New lease of life for historic Tsum in Kiev

The re-opening of the Tsum Shopping Centre at the crossroads between Khreshchatyk Street and Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street in Kiev in 2016 gave the city back one of its most significant landmarks. Tsum has a long history, starting in 1939, when Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev, a Russian architect with a reputation for working in a wide range of styles, designed it as a bookshop. Bombed to destruction in the Second World War, it was rebuilt two years later, and then extended in 1956, but retained its original façade throughout. Tsum was taken over by Esta Holding (the real estate division of Esta Group) in 2010, and the new owners decided to close it in 2012 in order to carry out a full renovation of the site. Four years and a hundred million dollars later, the work was finally completed. The brief given to Benoy, a London-based firm of architects, was to preserve Tsum’s characteristic features, in recognition of the depth of its historical and cultural roots in the city, while at the same time updating them for a 21st Century clientele. In keeping with this, the Art Deco façades from 1939 and 1956 were secured to a metal framework for safety reasons, and then restored. After the complete demolition of all the existing structures, the interior space was remodelled in line with the most advanced concepts of contemporary shopping. During the course of preliminary examinations of the building, the façade walls of the sixth and seventh floors (which were added to the original complex at a later date) were found to have design defects that could have threatened the success of the entire reconstruction. Because of its poor quality and lack of strength, the original brickwork could have caused the walls to collapse, so was completely dismantled and faithfully rebuilt. In view of the need to work in close proximity to other buildings, the biggest difficulties lay in the construction of the foundations and the underpinnings of the three new floors below street level. For the excavation work, use was made of the Top-Down system, which is basically the opposite of the traditional building process, and minimises the negative impact of construction work on neighbouring buildings. The reinforced concrete floor slab nearest the ground floor was therefore laid first. Beneath it, out of sight, the building contractors then used small earth-moving machines to continue the excavation work to the depth of the next floor slab down, and so on down to the foundations. At certain points, steel anchoring systems were used, in addition to the palisade of micropiles, to shore up the walls of the excavation. The iconic new Tsum has ten floors and total floor space of 45,000 square metres. One of its most striking features is the free-form void in its centre, which accommodates the elevators. Two of the three underground floors serve as car parks (180 spaces), while the third houses the menswear and footwear departments. With the other seven overground floors, the total available commercial floor space amounts to 23,500 square metres. On the seventh floor, there’s a range of cafés, bars and restaurants, plus a panoramic terrace measuring 1000 square metres. For the Tsum project, Atlas Concorde supplied a substantial quantity of porcelain floor tile and white-body wall tile, which plays a decisive role in creating different atmospheres in the various areas. Indoors, the architects chose the concrete-effect Evolve series and the marble-effect Marvel Pro, Marvel and Sign series. Outdoors, meanwhile, they opted for the Etic Pro and Sunrock series, which draw inspiration from wood and stone respectively.