Cosmos (hotel, Moscow)

The Cosmos Hotel was built in 1976-1979 to receive foreign guests who were expected in Moscow at the Games of the XXII Olympiad . The hotel became the first experience of the joint work of architects of the Soviet country and the capitalist west after the Le Corbusier Centro Union building : specialists from France, who was considered the closest friend of the USSR in the West, were involved for a large-scale demonstration project. From the Soviet side, the authors of the Mosproject-1 team worked on the project (architects V. Andreev, T. Zaikin, V. Steiskal; engineers V. Kandaurov, I. Samsonov, N. Ivanov), and from the French, employees of the Söfr company ( O. Kakub, P. Jugle, S. Epstein), construction work was carried out by specialists from friendly Yugoslavia ^[3] . The construction was carried out using technical innovations: a concrete plant worked directly on the construction site, concrete was heated in the formwork by infrared irradiators, bolted joints were used instead of embedded parts. Modern technologies have allowed to complete the construction in a short time - in just 3 years. The official opening took place on July 18, 1979 ^[4] . As part of the opening ceremonies, concerts were held by the Soviet singer Alla Pugacheva and the French singer and composer Joe Dassin, popular in the USSR ^[5] .

During the Olympics-80 in the "Cosmos" hosted the Olympic Press Center. After the Olympics, the hotel was repeatedly used as a platform for other international, all-Union and all-Russian events. In 1984, the Cosmos hosted the International Congress of Cosmonauts and Astronauts, in 1985 - the International Festival of Youth and Students, in 1989 - the international beauty contest "Miss Charm", in 1995 - the International Chess Olympiad, and in 1996 the hotel again housed the press center of the big sports - Goodwill Games ^{[6] [7]} . Some notable creative events took place here: the Morning Star was filmed, the Crystal Rook competition and the All-Russian project People's Artist - 2 were held ^[8] . From 2005 to 2014, Cosmos hosted the annual Conference of game developers ^{[9] [10]} .

The 25-storey Cosmos is located on the site between Mira Avenue , Kosmonavtov Street and Yaroslavskaya Street on the site of a 1-storey residential building demolished in the early 1970s ^[11] . According to the original idea of ​​the architects, the semicircular building of the hotel echoed the semicircle of the main entrance to the Exhibition of Economic Achievements and closed the axis of the main alley of the exhibition, but it was not possible to place Cosmos at the proposed location due to the proximity of Cosmonauts Street and Peace Avenue. As a result, the hotel was shifted to the northeast, and its massive volume and centric composition gave the neighborhood a new axis of symmetry. The building was largely innovative for the USSR: for the first time 3-chamber double - glazed windows were used here, the heating control system relied on data from numerous sensors on the facade of the building, key cards were used to enter the rooms and calculate on the hotel premises, in addition, Cosmos had the first in Soviet hotels bowling and a quasi-electronic automatic telephone exchange for conference calls . Technical innovations in construction and metal cladding in combination with scale gave the hotel a resemblance to the high-tech architectural style ^[4] .

In 1990, the area between Cosmos and Prospect Mira received the name of the French military and statesman Charles de Gaulle ^[6] . 15 years later, in the presence of the incumbent presidents of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac , an 8-meter monument to de Gaulle by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli and architect Alexander Kuzmin was solemnly erected ^[7] .

"Cosmos" was built to accommodate foreign tourists and delegations and was one of 4 Soviet hotels that had the status of "international class hotels" and the category of "luxury" in accordance with the "Regulation on the classification of hotels and hotel rooms to categories" (except he included “International” in Moscow, as well as “Baltic” and “Pulkovskaya” in Leningrad) ^[12] .

To ensure the work of the KGB, some of the rooms were equipped for covert surveillance, photographing and acoustic monitoring of foreigners and their guests ^[13] . In total, according to the original design, 1777 rooms were provided in the building: 1718 standard with double beds, 53 two-room and 6 three-room. The hotel food chain was designed for 3,500 guests. With modern redesigning, the ratio of rooms has changed while maintaining the total number due to apartments and suites of different levels ^[8] . Nevertheless, Cosmos retained the status of the most capacious hotel in the country with a separate entry in the Russian Book of Records, and also remained the most visited in the history of the country. In 2004, Cosmos received the 7 millionth guest - Englishwoman Michelle Collins ^{[14] [7]} .

In the modern "Cosmos" there are 1777 rooms, including 1383 standard rooms, 332 superior rooms, 45 suites and junior suites, 6 apartments and 5 luxury-grand rooms. The hotel has a business center with 7 conference rooms for 10-250 people and a congress hall for 1000 people, as well as exhibition areas of up to 1300 m². The hotel has 4 restaurants, souvenir, newspaper and pharmacy kiosks, a hairdresser, a beauty salon and a medical center ^[15] .

Cosmos is a member of the Moscow Association of Hotels and Travel Organizations, the Russian Hotel Association and the International Association of Congresses and Conferences, and is the founder of the non-profit organization Interregional Fund for Sustainable Tourism Development .

• In 2006, Cosmos detained the self-proclaimed psychic healer Grigory Grabovoi , who was widely known 2 years earlier thanks to promises to resurrect the children who died during the hostage-taking in school No. 1 of Beslan . Also, the congresses of his supporters were held at the hotel ^{[16] [17]} .
• In January 2010, an accident occurred in which a Cosmos employee became a victim because of a breakdown in the heating main valve. The maid took the elevator down to the basement, and when the doors opened, from a breakthrough of the main 20-cm heating pipe, water poured onto her at a temperature of 130 ° C. From the burns the woman died on the spot ^{[8] [18]} .
• In December 2011, in Cosmos, in his room after a conflict with a hotel bartender, 70-year-old English writer and guide author Colin Adams died ^[19] . According to the original version of law enforcement agencies, a fight broke out between the two men while intoxicated, and the cause of death was a head injury, but after a forensic examination, the police called the cause of death heart failure ^{[20] [21]} . Relatives of the deceased were not satisfied with the conclusions of the Moscow police and initiated an independent investigation. According to the ex-wife of an Englishman who arrived in Moscow for the things of the deceased, Adams received 2 serious head injuries shortly before his death, and a second autopsy performed in the UK showed that Russian pathologists for some reason removed one of the kidneys from the Englishman. Despite the intervention of the British embassy, ​​Moscow police refused to provide relatives with videos from the scene of the incident, which would help restore the course of events. On the suspicion of the writer’s family, Russian law enforcement authorities concealed the fact of the murder in order to protect the reputation of the Cosmos Hotel ^{[22] [23]} .

• In front of the hotel’s main entrance, a video was shot for the song “Olympiad-80”, dedicated to the Games of the XXII Olympiad and performed by singer Tynis Myagi ^[8] .
• In Timur Bekmambetov ’s 2005 film “Day Watch” , the Moscow headquarters of the Day Watch was located in the hotel building. Part of the filming also took place on the premises of the hotel. One of the scenes related to the Cosmos is the passage of the witch Alisa Donnikova's Mazda car performed by Jeanne Friske along the facade of the building ^{[4] [8]} .
• In Pavel Arsenov’s film “A Guest from the Future,” in the 1st part, the main character, Kolya Gerasimov ( Alexey Fomkin ) flies past a hotel on a flip (a personal aerial vehicle the size of a mini-car). In reality, when shooting this episode, a smaller layout was used.

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