Lotus Multifunctional Complex

The Lotus Business Center built on the corner of Odesskaya Street and Nakhimovsky Prospect in Moscow serves as an architectural accent for the entire surrounding area. A five-minute walk from Nakhimovsky Prospect Metro Station, the corner is home to the three 21-story office buildings connected to a shared ground floor housing a shopping center, restaurant and bank. The complex also includes a four-story underground car park.

photography by © Alexey Naroditskiy

This architectural design is based on the idea of the complex being an effective sculpture where plastic expressiveness is emphasized by the use of modern finishing materials. Glass with a slight mirror effect outlines—like shining armor—the dynamically arched façades.

Each building is trapezoid in shape, the longer sides of which are arched. Like gigantic propeller blades, the buildings twist around the center of the complex, where there is a skylight that allows natural light to enter the connected space and further down through the atrium that goes down the lowest parking level.

photography by © Alexey Naroditskiy

Seen together, the buildings comprise a dynamic volumetric and spatial composition that partly resembles a half-opened flower floating on water. It was this association that prompted the client to give this premium-class business center the name Lotus.The complex’s unique expressiveness and feeling of endless rotation are achieved thanks to the original plastic solution—in addition to its curvature on the horizontal plane, the buildings transform in vertical projection as well. The two unequal shorter sides of the curvilinear trapezoid of each building change their geometry every two floors. A shorter side gets longer, and a longer side gets shorter.

photography by © Alexey Naroditskiy

As a result, one side of the building goes forward projecting above the lower floors, and another side goes back. On the façade, this stepped feature is accentuated with façade elements 1.35 meters in width installed at an angle. Glass bands create an innovative façade structure resembling armadillo skin and vary the depth of the protruding part of floors along the curved sides.

In order to retain the integrity of a glass shell, the number of the metal elements visible outside is minimized. Particular attention was given to the corner elements of the glazing. To achieve the purity of perception of the glassy surface, a unique corner glass pane with inside metal structure was introduced.

photography by © MR Group

The final flourish on the complex’s glass shell was the finishing of the upper technical floor with the same glass plates installed in a chessboard manner. They crown the buildings, creating an unstable line between the sky, reflected in a tilted façade, and its true vault.

photography by © MR Group

At places where the perimeter changes, the columns go forward or back (maximum movement is 180 mm), thus retaining enough space between them and windows to sustain bearing capacity and maintain open planning. Cantilevers in corners do not exceed 4 meters.

The sculptural quality of the volumetric and spatial composition is achieved due to the triple shape deformation: the curvature of the trapezoid sides in the plane, changes in the width of its ends, and the stepped finishing of the façade. A viewer standing on the ground and looking at the complex can barely define a vertical constant and reconstruct a system of perspective deformations.

photography by © MR Group

Project Info
Architects: SPEECH
Location: Moskva, Russia
Authors: Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, Aleksey Iliyn
Architects in charge: A.Borisov, L.Trishkina, G.Chembaeva
Area: 152448.0 sqm
Year: 2014
Type: Office building, Residential, Mixed use
Photographs: Alexey Naroditskiy, MR Group