BRT Architekten Uses GenerativeComponents (GC) to Integrate Moscow Business Park into a Greenfield Environment.

When BRT Architekten began its design of the award-winning Setun Hills Business Park in Moscow, it knew it had to employ innovative technology to achieve an inspiring deliverable.

This massive-scale, four-building development covers more than 550,000 square meters. The scope of the project includes a semicircular, 12-story main building that opens impressively onto Minskaya Street, along with three, eight-story spherical buildings in a park-like setting. The main challenge for the BRT Architekten design team was that of integrating the organic forms into a greenfield environment, creating a relatively flat building geometry in its cross section, and interlocking it with the landscape in plan.

Successful project completion hinged on the team being able to consider and evaluate the multiple relationships between interior and exterior spaces using special forms and interlocking concepts. Its ability to accomplish this difficult task was facilitated by its deployment of GenerativeComponents. This associative and parametric modeling system enables architects and engineers to pursue designs and achieve results that were virtually unthinkable. GC enabled the BRT Architekten team to respond rapidly to the project’s changing parameters and optimize the design architecturally, environmentally, and economically, while monitoring and controlling the impact on the gross floor areas.

Indeed, by using GC’s powerful parametric and generative tools, the team enhanced the process of defining the design intent and creating numerous variations and alternatives in shape and size during more advanced planning stages. Despite Setun Hills Business Park’s considerable construction volume, the buildings are truly a modern integrated implant that blends into the landscape. The design of the office complex incorporates hemispherical, curved roof cladding, and centrally located, partially underground entrances on a private access road.

Among the most fascinating features of the BRT Architekten design is a five-spoke, glass-roofed courtyard that interconnects one building’s offices in an inner circle. The business park includes a central plaza that creates a relaxing internal urban environment for the park’s occupants. Each of the three spherical buildings contains a central lobby with a staircase and elevators in its symmetry axis and internal fire-escape stairs in each wing.

In addition, the flexibility of the design allows offices to be divided into functional units that range from 400 square meters to 1,600 square meters. The 12-story, semicircular structure comprises public underground parking, retail stores, a 250-room executive-class business hotel, a restaurant with panoramic views, and a fitness center. It also features a cinema under a nine-spoke, domed structure that creatively aligns with the three other buildings and encloses a courtyard with pools.