For the time being, there is no question of Le Corbusier’s creation — renovated in 2013— being touched.

It is classified as a protected historic monument by the authorities and the current inhabitants — state statistics agency Rosstat — have no intention of moving out.

But the potential destruction of two neighbouring late 19th century residential buildings to make way for the new business centre has set some preservationists on edge.

“If this project is realised it will change in a very regrettable way the immediate environment of the Tsentrosoyuz,” Antoine Picon, the president of the Fondation Le Corbusier, wrote in a letter sent in January to Russia’s Culture Minister and the Mayor of Moscow.

“The design took into account the make-up of the buildings that existed at the time,” he wrote. Mr. Picon said that he was still to receive a reply to his letter.

The Moscow building applied some of Le Corbusier’s architectural principles, including a curtain-wall façade and flat roof, and was made of concrete and red tuff stone, a type of volcanic rock.