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I always feel kind of cheap when I basi­cally rip off a story from the New York Times, but that’s what I’m going to do. I just came across this arti­cle in today’s Arts sec­tion about a pro­posed sky­scaper in St. Peters­burg that is caus­ing con­tro­versy because it’s going to be like 800 ft taller than any other build­ing in town. The build­ing is going to be the head­quar­ters of Russia’s largest cor­po­ra­tion and will anchor a new busi­ness dis­trict right on the Neva River. Said the company’s CEO of the plans:

“This new, mod­ern project will give birth to a new men­tal­ity for St. Peters­burg, which lives in a new, mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion,” said Mr. Miller, appear­ing with the city’s gov­er­nor, Valentina I. Matviyenko. “And its cit­i­zens will feel the pulse of the new econ­omy, the pulse of the con­tem­po­rary world.”

So I’m all for progress. And look­ing at this ren­der­ing, it’s not a bad look­ing build­ing. But, like. Come on. I think an impor­tant part of design­ing a beau­ti­ful struc­ture is tak­ing into account the sur­round­ing area. And height isn’t every­thing. A build­ing this high will be able to be seen from every­where in the city when in point of fact, it’s prob­a­bly not that impor­tant to the cul­ture of St. Peters­burg. So why make it a focal point for the entire city?

That’s a stu­pid ques­tion to ask, so let me point out that it’s rhetor­i­cal. They obvi­ously want every­one look­ing at them. They’re this build­ing so that every­one will who sees it, every­one in St. Peters­burg, will have Gazprom on their mind. It’s all mar­ket­ing, which is stupid.

Posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 3:25 am

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