In April 1929, the territory of two properties facing Novinski Boulevard, the so-called "Shalyapinskiy Park",[23]​ a green space behind a row of century houses was allocated for the construction of a house for employees of the People's Commissariat of Finance, along the Garden Ring, in one of which Fyodor Chaliapin lived between 1910-1922. The territory slopes gently to the Présnensky pond, which in 1925 was channeled along this section.[11] Development plans provided for the complete demolition of the existing houses and courtyards, including the outbuildings and the courtyard of the Chaliapin house, but in the end, not a single building was demolished during the construction of the Narkomfin building. The Sinichka River flows beneath the house, enclosed in a canal.[15]​.

Composition of the residential complex

In the design documentation, the house was called the second house of the Narkomfin. According to the project, the complex was supposed to consist of four buildings:.

1. • Residential, for 50 families and about 200 people. Built.

2. • Communal, connected to a warm residential passage with hinges: with kitchen, two dining rooms - indoor and summer on the roof, as well as a gym and library. Built, the kitchen operated in the 1930s selling takeaway food. The dining room was not working.

3. • A separate kindergarten building with a nursery was planned in a rectangular area between the house and the communal building. It has not been implemented. In 1934, the kindergarten was located in a communal building, in the dining room. It existed until 1941.

4. • The "service yard", which included a mechanical laundry, a dryer and a garage, faced Novinski Boulevard. Completed, the laundry was operational—it served residents into the 1930s.

The construction of a second residential building with large apartments, type K or D cells, was also planned next to the Narkomfin building.

Spatial organization of the complex

Three main volumes: a residential building, a communal building and an unfinished kindergarten, were planned as a rhythmically balanced ensemble of buildings of different sizes. They were lined by the laundry building, in front of which, from the side of Novinsky Boulevard, it was planned to organize a square platform, compositionally connecting this building with the city. The house and the laundry building were partially raised on columns, which freed up the passage space on the ground floor (2.5 m high). According to the architects' plan, by passing under the laundry building through the "front yard" in front of the Novinski Bulevard entrance, along a diagonal alley, one could enter the public area of ​​the complex, or through another alley through a residential building at the level of the open first floor, towards the park behind the building where there was a kind of observation deck.[16]​.

Architecture of a residential building

The architecture of the residential building was unusual and impressive for the late 1920s, especially considering the old Moscow environment. Residents of the nearest districts called it a "boat-house" ("steam-house" according to E. Miliútina); However, this epithet is applied to many modernist buildings. The authors of the project, Guínzburg and Milinis, managed to organize the living cells in a single building in such an unusual way that it even interested Le Corbusier himself, who visited the Narkomfin building and visited

personally Nikolai Miliutin's apartment.[24]​.

In an explanatory note on the project, Guínzburg explains the appearance of the open first floor as follows: "Due to the unevenness of the site, which in such cases causes a large surface area of ​​the basement, in this case, the house is mostly raised to a height of 2.5 meters on separate pillars, which is more economical and, in addition, keeps the park area intact."[16]​.

The book "Housing" says more succinctly: "The whole house is located in the park."[25] This refers to the remains of the "Shalyapinskiy" park, the surviving parts of the mansion's gardens. Additionally, in 1937, trees were transplanted to the park around the Narkomfin building from the reconstructed Garden Ring, which was covered with asphalt and the entire garden line was demolished. As a result, one of Guínzburg's arguments in favor of an open first floor and a "house with legs" was "not to cut off the territory of the park with a house."[25]

Other arguments by Guínzburg in favor of an open first floor on supports:

1. • The first floor is the least suitable for living, and the tenants of the only apartment on the ground floor of the house are forced to close the windows with curtains all the time.

2. • Due to the size of the pre-revolutionary rent, it is known that the first floor apartments were valued lower.

3. • «The opportunity to tear the building from the ground, ... to bring the perception of a person, spatially clean and clear, seemed tempting for compositional considerations».[25]​.

4. • In 1927, Le Corbusier published his Five Points of Modern Architecture in L'Esprit Nouveau. The first of them are the free supports of the first floor (pilotis).

The residential building is a six-story building block 85 m long and 17 m high, stretched from south to north, the bedrooms and corridors are grouped along the eastern facade, the living rooms along the western one, respectively, the rooms receive the morning sun, the living rooms in the evening. Closer to the ends there are two staircases connected to each other and to the apartments by two wide corridors – 4 m wide and 2.3 m high – on the second and fifth floors. Guínzburg calls the hallways horizontal arteries and contrasts them with vertical stairs: the hallways were supposed to make it easier for apartment residents to communicate with public service facilities. On the other hand, the architect interpreted the hallways as public spaces "a place of public stay."[26]​.

The typing section of the Stroykom of the USSR developed five main types of residential units: A, B, C, D and F. The largest of them, cell A, meant three- and two-room apartments, B - only two-room apartments. The minimum was cell F, designed for a living area of ​​25-30 m².

Three types of apartments were used in the Narkomfin building – according to Guínzburg, “Housing” (1934) – there are actually about a dozen types of apartment cells. The second and third floors were occupied by eight type K apartments, according to Guínzburg, in reality, nine type K apartments, intended for large families. On the top three floors, from the fourth to the sixth, there are 32 small type F apartments, according to Guínzburg, actually 24 small type F apartments, designed for one person or for a married couple without children. At the ends of the house, separated from the central part by stairs, cells 2F—double F cells—were used. At the level of the flat roof, there were dormitory-type rooms, where the single-person living cells published by Nikolai Miliutin in Sotsgorod were made. Some are for one person, others are for two, with a surface area of ​​9 and 15 m², respectively, with a height of 2.6 m, linked by a common bathroom and shower between each two rooms.

In K cells the area of ​​the living room, or "living room" is 25 m², its height is 5 m. In the part, divided into two levels, 2.3 m high, below are: a terrace connected to the hallway, a hall and a kitchen with an area of ​​4.3 m², on the upper floor, two bedrooms of 19.88 and 12.1 m² with a combined bathroom and toilet. Living area of ​​cells K, 57-60 m², total area 82-83 m², —(100 m² apartment No. 11—. From the moment the house was installed, this type of apartment was intended for the most elite families due to its spaciousness, comfort and greater “living space”.[27]​.

Cells F. All apartments are two stories with entrances from a fifth-floor hallway. The apartments had two layouts: either with a staircase from the entrance upstairs - to a two-story living room with a glass window along the entire wall - and up again - to a sleeping niche - or with a long staircase to the same living room and sleeping niche, located on the same level. Therefore, each apartment consists of two parts. One part is 3.6 m high (living room), the other 2.3 m (sleeping niche). With the chosen layout, the living and sleeping areas were opened to each other, visually and spatially, providing lighting and ventilation on two sides. The only closed spaces in the apartment were a shower cubicle with a sink and toilet. If necessary, the visual and physical separation of the sleeping niche and the living room was achieved by a curtain cornice. The front and bathroom are located directly at the entrance to the apartment. The F small apartments do not have a kitchen. The absence of kitchens, according to Victor Buchli, is the maximum expression of socialized life and a new way of life. The living room is equipped with a small "kitchen unit" for heating food. The total area of ​​cells F is 35 to 36 m².

The appearance of 2F cells at the ends of the building is due to the need for a rational distribution of the volumes of the apartments within the house; allowed, in the first place, to be limited to two corridors. Cells 2F as a whole duplicate the structure of cells F. They have two living rooms with a height of 3.6 m, as well as a dining room, an anteroom, a bathroom, a toilet and a kitchen with a height of 2.3 m. Guínzburg calls the 2F cells “in social terms <…> Ordinary apartments with a more rational distribution of heights and, therefore, with a more interesting spatial solution”, but does not say anything about the number of 2F cells in the house, their area and the number of rooms in them. Victor Buchli provides the following data...[28]​ Along each staircase there are 2F cells of two types: two levels - three apartments on the sixth floor -, the rest are single level - three apartments on the fourth floor -. All cells, by analogy with pre-revolutionary apartments, are visually and physically separated from each other by walls and doors. Along the south staircase there are two "articulated K-units" (Buchli's definition). This type of apartment was never mentioned either in the recommendations of the Stroykom of the USSR or in the works of Guinzburg, his students and commentators. It differs from the K cells in a significantly larger area, the presence of an additional bathroom and dining room on the lower level, as well as large semicircular balconies. Elena Ovsyannikova (2015) describes this type of apartment as follows: «At the ends of the building, from the north and south, there are more spacious apartments, individually designed with balconies. Guínzburg's workshop was located in one of these apartments.

