Moldtelecom

Slip-formed monolithic concrete gives the sixteen-storey Moldtelecom tower on Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard its severe, unornamented character, the rough texture of the pour still visible at the rounded corners where the plaster cladding has deteriorated. Alexandr Kireev, Nicolai Dorofeev, S. Mukhin, and Vladimir Shaloginov completed it in 1983, the year Brezhnev died and the programme of high-rise development along the boulevard began to stall. The tower was built as an expansion of the Communications Ministry complex, standing next to Victor Dubok's Inter-City Telephone Exchange from the 1960s, with a shorter expressive building between them completing a three-part ensemble. Vertical strips of windows run the full height of the facade, punctuated by plastic panel accents, while two overhanging technical floors near the crown, supported by curved cantilevers and fitted with rhomboidal air vent casings, give the building a slightly top-heavy profile. A cylindrical antenna structure on the roof and a stainless-steel entry canopy with a dynamic wing-like profile are the building's two most distinctive details, one futuristic in gesture, the other a rare example of refined material handling in an otherwise austere structure. The tower belongs to a cluster of boulevard buildings produced under the 1971 city plan, which also generated the Publishers' House and the Ministry of Agriculture. Its construction using slip forming was both a technical and a civic statement: in a city in a seismically active zone, a sixteen-storey monolithic concrete tower signalled modernity and engineering confidence.