By Eurasia Business News – November 18, 2020

Yandex announced the project in June 2020 – Photo credit : Yandex

The Moscow architecture administration has agreed on the concept of the new headquarters of the Russian IT giant Yandex which will be located in the Gagarinsky district . The location is both close to the prestigious Moscow State University, known as “MGU” and to the financial and business center “Moskva City”.

The Gagarinsky District has a special meaning to Yandex. This is the area where the IT giant began its activities in the 1990’s. The company’s first office was nearby, on Vavilova Street.

Last June Yandex announced plans for its new headquarters, with a titanium-plated façade and a publicly accessible covered atrium connecting the building with its surroundings.

Sergey Kuznetsov, the chief architect of the Moscow administration commented :

“The Yandex headquarters project will become another example of the implementation of complex, technologically advanced, modern architecture in Moscow. The facades will be faced with titanium panels of a light shade, part of the walls and the atrium will be covered with stained glass. The roof will have a complex contour with exploited terraces along the facade and on the roof.”

The complex will be built on the Kosygin Street, on the site of the former Korston Club Hotel. It will visually represent three wings of different heights, united by a central atrium with a transparent roof and public space. The new building will be comparable in height to the former Korston Club hotel.  The area of the headquarters will be 170 thousand square meters and the maximum height will be 75 meters.

Yandex plans to launch free buses to the headquarters from the Universitet and Leninsky Prospekt metro stations and the Gagarina Square MCC station. Citizens will be able to use them. The building will provide a multi-level underground parking for employees, part of which will be occupied by Yandex.Drive cars, which will be also available to local residents.

The Yandex headquarters is designed to make it easy for people to work together no matter where they are. For example, there will be many meeting rooms for teamwork. The building will be equipped with two large conference rooms, an educational complex, a lecture hall and a Yandex museum dedicated to the computer technology. Dining rooms, coffee shops, gyms and a swimming pool, as well as a spacious roof terrace will be available to Yandex employees.

In addition, a new park with an area of ​​about 2 hectares will appear near the building between Akademik Zelinsky and Akademik Zeldovich streets. Its improvement will also be financed by Yandex.

The author of the Yandex headquarters project is the London-based PLP Architecture, led by the founding partner and the chief architect Lee Polisano. The Russian architecture firms APEX and RTDA take part in the design. The landscape design will be developed by Arteza, which participated in the creation of the Zaryadye park opened in September 2017 near the Kremlin. The project developer is MR Group, a residential and commercial real estate.

It was reported in December 2018 that Yandex closed a deal to buy a plot for USD 145 million for a new headquarters at 15, Kosygin Street. 

Yandex currently rents 27,000 sq. m. of office space in the Aurora business park and 61,000 sq. m. in the Krasnaya Roza business center in Moscow. The lease agreements for both offices will expire on December 31, 2021. About 6.5 thousand employees now work in Yandex’s Moscow offices.

Dismantling of the building of the Korston Hotel will begin before the end of 2020 while the construction phase will start after the approval of the project documentation and the grant of the relevant construction permits.

The Yandex priority area is the development of its search engine , but over the years the company has become a multi-portal provider of services. Yandex.Drive, a car sharing service, was launched in December 2017 and Yandex.Eats was launched in January 2018.

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