Project model for a communal housing unit (reconstruction 1970)

Entries were published in the OSA and later led to the development of standard apartment types for STROIKOM (the Building Committee of the Russian Republic). The Model of Communal Housing Unit is a reconstruction of one of these apartment types. Though a difficult economic context meant much of the exploration of the avant-garde was never built, the apartment types developed (for STROIKOM) were realized in six buildings [4], including the Narkomfin Building (Moscow, 1928-30) designed by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis. The Narkomfin building incorporates apartment types F and K which are innovatively arranged in section, allowing for three floors of economical bedrooms and bathrooms, to every two floors of light and generous living rooms [5]. A challenge for Ginzburg was how to transition residents, accustomed to living in separate households, to this new communal way of living [6]. Ginzburg developed a working method that involved all influences on the architecture (political, technical, economic), resulting in the concept of ‘social condensers’ to create social change [7]. In addition to publishing his theories in the SA, Ginzburg also published a number of books, in particular ‘Dwelling: Five Years’ Work on the Problem of the Habitation’ (1934), which describes the approaches researched by Ginzburg and his colleagues at the OSA.

By the time the Narkomfin building was being constructed, Soviet architecture was known in the European architectural journals and ideas passed between the European and the Russian modernists. In particular, Le Corbusier is considered to have been influenced by Ginzburg and the Narkomfin building [8]. By the late 1920s, state interference began to put a stop to the pursuits of the OSA (and the wider modernist movement), and a new language architectural language was adopted.

Becka Crabtree, July 2022

[1] Haywood Gallery, ‘Art in Revolution: Soviet Art and Design after 1917’, Google Arts & Culture

<https://artsandculture.google.com/story/art-in-revolution-soviet-art-and-design-after-1917-hayward-gallery/4wVhjzEVYXhYLw?hl=en> [accessed 13 July 2022]

[2] Catherine Cooke, ‘The Avant-Garde: Russian Architecture in the Twenties’, ed. by Andreas C. Papadakis, Architectural Design, 61 (1991), 9-21 (p.14)

[3] Daniel Vega, ‘Housing and Revolution: From the Dom-Kommuna to the Transitional Type of Experimental House (1926–30)’, Architectural Histories, 8 (2020) <http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264> [accessed 13 July 2022] (para.8)

[4] Vega, Housing and Revolution, para.1

[5] William Curtis, ‘Architecture and Revolution in Russia’, in Modern Architecture Since 1900, ed. by William Curtis (London: Phaidon, 1996), pp. 201-215 (p.209).

[6] Vega, Housing and Revolution, para.29

[7] Cooke, Architectural Design, p.15

[8] Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, p.210