Mercury City Tower - Tallest Tower in Europe

By Penny Munoz

If you’re ever in Moscow, you can leave your “rose-coloured glasses” at home, because you’ll be looking up at the largest, pinkest building in Europe with or without them! Standing 29 metres taller than London’s The Shard which, was Europe’s tallest skyscraper until the Mercury City Tower was completed in 2013, this soaring 75-storey building tops out at 1,112 feet.

Designed by the late American architect Frank Williams and Mikhail Posokhin, the tower is representative of Russia’s progressive steps into modern, European architecture. According to Igor Kesaev, the private investor behind the tower, it "demonstrates that all of Russia is on a level with countries of the Eurozone, continuing its planned development and moving forward."

So what was the inspiration behind such a distinct building? Kesaev confesses that upon his first visit to New York City in 1991, he was taken aback by the architecture of the Chrysler building and the Citibank. “I thought that such kind of skyscrapers should appear in Moscow,” he told reporters at a press conference. “Now, 20 years later, this dream has come true.”

Located in the core of Russia’s financial district, this $1 billion project has about 970,000 square feet of office space and just over 215,000 square feet of luxury apartment space. With iconic mirrored-pink glass sheathing the exterior of the building and tapering angular blocks at the base, this post-modern building has office space, residential apartments, a restaurant, retail and a state-of-the-art fitness centre. The interior of the building is a minimalistic concept designed by Erick van Egeraat who said that he focused on the long lasting quality of the style, staying true to Russia’s past while adapting to contemporary trends. Inside the retail area, main lobby and all public spaces of the office and apartment area Egeraat’s simplistic creativity can be seen through the use of travertine, mirror polished stainless steel and backlit onyx walls and ceilings.

Though this is Europe’s tallest tower (for now), it is still about 1,600 feet shorter than the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper and over 2,000 feet shorter than the Kingdom Tower, which is expected to be the tallest tower in the world by 2019.