An examination of the Narkomfin building, carried out in 1994 by Elena Ovsyannikova, a professor at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, and Swiss students from Geneva, led by Jean-Claude People, showed that its internal structure turned out to be even more complex than stated in the project. It turned out that there were non-standard apartments on all floors, although most of them are typical. The total number of variants of residential units could reach eleven—including a concierge room, an upper-floor “study,” a bedroom on the roof, and Miliutin’s own attic. It is characteristic that at the end of the fifth floor corridor there was a common kitchen, organized already in the 1940s, and from the corridor itself there is access to the closets to store things that did not always fit in the "F" cells.

The book Johannes Cramer and Anke Zalivako (2013), which contains the most complete results of the internal structure of the Narkomfin research and design decisions: «Repeatedly referred to the inconsistency of the project which lies in the fact that Guínsburg and Milinis obviously could not or did not want to choose a single coherent concept for the organization of space. On the contrary, different types of apartments are not only arranged and equipped in completely different ways, but are also designed for completely different user groups, so that, together, a kind of encyclopedia of new housing has emerged with four fundamentally different types of apartments, each of which, in turn, has its own design options.

The low ceiling height, according to Guínzburg, is compensated by the "adjacent storage" of the living room. Meanwhile, realizing that the premises are not sufficiently insulated, Guínzburg stipulates that the solution "is suitable for a small family, otherwise sliding walls or curtains will be needed, which would allow, if necessary, to create the necessary acoustic insulation of the individual rooms."

The terraces at the lower corridor level were intended to be shared by the tenants of eight type K apartments – actually nine type K apartments – for which a covered terrace is provided parallel to the corridor. The solarium was designed for the recreation of residents of type F apartments.[31][32]​.

The principle of layout of residential cells, similar to that used in the Narkomfin house project, was implemented in several projects in the West, in particular, in the bachelor dormitory built in Wrocław, according to the project of Hans Scharoun (1929). The presence of a corridor that serves several levels is characteristic of Le Corbusier's residential units.[33]​.

The façade solution of the house is laconic constructivism: ribbon windows, a characteristic technique of the 1920s, emphasize the horizontal, smooth walls are decorated only with elements conditioned by function: strips of planters and a built-in terrace on the second floor. The structure of the facades reflects the interior layout of the apartments, following the principle of modern architecture from the inside out, so ribbons predominate on the east wall, and in the lower part of the west wall the living room windows merge into large glazing points, alternating with small kitchen windows. The northern end façade is devoid of windows and is enlivened only by the balcony ledge, the well-lit southern one is more plastic: it is enlivened by three semicircular balcony ledges, which form one of the textbook views of the house. Semicircular balconies are located one above the other on the third, fifth and sixth floors.

Structures and materials

The house was erected with the use of new products from the then construction industry; The engineer Sergei Lvovich Prokhorov and the Technobetón company directed by him were responsible for the construction experiments. The supporting structure is a reinforced concrete frame.

The frame structure made it possible to free the first floor for passage and relieve the load on the external walls, which serve as a thermal insulation fence thanks to cement blocks with thermal insulation filling. As can be seen from the illustrations given in the book by E. Ovsyannikova and the residential complex E. Miliútina House of Narkomfin, made in our time, when the plaster on the walls collapsed everywhere, the material of the walls of the main facade was cinder blocks and the end surfaces of the house were made of fired bricks.

An important innovation of S. L. Prokhorov was the use of “cold” concrete stone blocks with two large holes: for floors between floors and interior vertical walls between apartments and in the fencing of stairs. The voids in the blocks were used to lay sewage, drainage and ventilation ducts located inside the building, often in a rather complex configuration, since all communications were required to be made between the volumes of apartments of different typologies. As part of the floors, rows of blocks with reinforced concrete were interspersed, saving concrete and even wooden formwork, since it was not necessary to drive nails into the boards:.

Guinzburg calls the “cold” blocks with two holes “common for German concrete construction” – in fact, they are known, in particular, in Bauhaus practice. S. L. Prokhorov organized the production of similar blocks in large holes right at the construction site of the Narkomfin building using machines for the production of "Krestyanin blocks", where wooden inserts were placed to make holes.[34] Later, they were called "Prokhorov blocks".

The floors of the apartments were made of "Sorel" cement with two layers of 2 cm - wooden stone, wood shavings on the base, typologically the material is similar to chipboard. Xylolite (artificial stone made from sawdust) was placed on a concrete base plate. Fiber blocks and Krestyanin blocks in 1/2 block were used in the partition walls; the thickness of the partitions was 5 cm — there was a lack of sound insulation in the modern sense that was absent in the Narkomfin house; it was planned to be added during the renovation of the house in 2017-2019 —.[35]​ To insulate the reinforced concrete beams in places where they reached the facade, that is, on very rare occasions, reed, an insulating material made of compressed dry grass, was used.

The flat cement roof of the house is insulated with slag and fitted with gutters that run into the body of the house. The technological solutions for the roof with thermal insulation with pressed “peat plates” and waterproofing with bitumen followed the scheme developed by the leading German flat roof specialist Ernst May.

Interiors

The architects of the Narkomfin building paid great attention to the lighting of the interior spaces. Guínzburg calls the “best system” that visually expands space “a horizontal strip of light pulled toward the ceiling.” At the same time, according to the architect, "the horizontal ribbon gives much more uniform lighting." The calculations also touched on the optimal wall sections above and below the window: in both cases, the optimal wall height is 1 m above or below. The ideal solution is considered to be solid glazing, tested in the Narkomfin building on the example of the stained glass window of a communal building.[36]​.

One of the innovations of the Narkomfin building are sliding windows, similar to those invented by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. They have been modified taking into account the Russian climate. Tape windows included two elements: mobile and fixed. Stationary with reinforced concrete frames, movable with oak, sliding on rollers along the guide rail and a handle with an eccentric pressure against the concrete.[37]​ The pressure points on the wooden framed window were upholstered with canvas and felt. Guínzburg considers that the manufacture of fixed concrete frames is a mistake and mentions five advantages of sliding window frames:

1. • Standard.

2. • Saving space inside the rooms.

3. • Almost airtight hold and no need to glue in winter.

4. • No need for vents as the frame can be opened to any distance, starting from a narrow space.

5. • Simplicity and low cost.

The experiments with color in the building were a continuation of the experiments initiated by Guinzburg in the architectural hall of the former Moscow State Technical University (Bauman Moscow State Technical University) and recognized by the author as not very successful: "a long stay in this hall was boring." The work on selecting color solutions for the apartments of the Narkomfin building was supervised by Professor Hinnerk Scheper"), a Bauhaus artist. bluish and greenish...[c]​.

All homes have 8 cm wide oak parquet floors. Bathrooms in apartments with at least three rooms retained cork floors until 1960, then they were replaced by tile. Open wiring: stranded wire on porcelain insulators. The rotary switches, like the sockets, are also made of porcelain.

El primer crítico de la construcción del edificio Narkomfin fue el propio arquitecto Guínzburg -una mirada a la historia de la construcción de una casa como experimento sugirió su valoración crítica en el libro Жилище ("Vivienda"), publicado en 1934.

Se dedicó una gran cantidad de publicaciones al edificio Narkomfin, tanto en fuentes rusas como extranjeras. En fuentes occidentales, Narkomfin se describe a menudo acompañado de definiciones de «utopía» y «utópico» (en inglés: Utopian Housing Project).[40]​[d]​ En las publicaciones soviéticas, los autores intentaron evitar tal interpretación, utilizando habitualmente vocabulario como «experimento», «experimental», «tipo transicional», etc., sin centrarse en sus resultados.[e]​.

On the technical side

The load-bearing walls had become the subject of criticism, mainly due to the quality of the construction materials used, since the residential building had never been repaired in the almost 90 years of its existence. The plaster on the facades was crumbling and the walls made of artisanal cement and cinder blocks, made directly at the construction site, collapsed. The fillers in the cement slurry were various improvised materials, including metallurgical slag, straw, and reeds.

