METASITU

 

The speculative video piece “Stop Over City” was the outcome of rigorous research about global office typologies rooted in case studies  in Moscow, Russia. The main objective of this research enquiry was to critically ask what the future of Grade A offices is; executive landscapes where many of the decisions that affect our everyday are taken.

 

“Stop Over City” is an exploration about the future of Moscow’s International Business District (aka ‘Moscow City’), which is located just 4 km away from the Kremlin. Under construction for over two decades, and with a vacancy rate of over 40%, this area, the second densest in the world and the home to Europe’s tallest buildings, still has an uncertain future. Alongside offices, one can find multiple retail spaces, dwelling, hotel, and leisure facilities distributed throughout the different towers.

 

Our proposal is to create a Mega Airport in Moscow, linking Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo with Moscow City, situating the latter as an International Transit Zone of the airport, a terminal without planes. A visa-free space that would escape national jurisdiction. This would not only give a competitive edge to this defunct-before-birth district, but would also create a new framework in which new actors could participate.

Equipped with a shopping center, a hotel, residential facilities and over 400,000 workstations, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden would not have needed to ever leave the airport.

 

A city within the city, yet connected to the globe. A subversion of Ecumenopolis, yet a physical manifestation of it. Stop Over City - a zone that is both a terminus and a carrefour, an end and a transition, a non-lieu and a lieu-de-mémoire.  Stop Over City is a non-place that physically embodies that connection: landscapes that are repeated ad-infinitum holding individual stories.

 

ECUMENOPOLIS

STOP OVER CITY

The future of Moscow International Business Center is in the air.

Video/ 8’42’’ ----- 2014

US