Power to the People.

Originally designed by Vasili Bashkirov, the building has been radically reinvented by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) to become a glowing contemporary-art space, the new permanent home of the V-A-C. Foundation, created by director Teresa Mavica and Leonid Mikhelson, the country's wealthiest man, to promote contemporary art from Russia and nations of the former Soviet Union. BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,038 RENOVATION, RESTORATION, ADAPTIVE REUSE JOINING MOSCOW'S cathedrals, skyscrapers, and industrial chimneys, spewing steam and smoke as stark vertical elements on the skyline, are the four bright blue, slender pipes of GES-2 House of Culture. In the course of its its operating life, the power station had become hemmed in by a dense amalgamation of redundant industrial buildings, most of which have now been cleared away to make open space once again around the GES-2 site. [Extracted from the article]