A design with a real project team
The project’s engineering history includes Robert Halvorson’s 2007 paper about collaboration with Foster + Partners. That design-stage record belongs to the proposal, rather than a completed building. Historical drawings and engineering papers remain useful evidence even when the investment behind a tower does not proceed. [3]
Finance changed the outcome
Architectural Record reported in February 2009 that financing difficulties had led to cancellation of Foster + Partners’ 118-storey Rossiya tower. Construction Briefing reported the abandonment again in June 2009. These accounts place the failure in the financial crisis rather than establishing a demonstrated structural defect. [1][2]
Why we do not assign it a completed height
Editorial analysis: A proposed dimension describes an intention. It cannot enter a ranking of occupied buildings, and an earlier version of a design should not be treated as the final as-built specification. A useful archive keeps the design stage, project status and evidence date attached to every measurement.
What an engineer can learn
Editorial analysis: Construction feasibility and commercial feasibility are separate tests. A structural scheme may advance through analysis while financing, procurement or demand assumptions weaken. Studying an unbuilt tower therefore calls for two parallel histories: what the team designed and what the developer was actually able to commission. Cancellation alone does not establish that a proposed structural system was impossible.
Read the evidence
[1] Architectural Record, 19 February 2009: financing difficulties and cancellation ↗
[2] Construction Briefing, 9 June 2009: Russia Tower ditched ↗