Towering at a height of 462m, the Lakhta Centre in St Petersburg became Europe’s tallest skyscraper when the structural work finished in January this year, but now a bizarre row has broken out over who actually designed it.
Gorproject, a practice in Moscow, has threatened to take legal action against Tony Kettle, a leading British architect, for claiming “authorship” of the twisting spire on the Gulf of Finland, which will house the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a concert hall, a planetarium and Europe’s highest panoramic restaurant.
In response, Kettle has accused the firm of “the architectural equivalent of fake news”. He has threatened to countersue, claiming that Gorproject’s chief architect, Philip Nikandrov, was attempting to “rewrite history”.