The frame structure of the house on columns or "legs" made it very difficult to organize vertical communications in it, not to mention the freezing of the lower residential floor. The sewer risers had to be insulated and passed on non-standard, especially thickened columns, which was initially not taken into account in the project of the architectural solution. The flat roof and associated leaks also caused several problems. The execution of such a roof requires special care and high-quality materials, which during the construction period could only be obtained thanks to the initiative of Miliutin's highest-ranking client. Such a roof requires constant maintenance: cleaning dirty or frozen internal drains, repair of the coating and regular snow fall.

The "reeds" used inside the house turned out to be a poor acoustic insulating material, in particular as internal partitions between the originally "bedrooms", which turned out to be inhabited by different families. On this occasion, many criticisms were made. When the war ended, the ventilation ducts were clogged and exhaust ventilation did not work anywhere.

The experiment with the device of horizontal sliding windows "did not achieve the goal and caused complaints from residents."[37] Full-wall ribbon windows did not meet the realities of Moscow's climate. The pressure points on the wood-framed window were covered with canvas and felt. After a couple of decades, these seals wore out, in addition, the concrete frames began to crumble, exposing the metal reinforcement, the sliding window elements jammed, and cold air passed through in winter.

The equipment of the apartments has not been perfected either stylistically or functionally. For example, where it was possible to place a bathtub, they were pre-revolutionary bulky cast-iron products that took up too much space in the dimensions of the originally planned shower cabins. There was only one large bathroom in Miliutin's apartment.[39]​.

domestic point of view

From a domestic point of view, the Narkomfin building also provoked a lot of criticism. The basis was the violation of the principle of settlement of standard cells (apartments), established in the draft, associated with the most severe housing crisis in the USSR. In the Narkomfin building in the 1940s ... in the 1970s, examples of common apartments were widespread, when one of the families had to live in a common room, and the other in a bedroom. At the same time, the minimum size of kitchens and bathrooms generated scandals and, as a consequence, strong criticism of avant-garde architecture and the system as a whole. Apparently, the apartments of former people's commissars N. Miliutin and N. Semashko were the lucky exceptions.

The Narkomfin building could not withstand competition with traditional buildings in terms of construction technologies, built on the initiative of the Moscow City Council. If light concrete blocks were destroyed in the House of the People's Commissariat of Finance, the thick, non-freezing brick walls of the Mossovet (Soviet Moscow Government) houses are still distinguished by good sound insulation of all rooms and preserve the microclimate in the apartments.[39]​.

As a result, the Narkomfin building never became a "transitional type house-commune": in the mid-1930s, the utopian projects of the first years of Soviet power failed and the tenants themselves abandoned this idea.[42]​.

According to one modern author, "it quickly became clear that the nomenclature elite was not prepared to live according to Guinzburg's utopian precepts."[43] According to Victor Buchli, in the years before the war, almost half of the households (families) in the Narkomfin house had a maid and showed no desire to socialize.[44]

The gallery that runs along the lower corridor, intended for meetings and communication, quickly became places to dry clothes, then individual closets; the roof garden terrace was never completed and almost no one used the communal dining room. Residents happily bought meals prepared in the dining room, but preferred to take them with them to their apartments rather than eat together.[f]​ The communal building did not exist in this form for long. After a while, public catering stopped satisfying most residents and cooking became unprofitable. After this, the purpose of double-height hallways has changed. They were first adapted for a printing press and then for a design office.

Only two community domestic institutions operated successfully: a laundry and a kindergarten. But they were also closed during the war. The authors of the monograph of the Soviet period (1986), dedicated to the Narkomfin building, summarizing the results, wrote that "the experiment with the organization of new forms of social and domestic economy by the beginning of the 1930s was premature and turned out to be unsustainable."[37]​.

The English historian of material culture Victor Buchli wrote more candidly in his 1999 work that “the utopianism and desire to reform everyday life, which formed the basis of the Narkomfin House project, fell out of favor almost immediately after its completion. With the beginning of the five-year plan and the consolidation of power by Stalin, the ideas of collectivism and feminism incorporated in the project were rejected by leftists and Trotskyists.

Development of the urban environment

In 1933-1935, on the territory originally intended for the nursery of the residential complex - along its southern border - according to the project of architect Sergei Leontovich, a residential house for Sovnarkom workers was built - building 25, building 10 -,[46]​ of composition not associated with the complex. The Council of People's Commissars gave preference to Leontovich's architectural project, as it was more in line with the political situation, and built a building decorated with ornaments in the style of Stalinist classicism.[47]​.

As a result, the preservation of stately buildings along the line of Novinsky Boulevard, as well as the construction of another residential building within the boundaries of the originally allocated site - an alien complex - did not allow the author's plan for organizing space to be fully implemented. In 1934, the complex began to lose its compositional integrity. The changes affected the park between the residential and public buildings and the laundry. Trees were transplanted from Novinsky Boulevard, which disrupted the visual connections of the elements of the composition. The construction of the "ground floor" of the laundry room excluded the possibility of passage through its volume to the territory of the complex. At the same time, a photo from a German aerial reconnaissance in 1941 shows that the diagonal trajectory of the park from the laundry to the intersection of both buildings of the People's Commissariat of Finance has been preserved.[48]​.

Not built were: a kindergarten and a nursery, a second-stage residential building – the authors of the project were the architects Guínzburg and Zundblat – and a service yard complex that unites a garage for residents, a laundry room and a boiler room. Only a laundry was built, which was used by the residents in the first years, and after the war it became departmental subordination.[37]​.

In the early 1940s, a site was allocated along the northern edge of the territory of the residential complex—behind the courtyard facade of the laundry building along its entire length, and in the depths of the courtyard to the Narkomfin building from its eastern, northern, and partly western sides—for the departmental garage of SNK USSR. Subsequently, the Council of Ministers of the USSR,[49]​ on its territory of about one hectare, was covered with asphalt, the garage was surrounded by a fence, and the park behind the house overlooking the Moskva River was liquidated. The garage lasted until 1965. In the early 1950s, in the immediate vicinity of the Narkomfin building, one of Stalin's skyscrapers was erected - the Kudrinskaya Square Building, which became the dominant architecture of the Krasnopresnensky district.

Restructuring

Since the mid-1930s, house number 25, bldg. 1, was on the balance sheet of the Council of People's Commissars, from 1946, of the Council of Ministers of the USSR until the early 1960s. In 1961, it was removed from the balance sheet of the Council of Ministers and transferred to the subordination of the entire city. The communal block remained on the balance sheet of the Council of Ministers and served as a printing press.

In the process of construction of the volume facing the roof, intended for the ventilation chamber, a two-level penthouse apartment of the Minister of Finance Nikolai Miliutin was made, designed by him for his family with the consent of Guinzburg.[24]​ Miliutin was very interested in the interior design of his apartment and personally participated in the selection of colors to paint the walls.[g]​.

Since a separate building for a kindergarten and a nursery was not built, a significant part of the communal building was used as a kindergarten. Of the social functions of this building provided for by the plan, only the kitchen was fully operational in the 1930s. The dining room was only half-functioning, as the tenants preferred to eat at home.[51] After a time, public catering ceased to satisfy the majority of residents and the kitchen became unprofitable. After this, the purpose of the double-height hallways changed. They were first adapted for a printing press and then for a design office. Only two communal service establishments operated successfully: a laundry and a kindergarten—in a communal building.[52]​.

The gallery, which runs along the lower corridor, was intended for meetings and communication of the residents of the common apartments, however, they had gradually been converted into individual closets. In the 1930s, it was built, to form a single room at the north end of the gallery on the second floor. In the K cells – in the process of being converted to communal ones –[h]​ the parapets of the upper level galleries were placed everywhere in the 1930s and 1940s, and additional kitchens were formed in the narrow areas of the galleries, so that "the visually spacious character of the apartments was greatly disfigured".[54]​ The combined bathrooms of the apartments of types K and 2F had been converted into apartments. separated by installing additional partitions due to a decrease in the area of the bathrooms.[55]​.

After the war, a service hostel was organized in the northern part of the basement - before the war it was a separate apartment for a family, whose head, a scientific advisor to the Council of People's Commissars, suffered a purge in 1937, and three families moved into the unoccupied square -,[56]​ the third in the home. A service building was also added to the south façade, and a communal building was added. In 1959, an elevator shaft was added to the western facade side of the house, connected by passages to the main staircase and adjacent to the boiler room exhaust pipe.

