The Narkomfin Building is a block of flats at 25,
Novinsky Boulevard, in the
Central district of
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
, Russia. Conceived as a "transitional type of experimental house", it is a renowned example of
Constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture was a constructivism (art), constructivist style of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Abstract and austere, the movement aimed to reflect modern industrial society a ...
and
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
housing design.
Though a listed "Cultural Heritage Monument" on the
Russian cultural heritage register, it was in a deteriorating state for many years. Many units were vacated by residents. A reconstruction, which lasted more than three years, was completed in the summer of 2020, with the official opening of the renovated apartment building took place on 9 July.
Architecture for collective living
The project for four planned buildings was designed by
Moisei Ginzburg with Ignaty Milinis in 1928. Only two were built, completed in 1932. The color design for the buildings was created by
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
student
Hinnerk Scheper.
This apartment block, designed for high rank employees at the Commissariat of Finance (shortened to
Narkomfin) was an opportunity for Ginzburg to try out many of the theories advanced by the Constructivist
OSA group between 1926 and 1930 on architectural form and collective living. The building is made from reinforced concrete and is set in a park. It originally consisted of a long block of apartments raised on
piloti
Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood, and in e ...
s (with a penthouse and roof garden), connected by an enclosed bridge to a smaller, glazed block of collective facilities.
[
As advertised by the architects, the apartments were to form an intervention into the everyday life (or ''byt'') of the inhabitants. By offering Communal facilities such as kitchens, creches and laundry as part of the block, the tenants were encouraged into a more ]socialist
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
and, by taking women out of their traditional roles, feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
way of life. The structure was thus to act as a 'social condenser' by including within it a library and gymnasium.
On the other hand, architects of the 1920s had to face the social reality of an overcrowded socialist city: any single-family apartment unit with more than one room would eventually be converted to a multi-family kommunalka. Apartments could retain the single-family status if, and only if, they were physically small and could not be partitioned to accommodate more than one family. Any single-level apartment could be partitioned; thus, the avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
community (notably, Ginzburg and Konstantin Melnikov) designed such model units, relying on vertical separation of bedroom (top level) and combined kitchen and living room (lower level). Ilya Golosov implemented these cells for his Collective House in Ivanovo
Ivanovo (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Russia and the administrative center and largest city of Ivanovo Oblast, located northeast of Moscow and approximately from Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Russia, Vladimir and Kostroma. ...
, and Pavel Gofman for communal housing in Saratov
Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...
. Ginzburg refined their cell design based on real-life experience.
Vertical apartment plan
Narkomfin has 54 units, none of them has a dedicated kitchen - at least, legally. Many residents partitioned their apartments to set aside a tiny kitchen. There are five inhabited floors, but only two corridors on second and Fifth level (an apartment split between third and second level connects to the second floor corridor, etc.).
Apartments were graded by how far along they were to being 'fully collectivised', ranging from rooms with their own kitchens to apartments purely for sleep and study. Most of the units belong to "Cell K" type (with double-height living room) and "Cell F" connecting to an outdoor gallery. The sponsor of the building, Commissar of Finance Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin, enjoyed a penthouse (originally planned as a communal recreation area). Milyutin is also known as an experimental city planner who had developed plans for a linear city.
Influence
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...
, who studied the building during his visits to the Soviet Union, was vocal about the debt he owed to the pioneering ideas of the Narkomfin building, and he used a variant of its duplex flat plans in his Unité d'Habitation
The ''Unité d'habitation'' (, ''Housing Unit'') is a Modern architecture, modernist residential housing Typology (urban planning and architecture), typology developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afons ...
. Other architects to have reused its ideas include Moshe Safdie
Moshe Safdie (; born July 14, 1938) is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. He is well known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design throughout his six-decade career. His projects include cultural, ed ...
, in his Expo 67
The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, commonly known as Expo 67, was a general exhibition from April 28 to October 29, 1967. It was a category one world's fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is considered to be one of the most s ...
flats Habitat 67
Habitat 67, or simply Habitat, is a housing complex at Cité du Havre, on the Saint Lawrence River, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, designed by Israeli-Canadian- American architect Moshe Safdie. It originated in his master's thesis at the School of Ar ...
and Denys Lasdun, in his luxury flats in St James', London. The idea of the ' social condenser' was also acknowledged by Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin (14 December 1901 – 23 October 1990) was a Russian-born British architecture, architect who pioneered International style (architecture), modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint I ...
an influence on his work.
The Narkomfin building as reality
The Utopianism
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...
and reformism of everyday life that was behind the building's idea fell out of favour almost as soon as it was finished. After the start of the Five Year Plan and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's consolidation of power, its collectivist and feminist ideas were rejected as 'Leftist' or Trotskyist
Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
. In the 1930s, the ground floor, which was originally left free and suspended with pilotis, was filled with flats to help alleviate Moscow's severe housing shortage, while a planned adjoining block was built in the eclectic Stalinist style.
The building looks over the US embassy, which has discouraged the inhabitants from using the roof garden. The vicissitudes of the building were charted in Victor Buchli's book ''An Archaeology of Socialism'' which takes the flats and their inhabitants as a starting point for an analysis of Soviet 'material culture'.
Modern status
Legally, each apartment unit in the building was privatized (beginning in 1992) by the residents. Later, a real estate speculator bought out a significant proportion of the apartments, as a consolidated apartment package with the city MIAN agency. The rest were still owned and inhabited by the residents, but with MIAN dominance creating a legal stalemate where the residents were unable to form a condominium association and operate the building independently. Therefore, the city agency had control over the future of the Narkomfin building.
By 2010, the building was in a very dilapidated state, although it was still partially inhabited. UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
placed it at the top of their 'Endangered Buildings' list, and it was placed on the World Monuments Fund
World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and training ...
's watchlist of endangered heritage sites three times. An international campaign was launched to save the landmark. Despite the Russian "Cultural Heritage Monument" code prohibiting any major re-planning of internal walls and partitions, there were accusations that illegal renovations were taking place. Alexei Ginzburg, grandson of Moisei Ginzburg, stated that "The situation asout of control" in 2014.
In 2016, the building began renovation under the guidance of Alexei Ginsburg, after development company Liga Prav bought it from an auction. Renovation was completed in July 2020, with the original designs restored where possible and all later additions removed.

Gallery
Image:Narkomfin building 2020-07.jpg, Building after restoration.
Image:Narkomfin_Building_Moscow_2007_01.jpg, View from east, Garden Ring
The Garden Ring, also known as the "B" Ring (; transliteration: ''Sadovoye Koltso''), is a circular ring road avenue around central Moscow, its course corresponding to what used to be the city ramparts surrounding Zemlyanoy Gorod in the 17th ...
Image:Narkomfin_Building_Moscow_2007_02.jpg, View from west
Image:Dom Narkomfin under renovation.jpg, Renovation work in progress
Image:Narkmomfinfoto2.jpg, Building in 1930s
Image:Narkonfin-apartments-moscow-russia-architects-ginsburg-m-milinis-i-1928-1929-photograph-photographer-robert-byron3.png, Building in 1930s
References
External links
Moscow Architecture Preservation Society Profile
The Art Newspaper on the Narkomfin
.
{{Authority control
Apartment buildings
Residential buildings in Moscow
Buildings and structures built in the Soviet Union
Russian avant-garde
Architecture related to utopias
Residential buildings completed in 1932
Constructivist buildings and structures
Modernist architecture in Russia
Cultural heritage monuments of regional significance in Moscow