Lakhta Center” is actively introducing technologies - some for the first time in the regional and Russian construction market, some - in the global one. The significance of this construction for the construction industry can be assessed later, but it is already clear how the environment is changing: joint production ventures are emerging, qualified personnel are growing, suppliers are using new technical solutions - this is how new heights in quality standards are being mastered.

They prepared for pouring the bottom slab in advance, because it is impossible to “do over” the work. The participants rehearsed everything they could. For example, 13 concrete supply plants practiced producing a concrete mixture using a unique recipe until they achieved its absolute identity.

The pouring speed was more than 400 cubic meters per hour, and the mixers made more than 2,450 trips. The process was organized in such a way that the event local residents we learned from the media - there was no additional traffic jam on the busy Primorskoye Highway, no noise from the construction site.

The deviation delta is monitored by surveyors. They have seven equipment systems (optical and laser) in their arsenal; duplication helps double-check instrument readings. Three of the seven geodetic systems are presented in Russia for the first time, but have proven themselves well at the world's leading construction sites.

World geodetic premiere – pulsed high-speed laser scanner with a two-axis compensator. The device is being used for the first time in the construction of a skyscraper. With its help, Lakhta Center builders check the position of metal structures inside a concrete environment when manufacturing, for example, composite columns with a steel core inside a concrete structure.

To guide the core in a strictly vertical course, “space” technology is also used - the Trimble 4D Control geodetic device. It uses a satellite signal and a system of geosensors installed at the construction site. Using GPS and GLONASS readings, the system determines exact coordinates kernels and delta bias, which is constantly adjusted based on the received data.

For assembly they use BIM, a relatively new technology for Russia. It is a virtual three-dimensional model of a building that combines all design documentation data. By adding a time dimension, a virtual technology for constructing an object is built: projects for organizing construction, production of work, supply logistics. At Lakhta Center, one more application has been added to the standard use of the model. Due to its complex geometry, the tower is assembled from metal structures, each of which has a single possible installation location. The correctness of the assembly is controlled, including using BIM. Structures delivered to the site have barcodes associated with the BIM model. The part code clearly indicates its installation location in the overall structure.

Builders say about the St. Petersburg supertoll that it is “ self made" We are talking about the uniqueness of solutions, and as for labor, everything that is possible is automated. For example, a “sliding” (automated) formwork system is used to construct the core.

Formwork is a form for concreting, formed by two rows of panels, the space between which is the future core wall. Concrete is poured between the panels and hardens.

Conventional formwork needs to be unfastened, moved to a new location and reassembled - a huge loss of time and productivity. And the automatic one “moves” with the help of hydraulic jacks as concrete is poured.

The Lakhta construction site is very fond of such self-moving tools. The wind protection on the tower works on a similar principle - its panels slide along with the formwork. The “walking” mechanisms include a crane in the core of the tower - the first of its kind in St. Petersburg.

The high-rise business center under construction in St. Petersburg is often called the Gazprom tower. This building will be the tallest in the Northern capital and the second largest in Europe after the Ostankino Tower. The skyscraper is being built by Gazprom and will house the headquarters of this concern and its company.

Let us recall that initially the construction of a business center 400 meters high was planned to be carried out on a site of 4.7 hectares, in the center Northern capital, which caused a sharp protest from city defenders and the public. The object fell into a protected zone where monuments included in the list of UNESCO sites are located.

Soon, the governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, canceled the decree allowing the developer to deviate from the permitted height of 100 meters in this place.

A new site of 14 hectares for the construction of the Lakhta tower is located in the north of St. Petersburg at the exit of the city between the Gulf of Finland and Primorskoye Highway. The distance from the construction site to the city center is about 10 km. According to experts, now the Lakhta Tower, although it will be visible from almost all areas of the city, will not block the sights of St. Petersburg and dominate historical sites.

At the same time, the tower will be clearly visible from the sea; it will become a kind of lighthouse, welcoming those sailing into the city by sea. This will be a landmark object of the sea facade of the Northern capital.

Unlike the old project, in Lakhta Center, in addition to the office part, social infrastructure premises will be located.

The office part will occupy premises in the tower itself, and the buildings at its base will be used for social facilities - shops, sports and medical centers, a children's educational center and a planetarium.

At the top of the tower there will be an observation deck, a revolving restaurant and a conference room.

Lakhta Center Tower - brief description

The customer and investor of the project is Gazprom Neft, the construction project was carried out by the British architectural bureau RMJM - Robert Matthew Johnson Marshal.