Building decay

For all the years of the building's existence, not a single major repair has been carried out. In the late 1970s, the Moscow authorities were going to carry out a major renovation, for which thirty apartments were evicted, although for unknown reasons, it was left undone.[58]​ The resettlement process resumed in the late 1980s, and by early 2008 about 15 families—actually singles—were living there.[59]​ The lack of major repairs led to the fact that the house is very deteriorated, its condition for a long time was assessed by experts as "critical".[60]​ In 2006, the Narkomfin building was included in the "World Monuments Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites" - List of monuments of world culture in danger.[6]​ Since 2010, some of the empty apartments have been rented for workshops or housing, which were mainly occupied by "young creative people" who are not indifferent to the architectural masterpiece.[61][62]​.

The lack of major repairs to the house - apart from painting the facades - is explained by the fact that the house turned out to be irreparable: after the war of 1941-1945, the archives did not contain detailed drawings of the building, and also no drawings of the installations of water supply, sewage and ventilation communications.[63]​[i]​ According to Archnadzor, Guinzburg never published the implemented version of the house plans and did not mention the presence of the apartment Miliutin in it.[52]​ As E. B. Ovsyannikova (2015) reports, "the drawings were miraculously discovered in Le Corbusier's Zurich archive."[64]​.

According to the State Real Estate Registry, in 2005 the building had 46 apartments on its balance sheet. In 2006, Alexander Senatorov's company «Copernicus» (formerly MIAN) began purchasing apartments in the house. The senators claimed that they were planning the restoration of the house. However, it was not clear to what extent this would actually be a restoration and not a commercial restructuring.[65]​ In March 2014, of the total area – about 4 thousand square meters – the Senatorov group owned 2.2 thousand square meters, another 1.3 thousand square meters – in the accounts of the Moscow mayor's office, the remaining premises – with five apartment owners.[66]​ In 2014, a project for the restoration of the building appeared. Narkomfin, proposed by the architecture office Kleinewelt Architekten. Narkomfin House restoration project (2014).

The winter of 2011-2012 the communal block was practically destroyed. Access to some parts of the city-owned home was not safe. For a long time, there was no information in the public space about the causes of the plight of the Narkomfin building, and about the situation around it, which had not been resolved for decades. The reason turned out to be simple - the attitude of the Moscow authorities towards the era of the avant-garde. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov considered himself his ideological opponent. He never tired of repeating that this is erroneous and harmful architecture.[67] Western, but not Russian, media outlets quoted a fragment of Luzhkov's speech at the opening of the "Novinsky Passage" shopping center on April 8, 2004: "What a joy that such wonderful shopping centers appear in our city, not like this rubbish," said Luzhkov, pointing in the direction of Narkomfin.[68]​[j]​.

In mid-2017, the owner of the Narkomfin building was the company League of Rights. Since July 2017, concentrating all the property in its domain, this company began the rehabilitation of the building. The work is supervised by the general director of the company Garegin Levonovich Barsumyan. In 2017, a large-scale study of the building was carried out;[69]​ during the restoration process, the house continued to be visited.

In August 2017, it became known that an agreement had been reached so that the Liga Prav company would receive a loan in the amount of 855 million rubles from Sberbank for the restoration of the Narkomfin house. During the restoration process, the original author's solutions will be preserved. The plan is to recreate the open roof and scratched glazing. As in the original version of the project, the apartments will be on two levels, a living room-kitchen with expanded glazing, facing west, and bedrooms, facing east. In the course of work, it is planned to dismantle the attic floor and outbuildings of the communal building, restore the historical layout of the first floor, as well as restore the elements of the facades, restore with partial conservation of the stained glass frames of the communal building, balcony and roof fences. A spiral staircase leading to the roof of the communal building, preserved in very poor condition, was replaced according to the drawings in the fall of 2018. Part of the work will be the introduction of sound insulation in the walls of the house. It is planned to adapt the building for modern use, including the reuse of the premises for temporary or permanent settlement; A museum will open on the first floor of the building and a restaurant will be located in the public services building. The restoration was scheduled to be completed in 2019,[7] however, it was completed in August 2020.

The Narkomfin building, being conceived as a research experiment in at least several areas: social and domestic, construction-engineering, spatial and spatial-plastic planning, has preserved its role as a historical example of the Russian avant-garde, which is manifested in the great interest in it on the part of architects, mainly the West and some Russian and avant-garde historians.

The house is clearly recognized as an important part of the social and typological search for modern architecture in the field of residential construction, similar to the experiments of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier.[k]​.

The Narkomfin building is one of the most discussed monuments of the Russian avant-garde, and many myths have arisen around it. One of them is the version of using cane as "cane-filled concrete",[61]​ for the construction of partitions and interior walls.[62][72]​ Meanwhile, cane was not mixed with concrete, but was used for thermal insulation, and was not used much in the building, only in separate sections.[73]​.

According to Jan-Magomedov, none of the social and typological experiments of the architecture of the 1920s, neither in the longhouses nor in the houses of the transitional type, have been completed: "neither in the verification of the economic viability of small apartments, nor in the organization of public services for the inhabitants of the houses, nor in the application of new techniques of

construction».[71]​.

The commissioning of the Narkomfin building (1930) coincided in time with a critical turning point in the fate of architecture in the USSR: all professional associations were dissolved and in their place appeared the Union of Architects of the USSR, intended to determine the new look of Soviet architecture. Constructivism and rationalism were marked as “formalism” and foreign borrowings alien to the Soviet people. A policy of “dominating the classical heritage” in architecture was announced.[36][Comm 11]. The new urban planning of 1931 was aimed at creating monumental urban centers and considered that only the individual houses that decorated these centers were worthy residential architecture.[74]​ In 1932, the Narkomfin building was harshly criticized in the press,[75]​ after which mentions of the "House of the Workers of the People's Commissariat of Finance" disappeared from public space and did not return until four decades later.

The completion and occupation of the Narkomfin Building (1931) coincided in time with the opening of the 102-story Empire State Building in New York. Both buildings had a status character and each of them, in its own country, was a technical, technological and cultural advance, as its creators believed, towards the future. The Empire State Building has retained its significance and remains an American cultural icon to this day; As for the ideas and principles underlying the Narkomfin building project, they were relegated to oblivion shortly after its completion. As Victor Buchli writes in Археология Социализма ("Archaeology of Socialism"):

Stalinist architectural historian Dmitri Khmelnitsky provides a key to understanding the reasons for Nikolai Miliutin's removal from architecture and the subsequent expectation of his arrest: "The epic with the 'longhouses' of theorists Sabsovich and Miliutin was a unique attempt by mid-ranking party officials to link royal architectural design with official ideology.[l]​ This attempt came at a cost for both enthusiasts. However, the very idea of ​​'socializing everyday life' was not prohibited, on the contrary, it was consistently implemented from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. But it was not in the form of comfortable stone lodges, but in the form of communal wooden barracks.

It was inhabited in 1931 — simultaneously with the settlement of the “Embankment House” at 2 Serafimovich Street — by representatives of the Soviet nomenclature of the republican level, people's commissars and deputy people's commissars of the SNK RSFSR, heads of the main departments of the people's commissariats, etc. The most prominent due to their position occupied the apartments on the upper floors and at the ends of the buildings. Later, in 1937-1938, most of them were convicted and shot as "enemies of the people."[m]​.

Victor Bachli, who has studied in detail the changes in the social composition of the house, comes to the conclusion that two waves of "purges" occurred in 1934 and 1937-1938, which had a strong impact on the composition of the inhabitants of the Narkomfin building, and for the first time gives a number of apartments of "repressed" tenants who were not included in the execution lists of "Memorial", complementing them.[77] According to Victor Buchli, in practically all types of cells/apartments in the Narkomfin building, there are cases where the head of the family, who moved into an unoccupied apartment as a result of the “purge”, was subsequently repressed himself, and new Commissariat officials settled in the unoccupied living space. This was evident for the K-type cells and the attached apartments – beyond the design – on the first floor. At the same time, the author of the study observed a general trend of constant decline in the social status of newly arrived tenants in the building.[78]​.

