The Shabolovka radio tower faces demolition

The tower is a stunning example of the ambition and spectacle that marked this era of Soviet architecture. The building, a display of the desire for a cutting edge social movement, is fittingly located near the Moscow Kremlin. This Eiffel Tower of the new Russia, a 50-story hyperboloid in structure of steel mesh, was built under commissioned by Lenin and completed in 1922.

The Moscow Times is reporting that the more than 90-year-old Shukhov Radio and Television Tower is "likely to be dismantled." They quote the Communications and Press Ministry's call for immediately dismantling the tower that has been in a state of disrepair for some time: "The only possible option for a solution to the problem is a two stage reconstruction and renovation of the radio tower, which stipulates in the first stage its dismantling for the conservation and preservation of elements for later restoration."

The tower was intended to spread the word of Communism through the new radio technology and its pyramidal, mesh design suggests the architect’s desire to perpetuate the sense of daring and excitement that characterized the time during which it was built, and also a revolutionary ambition. Supported on a shallow ring of concrete, the tower is a diaphanous web rising into the sky. Only a shortage of materials thwarted plans to make it more than twice as tall — higher than Gustave Eiffel’s earlier creation in Paris. Even at that greater height, Shukhov’s construction was so efficient and elegant that his tower would have been a quarter of the Eiffel Tower’s weight.

Among the signatories to the petition are the architects Tadao Ando, Henry N. Cobb, Elizabeth Diller, Rem Koolhaas and Thom Mayne; the engineers Guy Nordenson and Leslie E. Robertson; and the Tate Museums director Nicholas Serota. The petition was written by Jean-Louis Cohen, the architectural historian, along with Richard Pare, the British photographer, both specialists in buildings and monuments of the Soviet era.

“The impression when you stand beneath it is unforgettable,” said Richard Pare. Vladimir V. Putin expressed, in 2009, support for restoring the tower and making it a tourist attraction, but nothing came of that. Far away of tourist routes, the radio tower has been allowed to deteriorate for years, corroding while government authorities in Moscow debated its fate. In 2010, the British architect Norman Foster joined a campaign to save the tower, which he called “a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historical importance.” Shukhov’s work is said to have partly inspired Norman Foster’s so-called Gherkin, in London.

The news comes two years after Vladimir Shukhov called for restoration work to begin immediately on the tower, lest "it would be simpler to order that the tower be demolished, so that it shames neither my ancestors nor our country," as he said in a news conference at the time.

An array of international architects, engineers, academics and cultural leaders has signed a petition pleading with President Putin to override the committee’s decision and spare the tower.