General contractor - Turkish company Renaissance Construction (created in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, founded by Turkish businessmen). Dozens of institutes and construction organizations are involved in the construction of the building.

The height of the building with the spire will be 462 meters, and the total weight of the tower with all the infrastructure, glazing and even furniture and people will be 670 thousand tons.

The area of one office floor is from 668 to 2060 sq. m. meters.

From the side of the Gulf of Finland, the Lakhta Tower center will appear in all its splendor in the form of a spire soaring upward. It can also be compared to a drop of water flying upward.

Peter the Great conceived Petersburg as the sea capital of Russia. And according to the authors of the project, from afar, from the sea, the Lakhta center will look like a snow-white yacht.

The project includes several architectural highlights, the main ones being a modern planetarium and an outdoor amphitheater.

Planetarium

The planetarium, designed for 140 people, will occupy unusual place- at the height of the fifth floor of one of the buildings adjacent to the tower. It will look like a huge ball, which seems to have been thrown into the building with all its might, and it stuck to the facade. Of course, such a spectacular form of the building cannot but interest everyone who walks or drives by.

During the sessions, a variety of special effects will be used - a moving floor and illusions of lightning and rain, virtual smoke and smells.

Amphitheater

The idea of creating an open amphitheater facing the sea is associated with the need for a smooth transition from the high roof to the water space. Here spectators will be able to admire water fountains and various shows on the water, as well as participate in theatrical performances and competitions.

When laying the foundation, many principles were taken from nature. Thus, the piles at the base of the building, like the roots of a giant tree, go 82 meters into the ground. Above the piles, a “box-shaped” foundation 17 meters high was built, which guarantees the stability of the building
The maximum permissible deviation of the structure from the vertical over the entire height is no more than 6 millimeters. Not to be confused with the vibration amplitude of a building during a storm wind
Double-glazed windows have passed a variety of tests: under high pressure of water, air currents and fire. The glass is made using a special film that will not allow the glass to break into fragments
All materials used in construction are non-flammable or fire resistant. But despite this, the evacuation of people was thought out as much as possible. In the event of a fire alarm, air is pumped into the central core, made of reinforced concrete, which prevents it from becoming smoked. By moving to the central core, where there are stairs, a person is safe
A special system will be used to wash windows, which moves along rails located on the ribs of the tower.
In strong winds, the top of the building can deviate by 46 cm from the vertical, and at the level observation deck(at an altitude of 357 meters) the maximum deviation will be 27 cm
To prevent birds from crashing into the windows, the double-glazed windows are edged with opaque material, and the glass itself is non-mirror. In addition, during mass flights of flocks, the lighting will be “scaring.” This way the birds will see the glass.

Adjacent territory

An entrance for office employees will be located on the east side of the building. This part of the complex will appear in the form of an arch with a span of 100 meters.

A pedestrian zone with a length of 8 km will begin on the south-eastern side. It will include a bridge and a huge space for holding mass celebrations and festive events.

The northern part of the territory will be used for various exhibitions, and in addition, in the future a railway platform and a metro station will be built here.

In addition, next to the tower there will be parking for tourist buses and the Poltava ship museum.

Transport infrastructure

In the future, it is planned to establish a transfer between the Lakhta center and the Chernaya Rechka and Staraya Derevnya metro stations. A metro station is expected to be built in 2025.

Development transport infrastructure contributes primarily to the World Cup. In 2018, the Begovaya metro station will be opened, one of the exits of which is located at a distance of just over a kilometer from the Lakhta center, that is, within walking distance.

The Lakhta Center Tower will become the center of the new business district of St. Petersburg, one might say Petersburg City, and the development of transport infrastructure will turn this undeveloped area of the Northern capital into an example of a modern and high-quality urban environment. We would like to remind you that the facility is scheduled to be commissioned in 2018.

Historical environment in Lakhta? Do you know our city well? The city center is far away, the issue is simply not relevant now.

- Local city defenders continue to insist that the tower will become a dominant feature and will cover something. According to the project, it is 462 meters in height.

In fact, the height of the tower is 462.7 meters. How to understand the statement of city defenders that the tower will cover something? Blocking the view of Primorskoye Highway? View of residential development? Does this concern you? It will be visible against the background of other objects - I agree, but it will definitely not cover or dominate significant historical objects. If the house is beautiful, why strive to ensure that no one sees it? Our project is very beautiful, the time will come when everyone will be proud of it.

