Narkomfin

The model for Le Corbusier’s Unitè D’Habitation, this architectural landmark is set slightly back from the Garden Ring, wedged between the US embassy and Novinsky Passage shopping centre. On the World Monuments Fund Watch List since 2002, this building is an early experiment in semicommunal living, and a prototype for contemporary apartment blocks. Designed and built between 1928 and 1930 by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis Narkomfin, the building offered housing for members of the Commissariat of Finances. There was room for 52 families in duplex apartments and a penthouse on the roof for the Commissar of Finances. In following with constructivist ideals, communal space was maximised and individual space was minimised. Apartments had minute kitchens and people were encouraged to eat in the communal dining room in the neighbouring utilities block. Narkomfin was built strictly on Corbusian principles: pillar supports, supporting frames, wall screens, horizontal windows, open planning and flat, functional roofs. Yet it predated Le Corbusier’s vertical city. It is said that the young architect asked Ginzburg for copies of the layouts of the duplex apartments, which he took back to Paris and developed into his own revolutionary designs. Having been in a semiruinous state for many years, Russian property development group MIAN Companies is now buying up apartments in the building in order to open an ‘Art Hotel’. Good news, says the founder of the Moscow Architectural Preservation Society Clementine Cecil, as it represents an opportunity to set a positive precedent for the conversion and use of constructivist buildings.