Hotel Rossiya project, Moscow 2005

I photographed Hotel Rossiya in 2005, shortly before its closure and demolition. By then the building was already in decline, but its scale still communicated the ambitions of the system that had produced it. Completed in 1967 beside the Kremlin, it contained 2,722 rooms and could accommodate around 5,000 guests. With kilometres of corridors, restaurants, cafés, cinemas, a concert hall and extensive service areas, it functioned less like an ordinary hotel than a vast state institution. It was built to house delegates to Communist Party congresses and sessions of the Supreme Soviet, as well as official and foreign guests visiting Moscow.