I saw one photoshopper. The picture showed our tower against the backdrop of the Bronze Horseman and the caption: “See what the angle is, everything is ruined there, it’s impossible to take a photo.” I don’t know... I myself have photographed myself many times next to the Bronze Horseman, but I have never photographed the statue from the tail side. Why do people care?

- What is the most important difference between the Lakhta Center project and the notorious Okhta Center?

These are fundamentally different projects. A simple business center was designed on Okhta - a tower with office premises. In fact, it turned out to be a closed space, a thing in itself. An employee would come there, work, get everything he needs, and at the end of the working day go home.

The rest of the townspeople could go to the Okhta Center to visit the observation deck or sit in the revolving restaurant on the 74th floor.

It was not intended to create social infrastructure in the Okhta Center, but the Lakhta Center provides for a very large volume of additional functions, which, in terms of area ratio, will dominate the office component.

The main volume of offices in Lakhta Center is located in the tower, and underneath it there will be the whole city for residents of nearby areas and tourists. The public component of the project includes sports and medical centers, shops, conference rooms, an entertaining science center for children and a planetarium.

- How did the idea with the planetarium come about?

Architects always strive to offer some kind of feature, a zest. We have several of them on our project. The idea of a planetarium was not born immediately. We were provided with a multi-light space, and we were all thinking about how to make the best use of it. We worked on this issue for a month and a half, and then - boom! And the planetarium was born! A huge ball, which seemed to be thrown at full force into the building, and it stuck to the facade. Very impressive. It will be visible both from the street and from passing cars, it will become another reason for people to come to us.

- Has the tower itself become larger than the Okhta Center project?

The tower became taller, larger in diameter, changed in shape and structure. This is absolutely new project. Outwardly, there are some similarities, it seems that it is the same tower, but in fact the towers are completely different.

- Are there design differences?

The basic design diagram remained unchanged, we were only able to optimize and reduce the number of technical floors, were able to abandon some columns, and simplified the beam system. And in the Lakhta project, decisions on organizing construction have changed significantly, new technologies have been applied. Currently, we have successfully completed work on the arrangement of the pile foundation of the tower and multifunctional building. In Lakhta, bored piles with a diameter of 2 meters were laid under a high-rise building, and in Okhta, foundations in the form of barettes were provided, which are much more expensive. This became possible because the soil situation in the new location is much better. Thanks to this and other optimization solutions, we get good savings Money per square meter.

- What are the parameters of the tower?

The office part will occupy about 120 thousand square meters, and the total usable area will be approximately 200 thousand square meters.

The tower is an office tower, and everything connected with it is the maintenance of office premises. The top of the tower was created for public functions, there is an observation deck, a revolving restaurant and a conference room area that can be rented out for short-term rent for any events. The rest are the offices of our investor.

- Do you plan to rent out space to other companies?

Currently, everything is being done to suit the needs of the investor, but perhaps some areas will be rented out to third-party tenants.

- The project on the official website involves placing a complex of apartments in the building, will these premises also not be sold?

Not an apartment complex, but a hotel with two hundred rooms, a simple four-star hotel. Can you imagine how many business trips we have? We need to place them somewhere. This is the headquarters.

- That is, the apartments will not be purchased by anyone, including the top management of the company?

No. This is a clean hotel with its own logistics solutions, delivery and cleaning of premises. If there were apartments for sale there, we would change a lot in the project.

- Tell us about the space around the tower.

In the adjacent territory of the business district there is parking for tourist buses, there is access to the berthing structure, there will be museum complex"Poltava".

The entrance lobbies in the Eastern part are intended for employees; they are decorated with a very beautiful arch, a span of 99 meters, a unique engineering structure. Business and tourist life will unfold around this arch.

From the southeastern part of our territory, a large walking area begins, stretching along a pedestrian bridge to the park of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Walking route will be about 8 kilometers, the issue of building a pedestrian bridge to Krestovsky Island is being considered.

The pedestrian zone is not 1.5 meter wide paths, it is a space where any events could be held, up to the May demonstrations. There is an amphitheater in the southern part of our territory.

- Can you tell me a little more about the amphitheater?

The amphitheater appeared in the project by accident. There was a very complex volumetric-spatial solution for the roof of a covered parking lot. It was necessary to create a smooth transition from the highest level of the roof to the water, and our architect proposed placing an amphitheater for 2 thousand people. We happily agreed, and we had one more “trick”.

