strictures of structure
The long-suffering, dilapidated and rather bizarre Dom Narkomfina is one of the last surviving classics of constructivist architecture. element explored the building in the run-up to an exhibition at the Shchusev Architecture Museum.
TEXT FRANCIS MERSON feedback
The Narkomfin building has a face you’d never pick out in a crowd. In fact, you could walk past this constructivist hulk a hundred times, on your way to Novinsky Passazh or the U.S. Embassy, without noticing anything out of the ordinary. With its jaundiced, peeling paint and crumbling balconies, it resembles so many decaying Soviet-era hospitals, institutes and workers’ clubs. But if you happen to be standing right in front of it, a few structural curios catch your eye — the three semi-circular balconies jutting out of the south side, the unbroken rows of windows lining its six floors, the oddly disproportionate length of the building … And if you happen to skip around the archipelago of puddles leading up to the podyezd and duck inside one of the gaping exterior doors, you immediately twig that you are in a very weird place. This housing block, built for the workers of the People’s Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin for short), is the magnum opus of Soviet architect Moisei Ginzburg, who oversaw its construction from 1928-32. Dom Narkomfina is not only the masterpiece of a gifted architect, but the brainchild of a social theorist — Ginzburg was convinced that the structure of a building determined the political behavior of its inhabitants. If the proletariat were like worker bees, Dom Narkomfina was to be their hive. Inside, two finger-like corridors stretch past countless wooden doors, each of which houses a so-called “cell” — the minimum living unit for a family. The cells originally consisted of tiny duplex apartments with high ceilings, massive windows, a bathroom and no kitchen. Each cell had a downstairs on an even-numbered floor (two or four) and an upstairs on an odd number (three or five), meaning that only two corridors were necessary to access all the apartments. The spacious corridor and balcony, with a now-defunct parquet and thin strip of windows, were intended to be the hub of life in Dom Narkomfina, where private space was reduced to a minimum, and everything but sleeping and defecating was regarded as a communal activity. Ginzburg hoped to create inherently equitable public spaces, where social hierarchies would be forced to break down in what he called a new “social condenser.” Disparate classes would collide, interact, and be forced to merge. A shared garden and solarium were built on the flat roof, while a four-storey annex housed a fitness center, communal kitchen, public restaurant, library, recreation room and day nursery. The collectivist idyll was made complete by a two-storey building containing laundry and repair services. All household chores were to be divided harmoniously among the inhabitants, who would thus have more time for labor and the construction of the bright Communist future. The “house-commune” was posited as the new primary unit of society, replacing the moribund, bourgeois concept of the family. Needless to say, the plan was doomed from the outset. First off, the Narkomfin workers were ousted by members of the Nomenklatura, who used their influence to appropriate flats for themselves. The finance minister Nikolai Milyutin was one of the first to move in, reconstructing a planned recreation area to become his personal penthouse. The idea of communal cooking never caught on either, as inhabitants preferred to construct illegal kitchens within their cells. The roof garden of the building also happens to overlook the U.S. embassy, and residents were thus “discouraged” from using it. But the death knell of Dom Narkomfina was the rise of a different kind of architecture, the “Empire” style propounded by Joseph Stalin, who rejected the Utopian, collectivist ideas of Ginzburg as “leftist” and “Trotskyist.” In 1933, the Empire struck back, when architect Boris Iofan’s grandiose plan for the construction of a Palace of the Soviets was approved. The Palace project was later scrapped to provide raw fodder for the war effort, but an adjoining wing in the eclectic Stalinist style was added to Dom Narkomfina. The building’s ground floor, originally left open and suspended on pylons in the constructivist style, was crammed with extra flats to help alleviate Moscow’s severe housing shortage. It would be all too easy to berate Stalin for stifling the freedom of architects like Ginzburg, but it must be conceded that the Empire-style wing of Dom Narkomfina is more comfortable, ergonomic and humane. Although the style of Stalin’s architects is monumental, and seems to embody the delusions of grandeur of its ideologue, it is fundamentally less repressive than Dom Narkomfina. It also corresponded more closely to the ultimate desires of the populace — where would you rather live, in a spacious multi-room apartment or in a kitchenless constructivist cell? The flamboyant designs of Ginzburg are now no more than a historical oddity, albeit a fascinating one, but there is still something vaguely creepy about a visit to Dom Narkomfina. The space does not simply encourage communal living, it enforces it through a peculiar kind of repression — the molding of space to make privacy impossible. Indeed, there is something totalitarian about the exploitation of structure to deny people the ability to act as they choose. (George Orwell’s “1984” contains a chilling description of how such an architecture might look.) Today, the Narkomfin building is in lamentable condition. Collapsed walls have rendered many of the units uninhabitable, while heating, water, and drainage malfunctions have caused multiple leaks, leading to damp, fungi, and wall decay. Until late last year, the building was scheduled to be demolished by the Moscow government to make way for luxury apartments (prices in the area are around $20,000 per square meter). But an international campaign to save Dom Narkomfina, which featured on the World Monuments Fund’s list of 100 Most Endangered Sites in 2002 and 2004, has resulted in a compromise. The MIAN Group is funding the building’s $20-million transformation into a boutique hotel. This redevelopment will be headed by none other than architect Alexei Ginzburg, the grandson of Moisei. It is ironic how neatly the original design of individual cells and large communal facilities, intended as an embodiment of collectivist ideals, echoes the format of the modern hotel, the quintessence of capitalist luxury. And I hardly think grandfather Ginzburg would have approved. At any rate, the construction of a ritzy boutique hotel is as true to the zeitgeist of Moscow 2008 as a constructivist house-commune was to the ideological ferment of Moscow 1928. An exhibition entitled “Dom Narkomfina and its Significance” is being held at the Shchusev Architectural Museum from March 18 to April 18. Photos and models of the building will be on display. Entry is 100 rubles. Dom Narkomfina itself may be viewed at will. |
