More than 35 years ago, on November 4, 1967, color television screens lit up in Moscow - the Ostankino television center began broadcasting with transmitters and antennas located on the world's tallest television tower. Today the Ostankino TV Tower is recognized as an architectural monument and an engineering achievement. Its height is 533 meters. Ostankino tower- this is not only a useful structure, since its construction the structure has become one of the symbols of the capital of Russia.
History of the Ostankino TV tower
Until 1948, television broadcasting was carried out from studios on Shabolovka through antennas raised to the Shukhov Tower. But the number of programs was rapidly increasing, in addition, it was necessary to improve the quality of the television signal and expand the reception area of television and radio broadcasting programs from 60 to 120 km. The decision to build the station was made in the mid-50s. As a result of a serious competitive selection of projects, preference was given to the work of Doctor of Technical Sciences N.V. 33 design organizations, 40 specialized construction and installation departments and dozens of manufacturing plants with their own design bureaus took part in the subsequent design and construction.
Architect Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin was born in 1907 in Tobolsk. After graduating from the architectural department Faculty of Construction Tomsk Technological Institute, he worked on the construction of a number of facilities, designed many high-rise buildings in Moscow (including the Moscow State University building on the Lenin Hills), and the stadium in Luzhniki. His ideas were used in the construction of the Motherland monument on Mamayev Kurgan in . In 1932, according to his project, a wind power plant was created in. Many solutions embodied in this project were used in the construction of the Ostankino TV and Radio Broadcasting Tower.
Construction began in 1960, but immediately after the construction of the tower began, it was decided to suspend work due to doubts about the reliability of the soil. Only 2 years later, in the summer of 1963, work resumed, but the foundation had to be strengthened several times. After studying the problem, its cross-section was increased by 1.5 m in width and 2.25 m in height. All ten of its edges were compressed with a reinforced concrete cage. As a result, the foundation area was 1940 m2, and the weight was 20 thousand tons (the weight of the entire tower was 55 thousand tons), i.e. 40% of the mass of the entire structure.
Construction of the tower was completed in 1964, the total duration of construction work was 54 months.
For the first time, it was decided to place all transmitting stations in the tower itself. This was bold, since previously all over the world stations were located not in television towers, but in separate buildings that were located nearby.
In 1970, the designer of the Ostankino television tower, Doctor of Technical Sciences N.V. Nikitin, and the team of authors headed by him were awarded the Lenin Prize. Participants in the project: B. A. Zlobin - chief engineer of the project, deputy chief architect of Moscow D. I. Burdin, chief engineer of the State All-Union Design Institute M. A. Shkud, director of the design institute "Promstalkonstruktsiya" L. N. Shchipakin.
External and internal structure of the Ostankino TV tower
The tower is a hollow shell made of monolithic concrete, conical in shape, with a powerful base and an elongated top. Inside the base, along the entire length, they placed electric power cables, communication cables, water pipes, sewerage, elevator shafts (a high-speed elevator lifts people 300 meters in 50 seconds) and a metal staircase connecting all floors of the tower. The main equipment of the transmitting stations with all technical services is located on 16 floors of the lower conical part of the structure. The main television transmitter hall is located on the fifth floor. All equipment of four transmitting television stations is combined into a ring. Above is the technical floor. The sixth floor houses transmitters and sixth television programs. On the seventh floor, radio and television control rooms are located around the inner circular corridor. The remaining area was given over to separate television and radio services. The entire height of the walls is covered by 150 ropes, which are attached to the wall every 7 m. Each of the 150 ropes is stretched with a force of 70 tons.
The all-Union radio and television transmitting station was created as a multi-purpose facility. Television transmitters were immediately installed here, designed to simultaneously demonstrate five black or color television programs with sound; VHF broadcast transmitters for six programs, including two stereo; junction station of television radio relay lines for 18 main directions. We installed a station for switching programs for long-distance exchange, cable highways and space television communication channels, as well as a station for receiving and switching eight programs from mobile television stations. New powerful television and radio transmitters in the meter and decimeter ranges were developed for the transmitting station.
