Moscow Aqua Building Begins Construction.

Construction is underway on the latest addition to the Moscow skyline, Aqua Palace. Once completed it will be 56 floors and approximately 250 metres in height. It is being developed by Turkish developer ENKA for plot four of the International Business Centre and should be completed in the third quarter of 2008.

Aqua Palace been designed by the American firm NBJJ, most famous for renovating the world's largest building, the Boeing plant in Chicago. The current blue glass design is a major step up in height and back towards a more traditionally shaped skyscraper after the previous vulgar post modern plans that saw two towers linked together by a sky-bridge creating what was in effect a 35 floor arch similar to the Umida Sky Building in Tokyo.

The podium with it's helmet visor like dome remains but the arch is gone replaced by a single block with a two intersecting ovals set at right angles. The earlier blue and gold is gone and blue and white are now the colour scheme of the day perhaps showing the roots of the name.

This is just the latest building to begin construction in what is a bonafide skyscraper boom in the Russian capital, ten years ago the city was dominated by a mixture of brutalist housing blocks and Stalinist baroque edifices. The rapidly growing wealth of Russia, fuelled by petro-dollars is now bringing a huge change with the International Business Centre leading the charge. Other buildings in the IBC include RMJMs twisting tower, another building by NBJJ at Capital City on plot 9, and Sir Norman Fosters Russia Tower, a contender for the tallest building in the world.