Have you come across reels criticising the new skyscraper in New York, which is being berated for blocking the view of the Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue?

Have you come across reels criticising the new skyscraper in New York, which is being berated for blocking the view of the Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue? These lamentations have been turning up in my feed for a week now, and New Yorker acquaintances confirm that everyone is indeed talking about the building. And it turns out that it was built by a Moscow architectural practice.

Yes, this is the first high-rise by Russian architects in the United States. The architect is the Moscow practice Meganom, which is designing the extension of the Pushkin Museum and built the Tsvetnoy department store, named the world's best department store in 2013, ahead of Harrods.

Angry commentators call the 262 Fifth Avenue tower a city blunder and a bank vault for oligarchs. The complaint is, strictly speaking, a single one: the tower has walled off one of Manhattan's main urban corridors, which opened to the pedestrian between the Flatiron and the Empire State. Now, instead of a striking picture of one of New York's symbols in the stories of every influencer in town, there are 262 metres of aluminium and glass.

They write that the building contains only 26 apartments, with prices starting at 18 million. The developer is a native of Latvia and a citizen of Israel who made his fortune on elite Moscow real estate in the 1990s and 2000s, specifically by building up Ostozhenka, with the remark that "it is hard for oligarchs to live in an ordinary building". They write that the site for this project was acquired in the 2010s, and that the city council approved the construction of a new skyscraper on it at the time, despite the protests of the Empire State's owners, who had proposed a protected zone. So far as I know, New York has just one officially protected panorama, the view from the Brooklyn Heights promenade.

But we are not in New York, which in present circumstances is more a fact than a choice, so while some propose finding a billionaire who would buy out and demolish this architectural achievement, I suggest simply rejoicing for our compatriots, who have expanded the geography of their projects as never before.