PLP Architecture reveals titanium-clad headquarters for Yandex in Moscow

UK-based PLP Architecture has unveiled its design for a 12-storey office for Russian search engine Yandex in Moscow, which will be clad in titanium to create "a beacon" for the company.

Set to be built in the Gagarinsky district of Moscow near the Moskva River, the 170,000-square-metre office block will house all of the company's staff.

PLP Architecture decided to clad the headquarters in titanium to give the building an iconic appearance that would make it stand out from other offices in Moscow.

"Russia produces the second-highest amount of titanium in the world and we wanted this to help create an iconic and symbolic building that would serve as a beacon of technology for the company," said Alessandra Luzzatto, partner at PLP Architecture.

"The crystalline form of the campus is composed of titanium panels on the facade and roof, which are designed to allow the building's shape and texture to constantly adjust as the light changes throughout the day," Luzzatto told Dezeen.

"We wanted to avoid a material that would read as flat and titanium adds life, depth, and movement in changing climatic conditions," she continued.

"Our inclusion of this type of material to wrap the entire building will lend it a particularly unique appearance on Moscow’s diverse skyline and help to break down its scale and massing."

The office will be built alongside two plazas with the ground floor of the building partially open to the public.

It will contain cafes, shops, co-working spaces and a technology museum that will focus on Yandex's growth since the 1990s into one of the country's largest technology companies.

"Two new outdoor plazas offer welcoming entry points, connecting the building with nearby parks and streets," said Luzzatto.

"Inside the unique, sculpted form of the building, scale is broken down into a network of interconnecting spaces that focus on optimised use and that complement adjacent functionalities," she continued.

"The open, publicly-accessible ground floor helps to show the company off and includes a museum, education facilities and co-working areas."

Above the largely public ground floor will be reception areas on a mezzanine level with 11 floors of office space above.

A full-height central atrium topped with a roof light will be the heart of the new building. It will be crossed by a series of stairs and bridges to connect the various floor and departments.

"The inclusion of many layers of spaces such as a central hub, pocket and rooftop terraces, and various open bridges and stairs aim to invigorate the company to inspire interaction and innovation amongst subsidiary companies, departments, teams, and individuals," said Luzzatto.

The completed building will join other headquarters for internet companies being built around the world. Architecture studios BIG and Heatherwick Studio are designing a campus for Google in California, while Frank Gehry recently extended Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters.

When designing Yandex's headquarters PLP Architecture looked at and built on the designs of other campuses for technology companies around the world.

"Yandex's unique position and offerings mean that it has very specific needs and requirements that necessitated a crafted and tailored design for their new campus," said Luzzatto.

"In doing this, we benchmarked our new building and studied well-known campuses around the world created for everything from IT to academic uses," she added. "Our goal here was to fully understand a suitably-inclusive workspace made for young and smart people."

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