The Narkomfin Building is an institutional and research project of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. The Museum team is studying both the architectural significance of the building and the life stories of its creators and inhabitants over a period of 100 years. The knowledge generated will form the basis of tour itineraries, publications, and various public and education projects constructed around this legendary building. In addition, residents of the building, Museum patrons, and GARAGE cardholders have access to Narkomfin Café, and a book shop has opened on the first floor of the residential block.
The residential building created for staff of the Ministry of Finance of the RSFSR, which is now known as the Narkomfin Building, is one of the best-known experimental constructions in the USSR of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The history of the building’s construction is closely connected with social processes taking place in the first decades of the USSR’s existence. Representatives of various professions were tasked with educating the new Soviet citizen, who would speak a new language, live according to the precepts of communism, and, as a result, become a true champion of its ideas. In architecture this led to the creation of house-communes and «transitional type» projects such as the Narkomfin Building. Laundry, childcare, and even residents’ leisure activities were all designed to take place in shared spaces and meals were to be served in a communal dining room.
However, the Narkomfin Building was famous not so much for its social concept as its unusual architectural solution.
The Narkomfin Building was based on designs for apartments developed by staff of the section for typifying residential accommodation of the Construction Committee (STROIKOM) of the RSFSR, headed by Moisei Ginzburg. The architect Alexander Pasternak, brother of the poet Boris Pasternak, became the lead staff member and a close associate of Ginzburg. He was the author of a series of projects for living cells, as compact apartments designed for various types of family were then called.
As a result of the section’s work, a decree was issued that recommended various versions of living cells for mass construction and the rest for experimental buildings. The design provided economical but comfortable living accommodation for the time, and natural lighting was also preferred.
The few remaining design drawings for the Narkomfin Building—working drawings and blueprint copies—do not entirely match the building as constructed. (In 1934, Ginzburg published the drawings submitted for approval and not the final version.) In particular, in some apartments additional rooms were created and other elements were included that did not feature in the design. However, from the beginning the Narkomfin Building consisted of three blocks: the housekeeping block, the communal block, and the residential block (the unbuilt second project included another housekeeping block and a second residential block).
The Narkomfin Building’s residential block is situated deep within the site and is oriented almost exactly from north to south, parallel with the part of the Garden Ring known as Novinsky Bulvar. The sun entered the building from the east facade in the morning (into the bedrooms, the glazed gallery, the corridor, and kitchens) and from the west facade, in which direction the main spaces consisting of combined dining and living rooms faced, in the evening.
All of the apartments are incorporated within the dimensions of the axes of the framework and columns. The small, two-level F-type cells occupied one section of the framework and the K-type two-level cells occupied two (16 pairs of F-type cells were arranged over eight K-type cells). Unlike the F-type cells, the K-type cells were designed in two mirror image versions to simplify the paired grouping of engineering communications—ventilation channels, extractor fans, water pipes, etc.
Leading engineer Sergei Prokhorov was responsible for engineering solutions during construction. He was one of the first people to use kamyshit (cane fiber), a light but non-durable material with excellent insulating qualities. The building was also constructed using «peasant» cement blocks, which were made on site, and spiral reinforcement for the round, loadbearing columns.
The color scheme of the apartments was also non-standard. It was developed by Bauhaus professor Hinnerk Scheper, who had been invited to the USSR, and his student Erich Borchert.
The building was commissioned by the People’s Commissariat for Finance (Narkomfin) of the RSFSR, which was headed by Nikolai Milyutin. He personally supervised the construction of the residential part of the building and, it appears, agreed with Moisei Ginzburg that he would design his own apartment, a penthouse on the roof. An important element of Milyutin’s concept was the direct link between the kitchen and the dining room, which was created using a suspended counter in the form of a flat «wall» with a window through which dishes could be served from the kitchen on to a long dinner table at which all of the residents and their guests would gather in the two-story dining room.
The first residents moved into the Narkomfin Building in 1931, but by 1936 alterations and redesigns had already begun to take place. For a while, Ginzburg’s studio was located in the communal block. Then it was home to the kindergarten, which had not been allocated a separate building. Starting in 1947, the building was redesigned. The first floor of the communal block was reorganized to create two low floors and six windows along the façade instead of continuous glazing. The columns in the club were supplemented with plaster capitals and «historical» Ionic cornices, and the terrace was built on. The dining room ceased to exist, having practically not even begun to operate, since prepared dishes were given to residents to take away. Instead, a communal kitchen was built on the fifth floor of the residential block, with rows of stovetops and washtubs. The kindergarten was closed, and the communal block became a printing house. The laundry remained, but eventually stopped serving residents. In the end, the building was transferred to the local housing department, and they gradually stopped repairing it.
At various times, as well as architect Moisei Ginzburg and Nikolai Milyutin, residents of the building included Nikolai Krylenko, People’s Commissar for Justice of the USSR, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, People’s Commissar for Justice of the USSR, Nikolai Sokolov, Chair of the Board of Gosbank of the USSR, Sergei Karp, Chair of Gosplan of the RSFSR, Nikolai Lisitsyn, People’s Commissar of Agriculture of the RSFSR, Daniil Sulimov, Chair of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, and his deputy, Turar Ryskulov, Nikolai Semashko, former People’s Commissar of Health of the RSFSR and his family, Soviet painter Alexander Deineka, Bolshoi Theater soloist Olga Insarova (Okorokova), actress Olga Bgan, chief surgeon of the Soviet Army Alexander Vishnevsky, and others. In the 1930s, the residents of the building did not avoid the fate of the rest of the country. Many of them were subject to repressions.
A detailed study of the Narkomfin Building, although not the first such research project, was undertaken by Moscow Architectural Institute (MARKHI) in 1990, with the participation of students led by Elena Ovsyannikova (MARKHI), Jean-Claude Ludi (University of Geneva), architectural historian Alexei Tarkhanov, and designer Mark Konik. At that point it became clear that during construction there were significant changes to the previously approved design drawings, and no fewer than eleven types of apartment were identified within the Narkomfin Building. Until the mid-2000s, there was no major work on the building, and as a result by that time it was in dangerous condition. Notwithstanding constant rumors about the demolition of the Narkomfin Building and attempts to turn it into aboutique hotel, in 2017 the plan for the restoration of the building, led by Alexey Ginzburg, the grandson of Moisei Ginzburg, was approved. By the time of this major restoration project, almost everything inside the apartments and in the corridor of the residential block had been broken and disposed of, including the unique oak woodwork with the bronze rollers of the sliding windows and the cast-iron radiators.
The restoration and partial reconstruction of the apartments, the aim of which was to re-establish the original external and internal design of the building, ribbon glazing, color schemes, and individual architectural elements, was completed in 2020. Of the surviving postwar alterations, it was decided to retain the lift shaft, which is now the main difference with the external appearance of the building in the early 1930s.
You can see the results of the restoration during a tour devised by Garage guide Zhanna Sevastyanova and Moisei Ginzburg’s grandson, Alexey Ginzburg.