Ostankino TV tower today
Today the height of the Ostankino tower is 540 m, which is almost 300 m higher than the building of Moscow University on the Lenin Hills and 215 m higher than the famous one in Paris. Despite this height, the concrete tower cannot topple: its center of gravity does not and will never go beyond the support area, which is limited by a foundation ring with a diameter of 60 meters. And the center of gravity is at a height of 110 meters along the axis of the structure.
Ostankino Tower is very attractive for tourists. Three high-speed elevators take visitors to observation decks, the highest of which is at 337 m. In the good one, you can climb two openwork stairs to an open balcony located at an altitude of 340.8 m. This observation deck also serves as the lobby of the Seventh Heaven restaurant. . There are wardrobes, entrances to elevator halls, a medical room and bathrooms. From here, diners descend the stairs to one of the restaurant's three floors. Each room has 24 four-seater tables placed along the exterior windows. The restaurant is mobile: to view the panorama of the city, the ring with tables rotates around the axis of the tower 1-3 times per hour.
In addition to the main observation deck, there are two more - at levels 147 and 269 m, where they rise when the weather is strong. Throughout its existence observation deck and the high-rise restaurant “Seventh Heaven” were visited by 10 million people.
Construction work continues on the tower today. In particular, due to the fire in 2000, its restoration is still underway. According to chief engineer Alexander Demyanov, after reconstruction, the height of the Ostankino TV tower will reach 562 m. The height will increase by 22 m by replacing the flagpole with additional antennas - their installation will make it possible to improve the quality of broadcasting and increase the area of reliable TV signal reception.
Ostankino TV Tower (Russia) - description, history, location. Exact address, phone number, website. Tourist reviews, photos and videos.
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Ostankino TV tower is not just business card capital, it is a monument to the grandeur of the Soviet era and at the same time a look into the future of Russian television. Since its construction, the Ostankino TV tower has become one of the symbols of Moscow. There are two observation platforms on it: open and closed, where excursions are organized for residents and guests of the capital from May to October.
The bird's-eye view of Moscow during the day and at night is a truly impressive sight, and it will become accessible again after the renovation work is completed. The reconstruction will also expand the variety of excursions.
Created " Technical route» with an inspection of the tower from the inside, the ropes that give strength to the structure, engineering rooms, etc.
Story
The birthday of Soviet television is December 31, 1938, and the Ostankino television and radio broadcasting tower has a history of almost half a century. It was built in 1967 by a team of Soviet engineers and architects: N.V. Nikitin, B.A. Zlobin, L.I. Batalov and others.
For that time it was the tallest building in the world (540 meters). Even now, the tower ranks sixth in height among free-standing structures on the planet.
The simplicity and strength of the structure is achieved by using reinforced concrete compressed with steel cables. An equally progressive idea is associated with the foundation of the tower. It's practically gone! According to the plan of chief designer Nikitin, the stability of the tower, standing almost without a foundation on the ground, is realized due to the strong superiority of the mass of the cone-shaped base over the mass of the mast structure. The base is built with 10 supports. The prototype of the tower was an inverted lily.
Ostankino Tower
The building was built with the aim of expanding the Russian television and radio broadcasting network (the first television tower was on Shabolovka), as well as to introduce people to the capital - as an observation deck at an altitude of 337 meters.
More than 10 million people have visited the observation deck during its existence.
Previously in concert hall Ostankino broadcast films about the construction of the TV tower, and now it hosts theatrical performances, seminars and various conferences. Also in Soviet times, Muscovites and guests of the city had the opportunity to literally be in seventh heaven.
One of the main attractions of the Ostankino TV Tower is the Seventh Heaven restaurant.