In April 1929, the territory of two properties facing Novinski Boulevard, the so-called "Shalyapinskiy Park",[23]​ a green space behind a row of century houses was allocated for the construction of a house for employees of the People's Commissariat of Finance, along the Garden Ring, in one of which Fyodor Chaliapin lived between 1910-1922. The territory slopes gently to the Présnensky pond, which in 1925 was channeled along this section.[11] Development plans provided for the complete demolition of the existing houses and courtyards, including the outbuildings and the courtyard of the Chaliapin house, but in the end, not a single building was demolished during the construction of the Narkomfin building. The Sinichka River flows beneath the house, enclosed in a canal.[15]​.

Composition of the residential complex

In the design documentation, the house was called the second house of the Narkomfin. According to the project, the complex was supposed to consist of four buildings:.

1. • Residential, for 50 families and about 200 people. Built.

2. • Communal, connected to a warm residential passage with hinges: with kitchen, two dining rooms - indoor and summer on the roof, as well as a gym and library. Built, the kitchen operated in the 1930s selling takeaway food. The dining room was not working.

3. • A separate kindergarten building with a nursery was planned in a rectangular area between the house and the communal building. It has not been implemented. In 1934, the kindergarten was located in a communal building, in the dining room. It existed until 1941.

4. • The "service yard", which included a mechanical laundry, a dryer and a garage, faced Novinski Boulevard. Completed, the laundry was operational—it served residents into the 1930s.

The construction of a second residential building with large apartments, type K or D cells, was also planned next to the Narkomfin building.

Spatial organization of the complex

Three main volumes: a residential building, a communal building and an unfinished kindergarten, were planned as a rhythmically balanced ensemble of buildings of different sizes. They were lined by the laundry building, in front of which, from the side of Novinsky Boulevard, it was planned to organize a square platform, compositionally connecting this building with the city. The house and the laundry building were partially raised on columns, which freed up the passage space on the ground floor (2.5 m high). According to the architects' plan, by passing under the laundry building through the "front yard" in front of the Novinski Bulevard entrance, along a diagonal alley, one could enter the public area of ​​the complex, or through another alley through a residential building at the level of the open first floor, towards the park behind the building where there was a kind of observation deck.[16]​.

Architecture of a residential building

The architecture of the residential building was unusual and impressive for the late 1920s, especially considering the old Moscow environment. Residents of the nearest districts called it a "boat-house" ("steam-house" according to E. Miliútina); However, this epithet is applied to many modernist buildings. The authors of the project, Guínzburg and Milinis, managed to organize the living cells in a single building in such an unusual way that it even interested Le Corbusier himself, who visited the Narkomfin building and visited

personally Nikolai Miliutin's apartment.[24]​.

In an explanatory note on the project, Guínzburg explains the appearance of the open first floor as follows: "Due to the unevenness of the site, which in such cases causes a large surface area of ​​the basement, in this case, the house is mostly raised to a height of 2.5 meters on separate pillars, which is more economical and, in addition, keeps the park area intact."[16]​.

The book "Housing" says more succinctly: "The whole house is located in the park."[25] This refers to the remains of the "Shalyapinskiy" park, the surviving parts of the mansion's gardens. Additionally, in 1937, trees were transplanted to the park around the Narkomfin building from the reconstructed Garden Ring, which was covered with asphalt and the entire garden line was demolished. As a result, one of Guínzburg's arguments in favor of an open first floor and a "house with legs" was "not to cut off the territory of the park with a house."[25]

Other arguments by Guínzburg in favor of an open first floor on supports:

1. • The first floor is the least suitable for living, and the tenants of the only apartment on the ground floor of the house are forced to close the windows with curtains all the time.

2. • Due to the size of the pre-revolutionary rent, it is known that the first floor apartments were valued lower.

3. • «The opportunity to tear the building from the ground, ... to bring the perception of a person, spatially clean and clear, seemed tempting for compositional considerations».[25]​.

4. • In 1927, Le Corbusier published his Five Points of Modern Architecture in L'Esprit Nouveau. The first of them are the free supports of the first floor (pilotis).

The residential building is a six-story building block 85 m long and 17 m high, stretched from south to north, the bedrooms and corridors are grouped along the eastern facade, the living rooms along the western one, respectively, the rooms receive the morning sun, the living rooms in the evening. Closer to the ends there are two staircases connected to each other and to the apartments by two wide corridors – 4 m wide and 2.3 m high – on the second and fifth floors. Guínzburg calls the hallways horizontal arteries and contrasts them with vertical stairs: the hallways were supposed to make it easier for apartment residents to communicate with public service facilities. On the other hand, the architect interpreted the hallways as public spaces "a place of public stay."[26]​.

The typing section of the Stroykom of the USSR developed five main types of residential units: A, B, C, D and F. The largest of them, cell A, meant three- and two-room apartments, B - only two-room apartments. The minimum was cell F, designed for a living area of ​​25-30 m².

Three types of apartments were used in the Narkomfin building – according to Guínzburg, “Housing” (1934) – there are actually about a dozen types of apartment cells. The second and third floors were occupied by eight type K apartments, according to Guínzburg, in reality, nine type K apartments, intended for large families. On the top three floors, from the fourth to the sixth, there are 32 small type F apartments, according to Guínzburg, actually 24 small type F apartments, designed for one person or for a married couple without children. At the ends of the house, separated from the central part by stairs, cells 2F—double F cells—were used. At the level of the flat roof, there were dormitory-type rooms, where the single-person living cells published by Nikolai Miliutin in Sotsgorod were made. Some are for one person, others are for two, with a surface area of ​​9 and 15 m², respectively, with a height of 2.6 m, linked by a common bathroom and shower between each two rooms.

In K cells the area of ​​the living room, or "living room" is 25 m², its height is 5 m. In the part, divided into two levels, 2.3 m high, below are: a terrace connected to the hallway, a hall and a kitchen with an area of ​​4.3 m², on the upper floor, two bedrooms of 19.88 and 12.1 m² with a combined bathroom and toilet. Living area of ​​cells K, 57-60 m², total area 82-83 m², —(100 m² apartment No. 11—. From the moment the house was installed, this type of apartment was intended for the most elite families due to its spaciousness, comfort and greater “living space”.[27]​.

Cells F. All apartments are two stories with entrances from a fifth-floor hallway. The apartments had two layouts: either with a staircase from the entrance upstairs - to a two-story living room with a glass window along the entire wall - and up again - to a sleeping niche - or with a long staircase to the same living room and sleeping niche, located on the same level. Therefore, each apartment consists of two parts. One part is 3.6 m high (living room), the other 2.3 m (sleeping niche). With the chosen layout, the living and sleeping areas were opened to each other, visually and spatially, providing lighting and ventilation on two sides. The only closed spaces in the apartment were a shower cubicle with a sink and toilet. If necessary, the visual and physical separation of the sleeping niche and the living room was achieved by a curtain cornice. The front and bathroom are located directly at the entrance to the apartment. The F small apartments do not have a kitchen. The absence of kitchens, according to Victor Buchli, is the maximum expression of socialized life and a new way of life. The living room is equipped with a small "kitchen unit" for heating food. The total area of ​​cells F is 35 to 36 m².

The appearance of 2F cells at the ends of the building is due to the need for a rational distribution of the volumes of the apartments within the house; allowed, in the first place, to be limited to two corridors. Cells 2F as a whole duplicate the structure of cells F. They have two living rooms with a height of 3.6 m, as well as a dining room, an anteroom, a bathroom, a toilet and a kitchen with a height of 2.3 m. Guínzburg calls the 2F cells “in social terms <…> Ordinary apartments with a more rational distribution of heights and, therefore, with a more interesting spatial solution”, but does not say anything about the number of 2F cells in the house, their area and the number of rooms in them. Victor Buchli provides the following data...[28]​ Along each staircase there are 2F cells of two types: two levels - three apartments on the sixth floor -, the rest are single level - three apartments on the fourth floor -. All cells, by analogy with pre-revolutionary apartments, are visually and physically separated from each other by walls and doors. Along the south staircase there are two "articulated K-units" (Buchli's definition). This type of apartment was never mentioned either in the recommendations of the Stroykom of the USSR or in the works of Guinzburg, his students and commentators. It differs from the K cells in a significantly larger area, the presence of an additional bathroom and dining room on the lower level, as well as large semicircular balconies. Elena Ovsyannikova (2015) describes this type of apartment as follows: «At the ends of the building, from the north and south, there are more spacious apartments, individually designed with balconies. Guínzburg's workshop was located in one of these apartments.

