Amazing Architecture 1 – Resort Druzhba in Yalta

It looks like a huge planetary gearset from the sky but when it was built in 1985 Turkish spies thought it was another dangerous military object built to support the Cold War effort. No, it’s a seaside resort “Druzhba” built on the shoreline of Yalta on Crimea, Ukraine.

The uniqueness of this amazing architectural object is in the structure and the fact that something like that could only be built in Soviet Union (where they apparently had unlimited amount of resources).

Druzhba project was begun early in the 80s by Mr Vasylievsky (architect) and Nodar Kancheli (engineer). You might have heard about Kancheli – he’s a great talent – he’s more of a mathematician than a building engineer and that’s why he’s come up with some really amazing structures.

He was on the cutting edge of the modern Soviet architecture; and Kancheli is great even by the standards of the Western world.

The structure of Druzhba was a challenge – it’s difficult to get your head around this, although the basic principle is rather simple.

After a careful ground inspection three huge concrete towers were planted in the shoreline. This part of the world has a very solid cliff on the shoreline, so the building is actually very safe.

Two enormous concrete doughnuts (76 metres in diameter) were then seated on ledges protruding from the towers. The upper two floors laid out in three additional roundhouses are sitting on top of the upper doughnut. So in effect the whole 6-storey mammoth is propped by only three ledges. They are mighty strong ledges, mind you.

On one of the pictures you can see how the concrete ring forming the base of the first doughnut is being constructed around the towers. The frontal tower is 55 metres high, the two far towers are 40 metres high.

At first you think – what an ostentatious building. But when you play with the idea in your head for a while, you see that it is actually very functional.

To fit 400 cosy rooms within just 6 storeys, you’d need quite s hefty box-like structure. It would be prolonged and ugly, having long corridors.

With Druzhba, however, the towers aren’t there for support only – they are hollow with lifts and a stair-case inside each. What this achieves is a very convenient access to the rooms. Alternatively, you’d need to go upwards in order to house 400 rooms in one structure and spoil the beautiful shoreline.

It is difficult to estimate the costs of the project. Ultimate architecture like that costs a lot – could be around 250 million pounds. Maybe more. The trickiest part of crazy architecture is to get the safety element right.

If you take a sheet of paper and a pencil, you can draw any amount of weird architectural structures – as far as your imagination stretches. The other question is if it is possible to build it in a safe way.

As for Druzhba, it is still standing strong. Although now called Kurpaty, everyone still calls it Druzhba (Friedship), it is a proper resort also offering various health improvement plans for its guests. If you’re an adventurous person and you still haven’t booked your holiday, here’s the address: 12-a Alupkinske Way, Yalta, Crimea, 98656, Ukraine. The phone is +38 (0654) 24-83-09. And no, I’m not affiliated with this hotel 🙂