It is located at an altitude of 334 meters (approximately the level of the 112th floor of a residential building) directly below the observation deck and occupies three floors, each of which makes circular movements around its axis at a speed of one or two revolutions per 40 minutes.
Excursion to the Ostankino Tower
Route No. 1
The route includes a visit to a spectacular observation deck, where you will see a 360-degree panorama of Moscow at an altitude of 337 m.
Route No. 2
The Ostankino TV tower is the tallest building in Europe; it ranks tenth in the world in height after such skyscrapers as the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, the Sky Tree TV tower in the capital of Japan and others. Its height is more than 540 meters. The owner of the structure is the Moscow Regional Center, a branch of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network.
The decision to build a new television tower, which would replace the tower built in the 20s by engineer Vladimir Shukhov on Shabolovka, was made in the late 50s. Construction took seven years, from 1960 to 1967. The first name of the tower sounded like “All-Union Radio and Television Transmitting Station named after. 50th anniversary of October".
Initially, a site for its construction was allocated in the Cheryomushki area, but then a site was found in Ostankino. The design and construction were carried out by a group of developers led by chief architect Leonid Batalov. According to the developers, new tower should have looked like an upside-down lily flower with four petals. Later, on the advice of Fritz Leonhard, the author of the TV tower project in Stuttgart, the number of reinforced concrete “petals” was increased to ten. The act of acceptance of the tower into operation was signed on the eve of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, and the authors and participants in the construction were awarded state awards.
The tower also housed the observatory of the Main Meteorological Center and a radiotelephone communication station, moved from the roof of the high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. With the commissioning of the tower, the quality and coverage of television and radio broadcasting, as well as the quality of telephone communications, immediately increased.
In the early 90s, a superstructure with antennas for FM radio transmitters, which was new for Russia, was installed at the top of the tower.
In 2000, a strong fire occurred at an altitude of 460 meters, and restoration work continued until 2008. During the fire, the famous high-rise restaurant “Seventh Heaven”, whose halls occupied three floors, burned down. The restaurant is famous for the fact that its rooms rotate, providing visitors with beautiful panoramic views of Moscow. The tower also has two observation platforms at an altitude of about 340 meters and a concert hall.
Now it seems that this is not the time high building in the world that survived the fire in 2000, it has always been there. But once upon a time it was just beginning to be built! So, a report on the construction of the television tower - with some technical details and historical photographs.
The tower, which weighs more than 32 thousand tons, was erected on a monolithic circular reinforced concrete foundation with a width of 9.5 meters, a height of 3 meters and a diameter (circumscribed circle) of 74 meters. In the decagonal reinforced concrete strip of the foundation, using a system of ring-stressed reinforcement (it consists of 104 bundles, each bundle has 24 wires with a diameter of 5 millimeters each), a preliminary stress is created - each bundle is tensioned with hydraulic jacks with a force of about 60 tons.
The foundation is laid in the ground to a depth of 4.65 meters. It is expected that it will settle by 3-3.5 centimeters. The tower's stability against overturning has a six-fold margin.
The reinforced concrete support of the entire structure is a thin-walled conical shell supported by ten reinforced concrete “legs” on the foundation benches. The diameter of the lower base of this shell is 60.6 meters, and at a height of 63 meters it is 18 meters. The upper part of the reinforced concrete shaft, starting from a height of 321 meters, is made in the form of a cylinder with an outer diameter of 8.1 meters. The thickness of the walls at the base of the tower is 500 millimeters.
In the center of the conical base, on a separate foundation (a round reinforced concrete slab with a diameter of 12 meters and a thickness of 1 meter), a reinforced concrete glass with a height of 63 meters and a diameter of 7.5 meters was erected. This glass contains high-speed elevators, power cables, communication cables, a shaft with water supply and sewer risers and an emergency steel staircase. The ends of the beams of fifteen interfloor ceilings rest on the glass, and a staircase runs between the glass and the conical base. The construction of separate foundations for two independent structures - the tower and the glass - allows different pressures to be transferred to the ground when they settle unevenly.
