Zaha Hadid Architects has won the Admiral Serebryakov Embankment competition, an international master planning contest for Novorossiysk, a Russian city on the Black Sea coast with the nation’s largest shipping port. Created in collaboration with local architecture firm Pride TPO, the winning master plan aims to reconnect the city with its coast and celebrate the region’s rich industrial history and relationship with the sea. The master plan will introduce a diverse mix of programming and facilities that prioritize non-vehicular circulation. As the nation’s main port on the Black Sea, the southern Russian city of Novorossiysk connects the country with the Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and the Suez Canal. The city is the third-busiest port in Europe by turnover and is the leading Russian port for exporting grain. Zaha Hadid Architects and Pride TPO tap into Novorossiysk’s rich history and traditions as a center of trade in their master plan. The 13.9-hectare master plan is a phased development of nine principal buildings with a total floor area of approximately 300,000 square meters. Applying the concept of “instancing”, in which nine iterations of a single form evolve in a gradient across the site, the configuration of each building is established according to its unique function, conditions, and requirements. The master plan’s first phase will include facilities for civic, cultural, and corporate events as well as a hotel. More than 40 teams from 13 countries took part in the competition. Construction of the master plan’s first phase is projected to start in the second half of 2019.

The most expensive mansion in Russia was put on sale for about US$ 98,6 million. The mansion with 1700 square meters of total area is located in the closed cottage village «Florance», 5 kilometers from MKAD along the Rublevo-Uspenskoe highway. The mansion consists of 5 furnished bedrooms with their own bathrooms and cloakrooms, four office rooms, spa area with swimming pool, sauna, solarium, beauty salon, cinema, billiard, library and so on. The mansion is located on a plot of 11 thousand square meters. On the site there is a reception house with professional kitchen and conference hall, a garage for six cars, a mini-farm, year-round greenhouses, and ponds equipped for fishing.

Volcano shaped hotel complex with erupting lava effect is being built in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The project developer is «New House» LLC, reported the Ministry for Development of the Russian Far East. The project estimated investment is US$ 22 million. The hotel’s total floor area will reach 280 thousand square meters and will include 180 rooms, a 25 meters swimming pool, a spa, a Korean bathhouse, a bar and a 600-seat concert hall. Now hotel main tower construction is underway. The opening ceremony is scheduled in 2019.

Russia has announced big plans for a superhighway that would effectively connect all the continents in the Northern Hemisphere, making it possible to travel from New York westward through Russia and on to London without the need for an airplane or a boat. The exact route hasn't been determined yet, but what is clear is that a plan such as this would create the largest, longest superhighway on Earth. The idea, dubbed the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TERP), would see a high speed railway and motorway built from Eastern Europe, across Siberia and over the Bering Strait to Alaska. At a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science, the head of the Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin presented the idea for the Trans-Eurasian belt Development (TEPR). Mr Yakunin has been engaged in the development of the project with academic Gennady Osipov and the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichy. During the meeting Vladimir Yakunin told that the project could link existing networks and supercharge global economic growth. The project would see not only a new train network built alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway but the construction of major roads, pipelines for oil and gas, and the laying of facilities for electricity and water supplies. "This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world "future zone", and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies," he said, according to the Siberian Times newspaper. If the idea is successful, it is expected that could create 10 to 15 new industries, new cities and a huge number of new jobs, as well as further development of Siberia and the Far East. Talking about a rough estimate for the costs of the project he said that it will require trillions of dollars, but insisted the economic returns would outweigh these investments. Today not all countries can provide high-speed railway network needed for this project. In Eastern Europe the European Union is separately drawing up plans for a high speed rail corridor to connect the Baltic States to Western Europe's high speed rail network - which runs through the Channel Tunnel to London. North American passenger railways are comparative undeveloped, however. Plans drawn up by President Obama to develop high speed rail corridors across the United States have stalled amid opposition. Bridges and tunnels spanning the Bering Strait have been proposed since the late 19th century but none has ever been built. The Russian government has expressed public support for a number of proposals in recent years but ground has not been broken on any of them, reported The Independent. China and Russia also unveiled a separate plan last year to connect, as well as a plan for a continent-spanning rail network that could cross the Bering Strait .

China and Russia are considering building a high-speed rail line thousands of kilometers from Moscow to Beijing that would cut the journey time from six days on the celebrated Trans-Siberian to two. The 803-kilometre line would be the first stage of the route to Beijing. The project would cost more than US$ 230 billion and be over 7,000 kilometers long, more than three times the world's current longest high-speed line, from the Chinese capital to the southern city of Guangzhou. At present, trains between the two run along the Trans-Siberian railway that links Moscow and Vladivostok, before switching to a branch line heading south through the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator. Direct passenger trains between Beijing and Moscow went into operation in 1954 and there are still two services per week.