Lakhta Center

The silhouette of the 462-meter tower, the compositional center and the main accent of the complex is the embodied energy of the flame. The tower building in the plan is a five-pointed star, the rays-wings of which diverge from the central core, and has a complex swirling shape

Architectural and technical solutions of Lakhta Center, on which the team of architects, designers and engineers of GORPROJECT has been working since 2011, are in many aspects innovative not only for Russia, but for the whole world.

The project, in which there is not a single repeating (typical) floor, is technically considered one of the most complex and unique in comparison with other skyscrapers on the planet. The solution of the most complex design problems became possible only thanks to the use of the latest BIM technologies and parametric design.

Lakhta Center Tower applies new and unique construction techniques. A continuous concrete pour of more than 19,624 cubic metres to create the site’s foundations broke the Guinness World Record in March 2015. The pour, which is 3,000 cubic metres more than the previous record, took 49 hours to complete. Concrete mixers made 2,540 trips from 13 different batch plants to the site. Every minute, on average, a concrete delivery truck entered the site, and 17 concrete pumps were used to finish the pour.

264

Bored piles are used as the foundation for the tower foundation: a total of 264 concrete piles with a diameter of two meters and a drilling depth of 72 and 82 meters.

The stability of the Lakhta Center tower is provided by a structural system of the core, outriggers and supporting columns.

The core of stiffness is the main structural element of the tower, which rises to the 86th floor. It contains all communications that are important for the life support of a high-rise building, elevator shafts and security zones.

FIRE SAFETY

The innovative fire extinguishing system uses water mist. When it is triggered, the fire is extinguished not by “rain”, but by a very dense thick fog that absorbs soot and carbon monoxide. It also provides automatic sprinkler irrigation of facade glazing and fire protection curtains in interior areas.

ELEVATORS

40

In the core of the skyscraper there are 40 elevators: high-speed passenger and administrative elevators, as well as firefighters in case of an emergency. Elevators will take visitors to the selected floor in a maximum of 100 seconds. Their speed is from 2.5 to 8 m/s, and the waiting time is no more than 25 seconds.

The intelligent two-line facade of the Lakhta Center is one of the main elements of the tower’s architectural solution. Also, an innovative cold-formed glazing system was used to glaze the outer thread of the facade.

This made the curved facade surface of the tower visually solid and continuous. During production, a laminated glass unit, due to the bending of tempered glass, takes the shape of a frame, while there is no thermal effect on it. It was this glazing design that made it possible to create an absolutely smooth, spiral-curved facade that reflects the sky and clouds.

The facade cladding is divided into single-strand and double-strand zones. In the Lakhta Center, two-strand facades are mounted not only on the tower, but also on the adjacent buildings of the stylobate part.

Buffer zones are the space between the two lines of the facade, they are located along the perimeter of the tower, occupying two floors at once, and the air space between the two layers of glazing provides thermal insulation in the closed position of the transom (in the cold season) and natural ventilation (when overheated from the sun) radiation), allowing you to reduce the cost of heating in winter and air conditioning in summer.

The BIM-model will be used by the operation service, which will make it possible to clearly represent the structure of the complex, all its engineering systems in order to effectively manage them and timely identify emerging problems