Under the influence of wind load, the upper part of the tower can oscillate, and the deflection of its top in strong winds can reach 10 meters. With winds that occur in Moscow quite often, on average once a week, visitors to the observation decks and restaurants will feel the vibrations of the tower in approximately the same way as the rocking of a ship with an amplitude of 8 centimeters with a period of vibration of 10 seconds.
Due to one-sided heating, the trunk moves (from curvature) at the top by 2.25 meters, at the level of the observation platforms - by 0.72 meters. To reduce deformations from wind loads and from one-sided heating, 150 steel cables were stretched at a distance of 50 millimeters from the inner surface of the barrel. Their total tension force is 10,400 tons—this is the weight of an ocean-going steamer. The cables will take on tensile forces and protect the concrete from cracks, and, consequently, the reinforcement from corrosion.
Several metal antennas with a total height of 148 meters are installed on the reinforced concrete part of the tower. The antennas are made in the form of steel pipes. There are rigid diaphragms inside the pipes. A special elevator is used to service antennas up to a height of 470 meters. To inspect and dismantle vibrators, as well as periodically paint the steel structures of the antennas, 6 platforms with railings are installed and cradles are suspended.
During the construction of the tower, the latest achievements of construction technology were widely used. A unique tower crane BK-1000 with a lifting capacity of 16 tons (with a boom reach of 45 meters) assembled and installed metal structures. The tower trunk was constructed using the world's only self-elevating unit weighing about 300 tons. Concrete was delivered to this unit by elevators.
Rice. 7.9. Scheme of construction of a television tower in Ostankino using a mechanized formwork unit: 1 - supporting part of the tower; 8 — turret trunk; 3 - formwork unit; 4 - light tap; 5 - receiving platform; 6 — loading area; 7 - tower crane
At a separate site, sections of metal antennas were assembled using a SKG-100 crawler crane (with a lifting capacity of 100 tons). This was a control assembly. At the same time, equipment was mounted on the antennas and vibrators were installed. Then the antenna sections were disassembled again, and their individual parts - drawers - were transported by crane to the loading area at a height of 63 meters. Then, using a special crane installed on the tower trunk, the first drawers were lifted to the top of the tower and mounted so that they went 10 meters inside its trunk. And after that the installation was carried out using a crawling crane.
The design of the architectural and construction part of the television tower was developed by the Central Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Buildings and Sports Facilities. Team of authors: design engineer N. Nikitin, architects D. Burdin, L. Batalov, V. Milashevsky, design engineer B. Zlobin, plumbing engineer T. Melik-Arakelyan. Separate parts of the project were developed by Mosproekt-1 and 19 other design organizations. The general design organization is GSPI of the USSR Ministry of Communications. The technological part of the project is carried out by a team of authors under the leadership of engineer I. Ostrovsky.
After control assembly and adjustment of the antennas on the stand, individual mounting elements (tsents) weighing up to 25 tons are transferred by a crawler crane to the operating area of the ring crane. He lifts the drawer to the loading platform at a height of 63 m. An overhead crane, located at a height of 385 m, lifts the drawers to another transfer site located at a height of 370 meters. Then the self-lifting crane, moving along the mounted drawers, installs the newly arriving drawers on top of each other.
The Ostankino TV Tower is a key landmark of Moscow, a grandiose structure that for a long time had no equal in the world. The tower has become a real symbol of the capital; its image can be seen on postcards, souvenirs, and T-shirts.
Tourists will be interested in the Ostankino TV Tower for its unique architectural features, amazing history, observation decks at incredible heights. In addition, guests will visit the highest restaurant in Moscow, view the exhibitions of the TV Tower Museum, and go down to the technical rooms.