As a result, we got a space where we can hold any events related to open air and water. We want it to be possible to watch from the amphitheater and water fountains, and water shows, and theatrical performances, competitions...

The northern part of the territory will be used to ensure pedestrian accessibility. There will be railway platforms and a metro station. On Northern Square we plan to hold open-air exhibitions.

- The lake also appeared in the project on the official website

Is the water of the Gulf of Finland not enough for you? There was no lake, there were and are expanses of water, but this is something completely different. The water surfaces did not appear by chance. We carried out aerodynamic tests to determine the wind loads on the tower itself, as well as the comfort level of pedestrian areas.

As a result of this work, we have identified areas where very strong winds are possible due to downdrafts air. We marked these zones in red on the plan, and then changed the “red” to “blue” and made a water surface there. People will not walk through these zones, and the project will have decorative and protective functions for pedestrian zones.

- How will the transfer be organized?

The metro station is expected only by 2025, so the facility will have to operate for 7 years without a metro. The transfer issue will definitely be resolved, but for now the first thing that comes to mind is to use transportation from metro stations " Old village" and "Black River".

The project also provides for a sufficient number of parking spaces (according to the standard, one parking space should be created for 5 employees and 1 parking space for 10 visitors, but we plan to create more parking spaces), and for tourism purposes, together with the city, a project for an interchange hub is being developed - these are these new Lakhta railway platforms ", intercept parking. There will also be public stops ground transport. All this should be operational by 2017.

- How many people will work in the tower?

In total, about 10 thousand people will be on the territory of the complex every day: more than 5 thousand office employees and about 4 thousand visitors and tourists.

- Can you name the approximate amount of investment in the project?

I'm not involved in this issue. I only determine the validity of specific decisions. For example, we calculate the efficiency of refrigeration systems. I know how much money we will save on this. And the total cost of the project is the competence of my management.

- And if you compare it with the Okhta Center project, which project is more expensive?

This cannot be compared at all - the objects are completely different, but the cost of construction per square meter in the Lakhta Center project is lower, because the situation with the soil is different here. We were just very lucky. And the amount of usable space here is much larger.

- Will the facility be introduced in stages or in one phase?

If we had it like in the MIBC Moscow City, when the entire development is divided into separate stages of construction, each building is put into operation independently - we would be terribly happy, but with us all the buildings are a single whole of one object. The design documentation was developed without highlighting queues, without highlighting launch complexes, without highlighting construction stages.

In our project engineering support, transport accessibility and everything else is created comprehensively; one tower cannot be put into operation. We wanted to divide it into stages, but it didn’t work out, so we will introduce everything at the same time, for which the builders thanked us very much (in quotes). We will have to put into operation all 400 thousand square meters at once. This will be a feat, because in Russia it has never happened that 400 thousand square meters were introduced at once.

- Tell us what is happening at the site now? What stage is going on?

The work is in full swing. The piles have been completed and the excavation of the tower foundation has been completed. This colossal structure is five football fields 20 meters deep. It's so beautiful it takes your breath away. There are spacer discs, a wall in the ground, everything is massive and solid... A colossal building structure. You physically feel the work of the structures. There are people working down there, they are very small, because the height still makes itself felt. There is a bay nearby, and the pit is dry. A person who is far from construction does not fully understand how difficult it is. This is simply Beautiful with a capital B, beautiful from the point of view of human capabilities and his engineering.

One of the tallest buildings in Russia and Europe - the modern skyscraper Lakhta Center - is located in the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg. Its construction began in 2012, the building was put into operation in 2018, and the opening of the Lakhta Center is scheduled for early 2020. In addition to Gazprom's headquarters, there will be offices, scientific and business centers, an amphitheater, a sports club and other infrastructure. The main highlight of the tower will be the observation deck, which offers a panoramic view of St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Finland. The cost of the Lakhta Center is estimated at 2.5 billion dollars.

Observation deck of Lakhta Center

The most anticipated object of the complex is the observation deck, which will be located at an altitude of 360 meters, on the top floor. It will be a panoramic site with a 360° viewing angle and telescopes for a detailed view. High-speed elevators will be available to lift visitors up. It is planned that the Lakhta Center observation deck will become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city.

