Federation Tower

This guide to Federation Tower in Moscow opens with a 2012 fire that broke out sixty-five floors up the still-unfinished skyscraper, with helicopters dumping water because no ladder on earth reached that high, and the question it left critics asking about a glass giant built fast on hope and borrowed money. It goes back to 2005, when construction began, and to November 2008, when global markets collapsed and the money ran out, leaving the half-built skeleton frozen for nearly three years.