EDDEA and Atlántica win several contracts to design a new urban district in Moscow
Atlántica, the company created by EDDEA, Ghenova and Galia, has won three contracts to plan urban development in Moscow, an initiative involving more than 100,000 hours of work and covering the design of an entire new district with housing, social facilities and commercial uses.
The newspaper EXPANSIÓN – Spain’s leading business daily – reported in its print and online editions on this contract, in which the Spanish company prevailed over major international firms thanks to its commitment to technology, which allows it to deliver housing at scale with higher quality and lower prices.
The tenders range from a 500-hectare district – with 35,000 homes and all social facilities – to the design of the new financial and residential centre of the Odintosvo neighbourhood, by way of a 4,800-apartment pilot project which, for the first time in many years, revives the closed perimeter block, so common in Europe and banished from urban planning manuals under communism.
Atlántica, based in Seville and structured as a Technology Platform, is owned by three companies specialising in different fields: architecture (EDDEA), naval and aeronautical engineering (Ghenova) and real estate (Galia). Its guiding principle is that it is possible to build differently from the way we do today, applying technology and certain working models already used in other industries, the newspaper notes.
Other Spanish partners have since joined the consortium, such as Medio Mundo (design and architecture), Geographica (geospatial technologies) and the Catalan public company BCNecologia, dedicated to rethinking cities through the lens of sustainability.
EXPANSIÓN highlights that Moscow is at a key moment in its recent history, establishing itself as the European city whose physiognomy is changing most radically. In this process the Russian capital faces a paradox: it is one of the three most expensive cities in the world and has the second-largest number of millionaires after New York, yet it needs affordable housing produced at scale.
Its urban plans provide for new districts along the southern arc, over an area of 16,000 hectares – that is, 160 square kilometres. To grasp the scale of these figures, it is equivalent to creating from nothing an area larger than the city of Barcelona or Valencia.
Standardised blocks
“One of the most highly valued aspects of our proposal is our commitment to building the new residential centres from standardised blocks. This makes it possible to deliver high quality at much more affordable prices,” explains José María de Cárdenas, one of the driving forces behind Atlántica.
The architect is a firm believer in joining forces to grow. “To compete abroad you have to form alliances, especially as SMEs – that is how we can access large contracts,” stresses De Cárdenas, also a partner at EDDEA, a studio that does most of its business abroad, notably the design of the future ‘Pop City’ in Taiwan, a mega-complex devoted to the music industry.
He also speaks up for Brand Spain and the country’s much-maligned construction sector: “Not everything about the bubble was bad; it left Spain with a great infrastructure of knowledge in urban planning, construction and concessions. Contracts such as the high-speed railway to Mecca, the Lima metro and the Panama Canal show that we can compete against anyone from any country.”