Christmas tree

Despite the fact that the official opening of the skyscraper has not yet taken place, Lakhta Center is already taking part in cultural life Northern capital. In honor of the New Year, on December 31, festive lighting was lit on the façade of the building, turning the tower into the world's tallest green Christmas tree.

Video of New Year's greetings:

Lakhta Center webcam

Currently, a webcam is installed at the observation deck level, which broadcasts a panorama of St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Finland in real time. You can see the popular attractions of the city - the park named after the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, the Gazprom Arena stadium, the Yacht Bridge, Elagin Island and other objects.

Floor plan and architecture

Due to widespread media coverage of the construction of this facility, many are interested in the question “how many floors are there in the Lakhta Center and what will be there?” According to the project, the tower has 87 floors, and total area premises is 400 thousand square meters. meters, of which 130 thousand square meters are designated for offices. meters. Almost 40 elevators are planned to be launched to move between floors. In addition to the main building, the complex includes two more buildings, which are located on the sides of the tower. Their height varies from 22 to 85 meters.

Lakhta Center Project

In addition to the observation deck and Gazprom headquarters, the complex will house the following facilities:

Panoramic restaurant Lakhta Center. The halls will be located on the 75th and 76th floors (height about 320 meters). This will be a nice alternative viewing platform. Based on the results of the selection of applicants for the creation of the restaurant, at the beginning of 2019 the management company announced the winner. They were famous Russian football players - the Berezutsky brothers, who proposed the concept of a restaurant of Russian cuisine, the basis of which would be Russian-made products and unique recipes from all over the country.
Multifunctional hall - transformer and congress center. A unique feature of this hall is that, if necessary, it can be divided into two rooms. This is the first such facility in St. Petersburg. The seating arrangement and stage configuration can be changed to suit the format of the event. It is planned that the transforming hall will host concerts, performances, fashion shows and other events.
Scientific and educational center. The main task scientific center there will be popularization of science among the population. The center will be open to a wide audience, educational events will be held here - lectures, exhibitions. The exhibition area reaches 7000 square meters. meters.
Medical Center. The Lakhta Center diagnostic and treatment complex is designed to provide services to residents of the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg. Equipped with the most modern equipment, the medical center will provide dental, therapeutic, surgical and other services.
Sports complex. In Lakhta Center it is planned to create a large sports center with an area of 4600 sq. meters. Here will be located GYM's, group exercise rooms, swimming pools, relaxation and wellness centers.
Atrium, shopping areas, expositions. For office workers and visitors to the skyscraper there will be exhibition halls for art objects and works of art, a multimedia hall, as well as cafes, canteens and shops.
Offices. Management Company offers offices for rent ranging from 650 to 2100 sq. m. meters. Detailed information from the administration, contacts can be found on the official website of the Lakhta Center.

At the foot of the tower, on the territory overlooking the bay, it is planned to build amphitheater. Designed for 2,000 seats, the facility will be the first structure of this type in St. Petersburg. The amphitheater is oriented towards the sea; according to the architects' plan, the stage can be water or the coastline.

Architectural solution

Since the Lakhta Center building has an extreme height, during the development of the project and construction, much attention was paid to the stability and safety of the structure. The main tower has a central core made of reinforced concrete, within which the most important communications and security zones are located. The foundation of the skyscraper stands on 2080 piles, and the floors and columns are made of metal and concrete.

The architectural concept of Lakhta Center was developed by RMJM in 2011. As conceived by the authors, the outlines of the skyscraper fit perfectly into the landscape of St. Petersburg and form a harmonious combination with the spiers and domes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

The glazing of the Lakhta Center is made without joints, which gives the building lightness - the smooth walls of the facade reflect water and clouds.

How to get to Lakhta Center in St. Petersburg

Metro near Lakhta Center

The nearest metro station "Begovaya" is located in walking distance from a skyscraper. The walk will take about 20 minutes, but while the tower is not open, you can admire it from the territory of the park of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

Route from the metro to Lakhta Center:

The authorities plan to build new station metro station "Lakhta". The project is included in the metro development plan until 2025.

Ground transportation

Next to the Lakhta Center there is a public transport stop - “15th km Lakhta”. There are buses No. 101, 101a, 110, 211, 216 and minibuses No. 206, 210, 232, 305, 305a, 400, 405, 417, 425.

In addition, to travel around St. Petersburg, you can use applications from taxi services Uber, Gett, Yandex. Taxi, Maxim, Taxovichkof, etc.