An examination of the Narkomfin building, carried out in 1994 by Elena Ovsyannikova, a professor at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, and Swiss students from Geneva, led by Jean-Claude People, showed that its internal structure turned out to be even more complex than stated in the project. It turned out that there were non-standard apartments on all floors, although most of them are typical. The total number of variants of residential units could reach eleven—including a concierge room, an upper-floor “study,” a bedroom on the roof, and Miliutin’s own attic. It is characteristic that at the end of the fifth floor corridor there was a common kitchen, organized already in the 1940s, and from the corridor itself there is access to the closets to store things that did not always fit in the "F" cells.

The book Johannes Cramer and Anke Zalivako (2013), which contains the most complete results of the internal structure of the Narkomfin research and design decisions: «Repeatedly referred to the inconsistency of the project which lies in the fact that Guínsburg and Milinis obviously could not or did not want to choose a single coherent concept for the organization of space. On the contrary, different types of apartments are not only arranged and equipped in completely different ways, but are also designed for completely different user groups, so that, together, a kind of encyclopedia of new housing has emerged with four fundamentally different types of apartments, each of which, in turn, has its own design options.

The low ceiling height, according to Guínzburg, is compensated by the "adjacent storage" of the living room. Meanwhile, realizing that the premises are not sufficiently insulated, Guínzburg stipulates that the solution "is suitable for a small family, otherwise sliding walls or curtains will be needed, which would allow, if necessary, to create the necessary acoustic insulation of the individual rooms."

The terraces at the lower corridor level were intended to be shared by the tenants of eight type K apartments – actually nine type K apartments – for which a covered terrace is provided parallel to the corridor. The solarium was designed for the recreation of residents of type F apartments.[31][32]​.

The principle of layout of residential cells, similar to that used in the Narkomfin house project, was implemented in several projects in the West, in particular, in the bachelor dormitory built in Wrocław, according to the project of Hans Scharoun (1929). The presence of a corridor that serves several levels is characteristic of Le Corbusier's residential units.[33]​.

The façade solution of the house is laconic constructivism: ribbon windows, a characteristic technique of the 1920s, emphasize the horizontal, smooth walls are decorated only with elements conditioned by function: strips of planters and a built-in terrace on the second floor. The structure of the facades reflects the interior layout of the apartments, following the principle of modern architecture from the inside out, so ribbons predominate on the east wall, and in the lower part of the west wall the living room windows merge into large glazing points, alternating with small kitchen windows. The northern end façade is devoid of windows and is enlivened only by the balcony ledge, the well-lit southern one is more plastic: it is enlivened by three semicircular balcony ledges, which form one of the textbook views of the house. Semicircular balconies are located one above the other on the third, fifth and sixth floors.

Structures and materials

The house was erected with the use of new products from the then construction industry; The engineer Sergei Lvovich Prokhorov and the Technobetón company directed by him were responsible for the construction experiments. The supporting structure is a reinforced concrete frame.

The frame structure made it possible to free the first floor for passage and relieve the load on the external walls, which serve as a thermal insulation fence thanks to cement blocks with thermal insulation filling. As can be seen from the illustrations given in the book by E. Ovsyannikova and the residential complex E. Miliútina House of Narkomfin, made in our time, when the plaster on the walls collapsed everywhere, the material of the walls of the main facade was cinder blocks and the end surfaces of the house were made of fired bricks.

An important innovation of S. L. Prokhorov was the use of “cold” concrete stone blocks with two large holes: for floors between floors and interior vertical walls between apartments and in the fencing of stairs. The voids in the blocks were used to lay sewage, drainage and ventilation ducts located inside the building, often in a rather complex configuration, since all communications were required to be made between the volumes of apartments of different typologies. As part of the floors, rows of blocks with reinforced concrete were interspersed, saving concrete and even wooden formwork, since it was not necessary to drive nails into the boards:.

Guinzburg calls the “cold” blocks with two holes “common for German concrete construction” – in fact, they are known, in particular, in Bauhaus practice. S. L. Prokhorov organized the production of similar blocks in large holes right at the construction site of the Narkomfin building using machines for the production of "Krestyanin blocks", where wooden inserts were placed to make holes.[34] Later, they were called "Prokhorov blocks".

The floors of the apartments were made of "Sorel" cement with two layers of 2 cm - wooden stone, wood shavings on the base, typologically the material is similar to chipboard. Xylolite (artificial stone made from sawdust) was placed on a concrete base plate. Fiber blocks and Krestyanin blocks in 1/2 block were used in the partition walls; the thickness of the partitions was 5 cm — there was a lack of sound insulation in the modern sense that was absent in the Narkomfin house; it was planned to be added during the renovation of the house in 2017-2019 —.[35]​ To insulate the reinforced concrete beams in places where they reached the facade, that is, on very rare occasions, reed, an insulating material made of compressed dry grass, was used.

The flat cement roof of the house is insulated with slag and fitted with gutters that run into the body of the house. The technological solutions for the roof with thermal insulation with pressed “peat plates” and waterproofing with bitumen followed the scheme developed by the leading German flat roof specialist Ernst May.

Interiors

The architects of the Narkomfin building paid great attention to the lighting of the interior spaces. Guínzburg calls the “best system” that visually expands space “a horizontal strip of light pulled toward the ceiling.” At the same time, according to the architect, "the horizontal ribbon gives much more uniform lighting." The calculations also touched on the optimal wall sections above and below the window: in both cases, the optimal wall height is 1 m above or below. The ideal solution is considered to be solid glazing, tested in the Narkomfin building on the example of the stained glass window of a communal building.[36]​.

One of the innovations of the Narkomfin building are sliding windows, similar to those invented by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. They have been modified taking into account the Russian climate. Tape windows included two elements: mobile and fixed. Stationary with reinforced concrete frames, movable with oak, sliding on rollers along the guide rail and a handle with an eccentric pressure against the concrete.[37]​ The pressure points on the wooden framed window were upholstered with canvas and felt. Guínzburg considers that the manufacture of fixed concrete frames is a mistake and mentions five advantages of sliding window frames:

1. • Standard.

2. • Saving space inside the rooms.

3. • Almost airtight hold and no need to glue in winter.

4. • No need for vents as the frame can be opened to any distance, starting from a narrow space.

5. • Simplicity and low cost.

The experiments with color in the building were a continuation of the experiments initiated by Guinzburg in the architectural hall of the former Moscow State Technical University (Bauman Moscow State Technical University) and recognized by the author as not very successful: "a long stay in this hall was boring." The work on selecting color solutions for the apartments of the Narkomfin building was supervised by Professor Hinnerk Scheper"), a Bauhaus artist. bluish and greenish...[c]​.

All homes have 8 cm wide oak parquet floors. Bathrooms in apartments with at least three rooms retained cork floors until 1960, then they were replaced by tile. Open wiring: stranded wire on porcelain insulators. The rotary switches, like the sockets, are also made of porcelain.

El primer crítico de la construcción del edificio Narkomfin fue el propio arquitecto Guínzburg -una mirada a la historia de la construcción de una casa como experimento sugirió su valoración crítica en el libro Жилище ("Vivienda"), publicado en 1934.

Se dedicó una gran cantidad de publicaciones al edificio Narkomfin, tanto en fuentes rusas como extranjeras. En fuentes occidentales, Narkomfin se describe a menudo acompañado de definiciones de «utopía» y «utópico» (en inglés: Utopian Housing Project).[40]​[d]​ En las publicaciones soviéticas, los autores intentaron evitar tal interpretación, utilizando habitualmente vocabulario como «experimento», «experimental», «tipo transicional», etc., sin centrarse en sus resultados.[e]​.

On the technical side

The load-bearing walls had become the subject of criticism, mainly due to the quality of the construction materials used, since the residential building had never been repaired in the almost 90 years of its existence. The plaster on the facades was crumbling and the walls made of artisanal cement and cinder blocks, made directly at the construction site, collapsed. The fillers in the cement slurry were various improvised materials, including metallurgical slag, straw, and reeds.

