New Moscow park brings 'wilderness' to the city center
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With a visit from President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has inaugurated an innovative 32-acre (13-hectare) park that mimics features of Russia's landscape on land where a notoriously unsightly hotel once sprawled.
The Zaryadye Park's opening Saturday came as part of observances commemorating Moscow's 870th anniversary. The park includes artificial micro-climate areas with plants representing Russia's steppes, tundra, wetlands and forests.
The site, about 200 meters east of the Kremlin along the Moscow River, once held the immense Rossiya Hotel, a 1960s Soviet hulk that once was the world's largest hotel with some 3,000 rooms.
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The new park was designed by the American architecture practice Diller Scofidio and Renfro, which called the park's concept "wild urbanism."