Presentation of Lakhta Center: video tour

Night lighting of Lakhta Center: panorama-google

Now let's see how they build IGLOO GAZPROM

The whole story began with the project of the Okhta Center, or Gazprom City complex. The complex with a 396-meter skyscraper was planned to be tied to the Neva again - it was supposed to rise on the cape formed by the Neva and the Okhta River flowing into it. On the opposite side of the Neva is the famous Smolny Institute, which was once the headquarters of the Bolsheviks, and now serves as the residence of the governor of St. Petersburg. The project then caused a lot of noise, mostly unenthusiastic. The glass needle of the skyscraper was radically disharmonious with the architectural style of the St. Petersburg center, while creating a new high-rise dominant, competing with the spiers of the Admiralty and the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Such interference in the historical low-rise urban landscape seemed blasphemous to many.

In the end, the Okhta Center became the Lakhta Center: the construction of the Gazprom skyscraper, now 462 m high, was moved to north shore Gulf of Finland. There are no urban developments nearby, and the historical center is a full 9 km away, so the “needle” will no longer invade the recognizable outlines of old St. Petersburg. The complex of a high-rise building, an auxiliary building and a vast recreational area is scheduled for completion in 2018, and then...

Is there any practical sense in constructing such tall buildings where there seems to be no shortage of land? Of course, Lakhta does not have the cramped conditions of American downtowns, but architecture is not always intended to perform a utilitarian function. Sometimes her task is to create symbols, objects of attraction. Historically, temples that were supposed to rise above the surrounding buildings became such centers of attraction. There was no other meaning in this except symbolic. When elevators appeared and cities began to grow rapidly, high-rise buildings became the leaders and dominants. Lakhta Center will welcome those traveling to St. Petersburg cruise ships and ferries, like the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, it will become a new symbol of the city, and this is precisely its main aesthetic task. This is what the authors of the project think.

Even those who are not good at geography probably remember: a city built in the delta rests on loose, water-soaked soil. Everyone remembers a branch of the St. Petersburg metro that was torn apart by quicksand for almost a decade. Unlike textbook Manhattan, which is essentially bare rock, in the St. Petersburg area the granite shield lies below 200 m, and it is unrealistic to rest a building on it. How to build a skyscraper here? It turns out that from the point of view of geotechnics - the science of soils - no monstrous difficulties arise in this case. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where two twin super-skyscrapers were being built, the situation was even worse: the buildings stand on 120-meter stilts. Of course, it is too difficult to rest on the rocky ground in Lakhta - this would require piles of an unprecedented length in world practice, so we have to use ones that support the building due to friction. The upper layers of the soil are very loose, but already below 30 m the Vendian clays begin to be quite hard, and the piles are held securely in them.

The traditional construction of a skyscraper foundation is an array of piles on which a powerful slab rests. In principle, something similar has been done in Lakhta, but the foundation of the St. Petersburg skyscraper will have its own characteristics. It is a box-shaped structure buried in the ground to a depth of 17 m. Thus, the building will appear to be “sunk” in the ground, which will serve to more evenly distribute the weight of the structure and help avoid severe settlement of the skyscraper in the future.

The outer boundary of the foundation is a wall in the ground (in plan it is a regular pentagon, or pentagon). It is not a supporting element, but it protects the strength part of the foundation from soil pressure, and most importantly, from the seepage of groundwater. A pit is dug in the ground inside the wall, and to prevent the wall from collapsing, it is gradually reinforced with four reinforced concrete structures located on top of each other - the so-called spacer discs. When the pit is ready, the heads of the pre-installed piles are exposed. There are 264 piles, and the length of the most powerful of them is 82 m. At the bottom of the pit, a concrete slab resting on the heads is poured, and reinforcement for the main load-bearing structure - the lower foundation slab - is mounted on it. The designers did not have a shortage of space, and therefore they were able to support the building on a large foundation to ensure maximum stability.

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The tragedy of the World Trade Center towers in New York, and especially the terrible picture of their collapse, is so clearly etched in the memory of each of us that the question “what will happen if???” arises quite naturally, as soon as we are talking about a new high-rise building. Here it should be remembered that the main customer of the complex is Gazprom, and we can say that this building is of strategic importance for our economy.