The frame structure of the house on columns or "legs" made it very difficult to organize vertical communications in it, not to mention the freezing of the lower residential floor. The sewer risers had to be insulated and passed on non-standard, especially thickened columns, which was initially not taken into account in the project of the architectural solution. The flat roof and associated leaks also caused several problems. The execution of such a roof requires special care and high-quality materials, which during the construction period could only be obtained thanks to the initiative of Miliutin's highest-ranking client. Such a roof requires constant maintenance: cleaning dirty or frozen internal drains, repair of the coating and regular snow fall.

The "reeds" used inside the house turned out to be a poor acoustic insulating material, in particular as internal partitions between the originally "bedrooms", which turned out to be inhabited by different families. On this occasion, many criticisms were made. When the war ended, the ventilation ducts were clogged and exhaust ventilation did not work anywhere.

The experiment with the device of horizontal sliding windows "did not achieve the goal and caused complaints from residents."[37] Full-wall ribbon windows did not meet the realities of Moscow's climate. The pressure points on the wood-framed window were covered with canvas and felt. After a couple of decades, these seals wore out, in addition, the concrete frames began to crumble, exposing the metal reinforcement, the sliding window elements jammed, and cold air passed through in winter.

The equipment of the apartments has not been perfected either stylistically or functionally. For example, where it was possible to place a bathtub, they were pre-revolutionary bulky cast-iron products that took up too much space in the dimensions of the originally planned shower cabins. There was only one large bathroom in Miliutin's apartment.[39]​.

domestic point of view

From a domestic point of view, the Narkomfin building also provoked a lot of criticism. The basis was the violation of the principle of settlement of standard cells (apartments), established in the draft, associated with the most severe housing crisis in the USSR. In the Narkomfin building in the 1940s ... in the 1970s, examples of common apartments were widespread, when one of the families had to live in a common room, and the other in a bedroom. At the same time, the minimum size of kitchens and bathrooms generated scandals and, as a consequence, strong criticism of avant-garde architecture and the system as a whole. Apparently, the apartments of former people's commissars N. Miliutin and N. Semashko were the lucky exceptions.

The Narkomfin building could not withstand competition with traditional buildings in terms of construction technologies, built on the initiative of the Moscow City Council. If light concrete blocks were destroyed in the House of the People's Commissariat of Finance, the thick, non-freezing brick walls of the Mossovet (Soviet Moscow Government) houses are still distinguished by good sound insulation of all rooms and preserve the microclimate in the apartments.[39]​.

As a result, the Narkomfin building never became a "transitional type house-commune": in the mid-1930s, the utopian projects of the first years of Soviet power failed and the tenants themselves abandoned this idea.[42]​.

According to one modern author, "it quickly became clear that the nomenclature elite was not prepared to live according to Guinzburg's utopian precepts."[43] According to Victor Buchli, in the years before the war, almost half of the households (families) in the Narkomfin house had a maid and showed no desire to socialize.[44]

The gallery that runs along the lower corridor, intended for meetings and communication, quickly became places to dry clothes, then individual closets; the roof garden terrace was never completed and almost no one used the communal dining room. Residents happily bought meals prepared in the dining room, but preferred to take them with them to their apartments rather than eat together.[f]​ The communal building did not exist in this form for long. After a while, public catering stopped satisfying most residents and cooking became unprofitable. After this, the purpose of double-height hallways has changed. They were first adapted for a printing press and then for a design office.

Only two community domestic institutions operated successfully: a laundry and a kindergarten. But they were also closed during the war. The authors of the monograph of the Soviet period (1986), dedicated to the Narkomfin building, summarizing the results, wrote that "the experiment with the organization of new forms of social and domestic economy by the beginning of the 1930s was premature and turned out to be unsustainable."[37]​.

The English historian of material culture Victor Buchli wrote more candidly in his 1999 work that “the utopianism and desire to reform everyday life, which formed the basis of the Narkomfin House project, fell out of favor almost immediately after its completion. With the beginning of the five-year plan and the consolidation of power by Stalin, the ideas of collectivism and feminism incorporated in the project were rejected by leftists and Trotskyists.

Development of the urban environment

In 1933-1935, on the territory originally intended for the nursery of the residential complex - along its southern border - according to the project of architect Sergei Leontovich, a residential house for Sovnarkom workers was built - building 25, building 10 -,[46]​ of composition not associated with the complex. The Council of People's Commissars gave preference to Leontovich's architectural project, as it was more in line with the political situation, and built a building decorated with ornaments in the style of Stalinist classicism.[47]​.

As a result, the preservation of stately buildings along the line of Novinsky Boulevard, as well as the construction of another residential building within the boundaries of the originally allocated site - an alien complex - did not allow the author's plan for organizing space to be fully implemented. In 1934, the complex began to lose its compositional integrity. The changes affected the park between the residential and public buildings and the laundry. Trees were transplanted from Novinsky Boulevard, which disrupted the visual connections of the elements of the composition. The construction of the "ground floor" of the laundry room excluded the possibility of passage through its volume to the territory of the complex. At the same time, a photo from a German aerial reconnaissance in 1941 shows that the diagonal trajectory of the park from the laundry to the intersection of both buildings of the People's Commissariat of Finance has been preserved.[48]​.

Not built were: a kindergarten and a nursery, a second-stage residential building – the authors of the project were the architects Guínzburg and Zundblat – and a service yard complex that unites a garage for residents, a laundry room and a boiler room. Only a laundry was built, which was used by the residents in the first years, and after the war it became departmental subordination.[37]​.

In the early 1940s, a site was allocated along the northern edge of the territory of the residential complex—behind the courtyard facade of the laundry building along its entire length, and in the depths of the courtyard to the Narkomfin building from its eastern, northern, and partly western sides—for the departmental garage of SNK USSR. Subsequently, the Council of Ministers of the USSR,[49]​ on its territory of about one hectare, was covered with asphalt, the garage was surrounded by a fence, and the park behind the house overlooking the Moskva River was liquidated. The garage lasted until 1965. In the early 1950s, in the immediate vicinity of the Narkomfin building, one of Stalin's skyscrapers was erected - the Kudrinskaya Square Building, which became the dominant architecture of the Krasnopresnensky district.

Restructuring

Since the mid-1930s, house number 25, bldg. 1, was on the balance sheet of the Council of People's Commissars, from 1946, of the Council of Ministers of the USSR until the early 1960s. In 1961, it was removed from the balance sheet of the Council of Ministers and transferred to the subordination of the entire city. The communal block remained on the balance sheet of the Council of Ministers and served as a printing press.

In the process of construction of the volume facing the roof, intended for the ventilation chamber, a two-level penthouse apartment of the Minister of Finance Nikolai Miliutin was made, designed by him for his family with the consent of Guinzburg.[24]​ Miliutin was very interested in the interior design of his apartment and personally participated in the selection of colors to paint the walls.[g]​.

Since a separate building for a kindergarten and a nursery was not built, a significant part of the communal building was used as a kindergarten. Of the social functions of this building provided for by the plan, only the kitchen was fully operational in the 1930s. The dining room was only half-functioning, as the tenants preferred to eat at home.[51] After a time, public catering ceased to satisfy the majority of residents and the kitchen became unprofitable. After this, the purpose of the double-height hallways changed. They were first adapted for a printing press and then for a design office. Only two communal service establishments operated successfully: a laundry and a kindergarten—in a communal building.[52]​.

The gallery, which runs along the lower corridor, was intended for meetings and communication of the residents of the common apartments, however, they had gradually been converted into individual closets. In the 1930s, it was built, to form a single room at the north end of the gallery on the second floor. In the K cells – in the process of being converted to communal ones –[h]​ the parapets of the upper level galleries were placed everywhere in the 1930s and 1940s, and additional kitchens were formed in the narrow areas of the galleries, so that "the visually spacious character of the apartments was greatly disfigured".[54]​ The combined bathrooms of the apartments of types K and 2F had been converted into apartments. separated by installing additional partitions due to a decrease in the area of the bathrooms.[55]​.

After the war, a service hostel was organized in the northern part of the basement - before the war it was a separate apartment for a family, whose head, a scientific advisor to the Council of People's Commissars, suffered a purge in 1937, and three families moved into the unoccupied square -,[56]​ the third in the home. A service building was also added to the south façade, and a communal building was added. In 1959, an elevator shaft was added to the western facade side of the house, connected by passages to the main staircase and adjacent to the boiler room exhaust pipe.

