MOSCOW: Moscow planners have approved Lord Foster’s design for the world’s biggest building — likened by critics to an alien spacecraft and a “dahlia stuck in a string bag”. The British architect’s GBP2bn “city within a city”, Crystal Island, will be built on the banks of the Moscow river, with a total floor area of 2.5m square metres, making it the largest enclosed space ever to be constructed.

Crystal Island’s steel mega frame is to feature a “smart skin” to buffer against extreme temperatures and is expected to contain 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments and a school for 500 pupils. Its 620m wide base will taper to a spire almost 500 metres high, giving it the form of a vast transparent wigwam.

The design was passed despite stiff resistance in planning meetings. Aleksei Klimenko, a leading member of Moscow’s expert council on architecture, said it would overshadow a Unesco-protected church in the nearby Kolomenskoye district. The building was too Oriental-looking and resembled a “dahlia stuck in a string bag” he told Radio Svoboda.

Other problems included the density of heavy metals at the site which had leached from nearby factories, he said.

However, several city planners praised the Crystal Island development, which will be situated four miles from the Kremlin on the Nagatino peninsula and is due to be finished in 2014.

The architect’s partnership said daylight would be able to penetrate deep into the interior of the “tent”, with external panels opened in summer and closed to preserve heat in winter, when temperatures in Moscow can drop to minus 30C. Terraced on the outside of the building will be a series of gardens, and the whole structure is to be set in a landscaped park. The building will house three theatres, an Imax cinema, offices, a museum, two observation decks and underground parking for 14,000 cars.—Dawn/Guardian News Service