RMJM wins St Petersburg tower competition — but where were the architect judges?

By Ellen Bennett

Norman Foster and Rafael Viñoly walked off the jury that chose RMJM’s designs for the massive Gazprom City development in St Petersburg.

The two stars joined Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa in boycotting the competition, leaving the client and politicians to make the choice.

They refused to disclose their reasons for leaving, but Viñoly denied suggestions they had been pressured to select RMJM as winner following the practice’s success in a public vote.

Herzog & de Meuron, which was shortlisted for the competition, criticised the process, saying the row “seemed to confirm the cliches about Russia, which we are reluctant to believe”.

RMJM, the only UK practice on the shortlist, was a surprise winner, beating international stars also including Jean Nouvel, Massimiliano Fuksas, Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind.

Viñoly said: “Mr Foster, Mr Kurokawa and myself retired from the jury before it convened. We were asked to go to St Petersburg on Friday to meet the governor [of St Petersburg and member of the jury Valentina Matviyenko] and discuss with her our concerns and suggestions for moving forward in a much more productive manner. We went but unfortunately the meeting did not take place.”

Kurokawa has been more open about his reasons for leaving — publicly stating his opposition to all six of the shortlisted designs because of their height and his belief that St Petersburg should preserve its low scale cityscape. He told the New York Times that the city’s current limit on building heights was “the most sensitive issue to keeping the existing cultural value of the old city centre”.

The competition for the HQ of one of the world’s largest energy companies has already attracted public protests in St Petersburg and a boycott organised by the Russian Union of Architects.

RMJM’s design, dubbed “the corn on the cob”, would rise to 396m, dwarfing all other buildings in the city. Russia’s leaders believe it will make a bold statement about St Petersburg’s determination to become an economic powerhouse — Russian president Vladimir Putin hails from St Petersburg and has been closely involved in the competition.