Building decay

For all the years of the building's existence, not a single major repair has been carried out. In the late 1970s, the Moscow authorities were going to carry out a major renovation, for which thirty apartments were evicted, although for unknown reasons, it was left undone.[58]​ The resettlement process resumed in the late 1980s, and by early 2008 about 15 families—actually singles—were living there.[59]​ The lack of major repairs led to the fact that the house is very deteriorated, its condition for a long time was assessed by experts as "critical".[60]​ In 2006, the Narkomfin building was included in the "World Monuments Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites" - List of monuments of world culture in danger.[6]​ Since 2010, some of the empty apartments have been rented for workshops or housing, which were mainly occupied by "young creative people" who are not indifferent to the architectural masterpiece.[61][62]​.

The lack of major repairs to the house - apart from painting the facades - is explained by the fact that the house turned out to be irreparable: after the war of 1941-1945, the archives did not contain detailed drawings of the building, and also no drawings of the installations of water supply, sewage and ventilation communications.[63]​[i]​ According to Archnadzor, Guinzburg never published the implemented version of the house plans and did not mention the presence of the apartment Miliutin in it.[52]​ As E. B. Ovsyannikova (2015) reports, "the drawings were miraculously discovered in Le Corbusier's Zurich archive."[64]​.

According to the State Real Estate Registry, in 2005 the building had 46 apartments on its balance sheet. In 2006, Alexander Senatorov's company «Copernicus» (formerly MIAN) began purchasing apartments in the house. The senators claimed that they were planning the restoration of the house. However, it was not clear to what extent this would actually be a restoration and not a commercial restructuring.[65]​ In March 2014, of the total area – about 4 thousand square meters – the Senatorov group owned 2.2 thousand square meters, another 1.3 thousand square meters – in the accounts of the Moscow mayor's office, the remaining premises – with five apartment owners.[66]​ In 2014, a project for the restoration of the building appeared. Narkomfin, proposed by the architecture office Kleinewelt Architekten. Narkomfin House restoration project (2014).

The winter of 2011-2012 the communal block was practically destroyed. Access to some parts of the city-owned home was not safe. For a long time, there was no information in the public space about the causes of the plight of the Narkomfin building, and about the situation around it, which had not been resolved for decades. The reason turned out to be simple - the attitude of the Moscow authorities towards the era of the avant-garde. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov considered himself his ideological opponent. He never tired of repeating that this is erroneous and harmful architecture.[67] Western, but not Russian, media outlets quoted a fragment of Luzhkov's speech at the opening of the "Novinsky Passage" shopping center on April 8, 2004: "What a joy that such wonderful shopping centers appear in our city, not like this rubbish," said Luzhkov, pointing in the direction of Narkomfin.[68]​[j]​.

In mid-2017, the owner of the Narkomfin building was the company League of Rights. Since July 2017, concentrating all the property in its domain, this company began the rehabilitation of the building. The work is supervised by the general director of the company Garegin Levonovich Barsumyan. In 2017, a large-scale study of the building was carried out;[69]​ during the restoration process, the house continued to be visited.

In August 2017, it became known that an agreement had been reached so that the Liga Prav company would receive a loan in the amount of 855 million rubles from Sberbank for the restoration of the Narkomfin house. During the restoration process, the original author's solutions will be preserved. The plan is to recreate the open roof and scratched glazing. As in the original version of the project, the apartments will be on two levels, a living room-kitchen with expanded glazing, facing west, and bedrooms, facing east. In the course of work, it is planned to dismantle the attic floor and outbuildings of the communal building, restore the historical layout of the first floor, as well as restore the elements of the facades, restore with partial conservation of the stained glass frames of the communal building, balcony and roof fences. A spiral staircase leading to the roof of the communal building, preserved in very poor condition, was replaced according to the drawings in the fall of 2018. Part of the work will be the introduction of sound insulation in the walls of the house. It is planned to adapt the building for modern use, including the reuse of the premises for temporary or permanent settlement; A museum will open on the first floor of the building and a restaurant will be located in the public services building. The restoration was scheduled to be completed in 2019,[7] however, it was completed in August 2020.

The Narkomfin building, being conceived as a research experiment in at least several areas: social and domestic, construction-engineering, spatial and spatial-plastic planning, has preserved its role as a historical example of the Russian avant-garde, which is manifested in the great interest in it on the part of architects, mainly the West and some Russian and avant-garde historians.

The house is clearly recognized as an important part of the social and typological search for modern architecture in the field of residential construction, similar to the experiments of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier.[k]​.

The Narkomfin building is one of the most discussed monuments of the Russian avant-garde, and many myths have arisen around it. One of them is the version of using cane as "cane-filled concrete",[61]​ for the construction of partitions and interior walls.[62][72]​ Meanwhile, cane was not mixed with concrete, but was used for thermal insulation, and was not used much in the building, only in separate sections.[73]​.

According to Jan-Magomedov, none of the social and typological experiments of the architecture of the 1920s, neither in the longhouses nor in the houses of the transitional type, have been completed: "neither in the verification of the economic viability of small apartments, nor in the organization of public services for the inhabitants of the houses, nor in the application of new techniques of

construction».[71]​.

The commissioning of the Narkomfin building (1930) coincided in time with a critical turning point in the fate of architecture in the USSR: all professional associations were dissolved and in their place appeared the Union of Architects of the USSR, intended to determine the new look of Soviet architecture. Constructivism and rationalism were marked as “formalism” and foreign borrowings alien to the Soviet people. A policy of “dominating the classical heritage” in architecture was announced.[36][Comm 11]. The new urban planning of 1931 was aimed at creating monumental urban centers and considered that only the individual houses that decorated these centers were worthy residential architecture.[74]​ In 1932, the Narkomfin building was harshly criticized in the press,[75]​ after which mentions of the "House of the Workers of the People's Commissariat of Finance" disappeared from public space and did not return until four decades later.

The completion and occupation of the Narkomfin Building (1931) coincided in time with the opening of the 102-story Empire State Building in New York. Both buildings had a status character and each of them, in its own country, was a technical, technological and cultural advance, as its creators believed, towards the future. The Empire State Building has retained its significance and remains an American cultural icon to this day; As for the ideas and principles underlying the Narkomfin building project, they were relegated to oblivion shortly after its completion. As Victor Buchli writes in Археология Социализма ("Archaeology of Socialism"):

Stalinist architectural historian Dmitri Khmelnitsky provides a key to understanding the reasons for Nikolai Miliutin's removal from architecture and the subsequent expectation of his arrest: "The epic with the 'longhouses' of theorists Sabsovich and Miliutin was a unique attempt by mid-ranking party officials to link royal architectural design with official ideology.[l]​ This attempt came at a cost for both enthusiasts. However, the very idea of ​​'socializing everyday life' was not prohibited, on the contrary, it was consistently implemented from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. But it was not in the form of comfortable stone lodges, but in the form of communal wooden barracks.

It was inhabited in 1931 — simultaneously with the settlement of the “Embankment House” at 2 Serafimovich Street — by representatives of the Soviet nomenclature of the republican level, people's commissars and deputy people's commissars of the SNK RSFSR, heads of the main departments of the people's commissariats, etc. The most prominent due to their position occupied the apartments on the upper floors and at the ends of the buildings. Later, in 1937-1938, most of them were convicted and shot as "enemies of the people."[m]​.

Victor Bachli, who has studied in detail the changes in the social composition of the house, comes to the conclusion that two waves of "purges" occurred in 1934 and 1937-1938, which had a strong impact on the composition of the inhabitants of the Narkomfin building, and for the first time gives a number of apartments of "repressed" tenants who were not included in the execution lists of "Memorial", complementing them.[77] According to Victor Buchli, in practically all types of cells/apartments in the Narkomfin building, there are cases where the head of the family, who moved into an unoccupied apartment as a result of the “purge”, was subsequently repressed himself, and new Commissariat officials settled in the unoccupied living space. This was evident for the K-type cells and the attached apartments – beyond the design – on the first floor. At the same time, the author of the study observed a general trend of constant decline in the social status of newly arrived tenants in the building.[78]​.