The Dominion Office Building is one of the first new projects to be built in an area of Moscow that has primarily been home to industrial and residential buildings. The new office building, however, represents the recent growth of the creative and IT sectors in the southeast portion of the city.
Zaha Hadid Architects conceived the building as a series of vertically stacked plates, offset at each level. Curved elements connect each plate and a central atrium rises through each level to bring an abundance of natural light into the center of the building.
The atrium is arguably the most striking aspect of the project, as its use of contrasting black and white colors along with a series of staircases that look like they could have fallen right out of an M.C. Escher lithograph or a Harry Potter movie criss-cross their way to the top of the structure. Balconies on each level project into the atrium and a ground floor restaurant links the atrium to an outdoor terrace and the city street.
The office spaces are arranged in a system of standard rectilinear bays to accommodate small, expanding, or large companies. As is common among new office space, the ideas of interaction and collaboration were key design elements for the project. Aspects such as coffee and snack areas and relaxation zones on the balconies turn the atrium into a shared space that encourages interaction between co-workers and building tenants.
In total, the office provides 25,700 sm of space across nine total floors (seven office floors and 2 basement floors).
Photo: Hufton & Crow via Zaha Hadid Architects
Photo: Hufton & Crow via Zaha Hadid Architects
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Idea Center at Playhouse Square: A better idea
Through a unique partnership between a public media organization and a performing arts/education entity, a historic building in the heart of downtown Cleveland has been renovated as a model of sustainability and architectural innovation. Playhouse Square, which had been working for more than 30 years to revitalize the city's arts district, teamed up with ideastream, a newly formed media group t...
| Aug 11, 2010
200 East Brady
Until July 2004, 200 East Brady, a 40,000-sf, 1920s-era warehouse, had been an abandoned eyesore in Tulsa, Okla.'s Brady district. The building, which was once home to a grocery supplier, then a steel casting company, and finally a casket storage facility, was purchased by Tom Wallace, president and founder of Wallace Engineering, to be his firm's new headquarters.
| Aug 11, 2010
Two Rivers Marketing: Industrial connection
It was supposed to be the perfect new office. In July 2003, Two Rivers Marketing Group of Des Moines, Iowa, began working with Shiffler Associates Architects on a 14,000-sf building to house their rapidly growing marketing firm. Over the next six months they put together an innovative program that drew on unprecedented amounts of employee feedback.
| Aug 11, 2010
AIA Course: Enclosure strategies for better buildings
Sustainability and energy efficiency depend not only on the overall design but also on the building's enclosure system. Whether it's via better air-infiltration control, thermal insulation, and moisture control, or more advanced strategies such as active façades with automated shading and venting or novel enclosure types such as double walls, Building Teams are delivering more efficient, better performing, and healthier building enclosures.
| Aug 11, 2010
Glass Wall Systems Open Up Closed Spaces
Sectioning off large open spaces without making everything feel closed off was the challenge faced by two very different projects—one an upscale food market in Napa Valley, the other a corporate office in Southern California. Movable glass wall systems proved to be the solution in both projects.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Pere Marquette Depot Bay City, Mich.
For 38 years, the Pere Marquette Depot sat boarded up, broken down, and fire damaged. The Prairie-style building, with its distinctive orange iron-brick walls, was once the elegant Bay City, Mich., train station. The facility, which opened in 1904, served the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Company when the area was the epicenter of lumber processing for the shipbuilding and kit homebuilding ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Special Recognition: Durrant Group Headquarters, Dubuque, Iowa
Architecture firm Durrant Group used the redesign of its $3.7 million headquarters building as a way to showcase the firm's creativity, design talent, and technical expertise as well as to create a laboratory for experimentation and education. The Dubuque, Iowa, firm's stated desire was to set a high sustainability standard for both itself and its clients by recycling a 22,890-sf downtown buil...
| Aug 11, 2010
Thrown For a Loop in China
While the Bird's Nest and Water Cube captured all the TV coverage during the Beijing Olympics in August, the Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV Headquarters in Beijing—known as the “Drunken Towers” or “Big Shorts,” for its unusual shape—is certain to steal the show when it opens next year.
| Aug 11, 2010
Top of the rock—Observation deck at Rockefeller Center
Opened in 1933, the observation deck at Rockefeller Center was designed to evoke the elegant promenades found on the period's luxury transatlantic liners—only with views of the city's skyline instead of the ocean. In 1986 this cultural landmark was closed to the public and sat unused for almost two decades.
| Aug 11, 2010
200 Fillmore
Built in 1963, the 32,000-sf 200 Fillmore building in Denver housed office and retail in a drab, outdated, and energy-splurging shell—a “style” made doubly disastrous by 200 Fillmore's function as the backdrop for a popular public plaza and outdoor café called “The Beach.