That is why the task was set to ensure the highest safety standards. In principle, the skyscraper will be built according to a well-known scheme: a cylindrical reinforced concrete core, floors, columns along the outer contour. The World Trade Center towers had approximately the same design. These were strong buildings, designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 747, but the destruction of some power structures of the external circuit led to the progressive destruction of others, a domino effect was created, and as a result the skyscrapers collapsed. The high-rise building of Lakhta Center is designed in such a way that it can be supported by one core. You can blow up all ten columns along the outer contour, but even then the skyscraper will stand. This is a real fortress, which, according to the architects, should survive many decades.

The stability of the structure is ensured by a special scheme for redistributing the load of the external contour of the building to the core. Every 16 floors, ten powerful consoles extend from the reinforced concrete core - a kind of hanging foundations on which a section of the building will additionally rest. There are four such outrigger levels in the skyscraper.

As a result, Lakhta Center will have a safety margin unique among buildings of this kind, significantly exceeding established international standards.

The reluctance to save on safety does not mean that the idea of increasing the efficiency of a structure and reducing operating costs is completely alien to the authors of the project. On the contrary, it is very important for Gazprom, given that it is building a building “for itself,” to remain committed to modern energy saving technologies, especially in the harsh St. Petersburg climate. For example, the building will receive a double façade, that is, there will be an insulating layer of air between two strands of glazing. The heating system will use such highly economical devices as infrared emitters. In addition, the heat accumulated in the building from operating computers and other office equipment will be removed and then used in the heating system. The air conditioning system has its own peculiarities - it is based not on the usual scheme for removing heat from the room to the outside, but on cold accumulators placed underground, which can produce up to 1000 tons of ice per night, and then release its cold to the rooms during the day. Occupancy sensors will also become widespread, which will turn off lighting fixtures when there is no one in the room.

But will the building be habitable from the bottom floors to the very top? High-rise buildings erected for purely commercial purposes are often inhabited from top to bottom, and there are no “excesses” there. However, if we are talking about a symbol, be it the Moscow State University building on Sparrow Hills in Moscow or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, a significant part of their height is an uninhabited spire, designed to give the structure aesthetic completeness. Despite the fact that the height of the Lakhta Center skyscraper will be 462 m, all inhabited floors will be below the 400 m mark. Anything higher is an architectural element that will help the building serve as a city landmark and decoration of the sea gates of St. Petersburg.

The skyscraper in Lakhta will have a helical shape, that is, its facades will have a rather complex and asymmetrical surface. Particularly interesting is the use of cold-formed glass, which makes the glazing absolutely smooth. Together with the double facade, this will give unusual optical effects - for example, the reflection of clouds, as if rising diagonally along the wall of the building.

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Construction of business and community center in Lakhta is not only an attempt to turn St. Petersburg to the sea with a “human face”, but also a desire to follow the centrifugal trend in modern urban planning. New business parks are being created away from dense urban areas; there are large areas and there are no problems with parking. The flow of cars to the Lakhta Center will always be in antiphase with the flow that moves to the city center in the morning and rushes to the outskirts and suburbs in the evening. This will partially relieve congestion in the historical center of St. Petersburg, and business activity in the Lakhta Center, on the contrary, will intensify. Of course, the accessibility of Lakhta Center will be ensured not only for motorists, but also for those who use public transport: the complex will be connected to the city center by a metro line.

However, the purpose of Lakhta Center goes far beyond the task of providing the city with additional office space. In the skyscraper and in the auxiliary building, the project provides not only business premises, but a large entertaining science center for children, conference rooms, exhibition spaces, sports and medical complexes, cafes, restaurants, shops and even an ultra-modern planetarium. The vast surrounding area will include public gardens, parks, walking paths and an amphitheater overlooking the Gulf of Finland.

We can say that the history of Lakhta Center is connected not only with urban planning and architecture. After all, it so happened that the clash of interests of a large national corporation and the aspirations of the civil society of the Northern capital regarding the Okhta Center led not to the triumph of one side to the detriment of the other, but to a new quality and to a new stage in the development of St. Petersburg.

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Construction of a high-rise building in the area of a deep river delta is a difficult task, but not impossible. The upper layers of the soil have quicksand properties, but at a depth of 30 m there are so-called Vendian clays, which are comparable in hardness to natural stone. In this regard, it became possible to replace the slotted foundations with bored piles, which will support the building not due to support on the rock, but due to the force of friction. The piles, the most powerful of which reach a length of 82 m, are not driven, but installed. Such piles are called bored piles: first, a well is drilled, then a casing pipe is lowered into it (so that the walls of the well do not crumble), reinforcement is installed inside the pipe, and then concrete is poured.

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