The height of the Ostankino tower is 540 m: this is the sixth highest in the world, and the first in Europe. The main observation deck of the tower is located at an altitude of 337 m. A high-speed elevator takes visitors here. When a person first steps onto the site, he is breathtaking from the incredible panorama that opens before his eyes. Moscow appears in all its splendor. It seems that the huge city fits in the palm of the visitor's hand. VDNKh, Moscow State University, the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Moscow City, Luzhniki Stadium - all the main attractions of Belokamennaya are visible from the observation deck of the Ostankino TV tower.
You can see the city from the height at which the clouds form both during the day and at night - both excursions will leave a lasting impression.
A “Technical route” is also available, during which tourists will see the “filling” of the tower: ropes, engineering rooms, an elevator shaft, etc.
The construction of the Ostankino TV tower was a real triumph of Soviet architecture and engineering. Construction of the colossal structure began in 1960 and was completed in 1967. The tower project was developed by outstanding Soviet architects N. Nikitin, L. Batalov, B. Zlobin, M. Shkud.
Until 1976, when the CN Tower (Toronto, Canada) was put into operation, the Ostankino Tower was the tallest building in the world.
During construction, prestressed reinforced concrete was used, which becomes harder over the years (immediately after the tower was put into operation, the hardness coefficient reached 4 units, now it is 7). The structural strength of the structure was ensured by a unique system of steel cables located inside the tower.
Another innovative idea of Soviet engineers was related to the foundation of the tower. In fact, the structure does not have a concrete base, and its stability is achieved through 10 supports that evenly distribute the load.
The construction of the Ostankino Tower was associated with the desire of government authorities to expand the coverage of the television network. Initially, the project also included the creation of an observation deck. Since its opening, more than 10 million tourists have visited the observation deck.
Nowadays, 20 television and 24 radio channels broadcast from the Ostankino Tower.
Sights of the Ostankino TV tower
Museum
On the ground floor there is a museum, the collections of which will tell about interesting pages of the history of the Ostankino TV tower, its structure, legends and myths that have developed around this unique structure.
In addition, here guests will learn about the development of television in the USSR, from its origins to our time. Among the museum's exhibits are models of the Ostankino and Shukhov towers, parts of structures, antennas, cables, elevator equipment, and weather service sensors.
Separate exhibitions are dedicated to the designers of the Ostankino TV tower. One of the most interesting exhibits is the USSR flag, which flew on the tower until 1992.
The museum has an interactive multimedia complex: on large LCD screens, visitors can independently obtain a variety of interesting information about the tower.
Next to the museum there is a souvenir shop where you can buy badges, postcards, pens in the shape of the Ostankino TV tower, notebooks, plates and much more.
Restaurant "Seventh Heaven"
In 2016, after a 16-year reconstruction, the restaurant “Seventh Heaven” opened - the highest establishment Catering in the world. The complex occupies three floors of the tower; in order to get to the restaurant, visitors must purchase a ticket to the observation deck.
The restaurant menu includes desserts, salads, pastries, cheeseburgers, hamburgers, ice cream, and a variety of drinks. Main feature“Seventh Heaven” is a fantastic panorama bar counter. While dining, visitors look at Moscow from a 334-meter height.
The restaurant is located on a rotating platform that rotates 360 degrees in 40 minutes. Thus, guests who stay in the restaurant for a little more than half an hour will be able to look at the capital from all sides.
The Seventh Heaven restaurant has become a cult place for lovers. Young people find this place ideal for declaring their love or proposing marriage.
Excursions
Tourists are invited to take part in an excursion along one of two routes. The first route involves visiting the observation deck at 337 m. The second route is more complete, it includes a guided tour of the tower’s interior up to 85 m. Then tourists board an elevator and go up to the observation deck at 337 m.
The highlight of the second route is access to an open area located at an altitude of 340 m. This part of the excursion is only possible in good weather. The maximum number of people in a tour group is 10 people.
After the tour, guests will be able to go down to the Seventh Heaven restaurant.
Video about the history of the creation of television and radio broadcasting in Russia:
