The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis · a communal house for the employees of the People’s Commissariat of Finance, scored as the building as restored in 2017 to 2020: the long dwelling block and the communal block joined to it by a covered bridge · the dwelling block a slab on a reinforced-concrete frame, raised in part on columns over a sloping garden, with ribbon windows on its long fronts and a flat roof with a terrace and a penthouse flat added during building; its cells of the two-storey family type K and the small split-section type F, served by corridors that each serve three floors; the communal block a smaller glazed block of kitchen and dining room, gymnasium and library or reading room · Novinsky Boulevard, Moscow · built 1928 to 1930 · Moisei Ginzburg with Ignaty Milinis, for the employees of the Narkomfin of the RSFSR, under the patronage of the commissar Nikolai Milyutin · as it stands: communal services given up within the 1930s, the columns walled in and the communal block put to other uses; decayed by the 2000s; restored 2017 to 2020 by Ginzburg Architects, led by Alexei Ginzburg, the architect’s grandson, for a private developer, the columns reopened and the windows, plan and colour returned to the documented originals, the flats sold as private apartments; the laundry block is context, and the kindergarten, planned and never built, is not scored
Mode
Constructivist communal house; the house of the transitional type between the family flat and the full commune, built as a social condenser
Mythos
The internal street, the ship of cabins along a gangway, the common table of the commune; and the period’s own myth of the new way of life
Phase
Built 1928 to 1930; communal life given up within the 1930s; the columns walled in and the communal block turned to other uses; decayed by the 2000s; restored 2017 to 2020 and sold as private flats
Presentation
A long slab of interlocking cells of types K and F on a concrete frame, raised in part on columns, with ribbon windows and a roof terrace; a glazed communal block joined by a covered bridge; a penthouse for the patron on the roof
Register
Light, white and economical; small in scale and modest by design; the lift of a double-height room and a lit corridor, never grandeur
Scale
A single house of flats for the staff of a commissariat: a household’s world, its labour and its politics, not a city’s
Governing Proposition
A commissariat in Moscow builds a house for its staff, and its architects make it the first full statement of a new section of housing: small cells and two-storey family flats interlocked along corridors that each serve three floors, and a bridge to a dining room where the kitchen was meant to go. The wager is that the plan of a dwelling is a form of life, and that the household can be shrunk and opened outward by degrees, not by decree; the building’s own history tested the wager and partly refuted it, and the house now stands restored as private flats bearing the form of a commune.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Moscow at the end of the 1920s had two ways of housing people. One was the apartment house of masonry, with courtyards and corridors of rooms, which the housing crisis had broken up into communal flats, a family to a room and a kitchen shared by strangers. The other existed mostly on paper: the radical commune projects of the late 1920s, the student commune and the competitions for the dom-kommuna, which would abolish the family flat outright and house its members as a collective.
Between them stood the Union of Contemporary Architects, OSA, and its leader Moisei Ginzburg. In 1928 and 1929 the typification section of Stroikom, the Construction Committee of the RSFSR, worked under him on the cell of the new dwelling: what the smallest decent unit was, how it could be stacked, how it could be served. The building on Novinsky Boulevard, built from 1928 to 1930 for the employees of the Narkomfin, the People’s Commissariat of Finance, under the patronage of the commissar Nikolai Milyutin, was the first full built use of those cells. Ginzburg designed it with Ignaty Milinis.
It was designed as a dom perekhodnogo tipa, a house of the transitional type, and as a social condenser, a building whose form would carry its residents toward a new way of life. The word transitional is the building’s honesty. The family flats kept their kitchens; the commune was offered across a bridge, not imposed. Ginzburg set out the Stroikom work in his book Zhilishche (Dwelling) of 1934.
Movement II
The section is the building. A corridor on every floor wastes a third of a block’s area. The type F answers that by splitting the section: a small cell is entered from a low corridor and steps half a floor up or half a floor down from it, so that one corridor serves three floors, and each cell runs through the depth of the block to take light from both fronts. The type K answers the same arithmetic for families: a two-storey flat with a double-height living room, a wall of window rising the full two storeys, and a sleeping gallery looking down into the room.
Walk it as a resident walks it. The corridor is long and lit, a street inside the house where neighbours meet in passage. At a door the level changes, up or down half a floor, and the change marks the threshold between what is common and what is private. The room behind is small, and lit from both sides. In the K flat the household has one shared vertical space, and a small family flat feels generous. Substitute a corridor block of identical flats with full kitchens and the building no longer knows what it argues.
The interlocking of F and K cells, the corridor serving three floors, the light reaching every cell from both fronts and the double-height room fitted within a slab of uniform frame are resolved in one extrusion, and that command is of the first rank. It has its costs. The F corridors are low by design, a crawl beside the height of a K room, and the cells are tight: economy presses on comfort. Command of the idea outran command of the material, and the material is the subject of the last movement.
Movement III
The long dwelling block is a slab on a reinforced-concrete frame, raised in part on columns over the sloping ground of a garden behind Novinsky Boulevard, with ribbon windows on its long fronts and a flat roof with a terrace. Seen through the trees from the slope, the white slab lifted over the garden is the building’s first and largest elevation. It is not a large one. The building has no grandeur and seeks none, and its lift comes again and again in small measures: the slab on its columns, the double-height room, the lit corridor, the roof terrace above the trees.
A covered bridge joins the dwelling block to a smaller glazed communal block, which held a communal kitchen and dining room, a gymnasium and a library or reading room. The bridge is the transitional idea built: small kitchens in the flats, the dining room across the way, and dinner a walk to a common room. Cooking, laundry, childcare and exercise were to be taken out of the flat into shared rooms, and the private cell shrunk to sleep, work and a family’s evening. The laundry block belongs to the context, and the kindergarten that would have completed the ensemble was planned and never built.
Three archetypes are built here in part. The internal street is the most load-bearing, the oldest pattern of the city lifted into the house. The ship is the second, a long hull of cabins along a gangway with a deck on top. The third is the commune, the house of a common table, built as the bridge. But the myth the building constructs most fully is its own period’s: the new way of life, novyi byt, and the new person it was to form. That is a myth of 1928, not an archetype, and the ship and the street are evoked by the type as much as built afresh.
Movement IV
On the roof of the dwelling block, during building, a penthouse flat was added for Nikolai Milyutin, the commissar under whose patronage the house was built. Nothing in the scheme requires it, and much in it contradicts it: a private flat for the patron on top of a house built to shrink the private flat. It was built in the original campaign, as part of the work, and it is charged to the work, not to Ginzburg.
The penthouse makes the building say more than it meant to. The house holds the family, rebuilt as a smaller unit; domestic labour, taken out of the flat, and with it the place of women in the household; the state, as patron and as the commissariat whose staff it housed; the body, in the gymnasium and on the roof; the natural order, in the garden slope, light and air; the city, in the internal street. And it holds hierarchy, in the gap between the K flat, the F cell and the commissar’s flat above them both. The section places each order at its level.
One law governs the whole: the frame, the ribbon of glass, and the division of life into private cells and shared space joined by a lit passage. The low F corridor, sized for one person at a time, and the glazed dining hall for the whole house obey it alike. The penthouse bends it, and so does an ensemble never fully joined in use. The range the law covers is a household’s, not a world’s; history appears only as the moment’s programme, and the sacred and death are absent.
Movement V
The stake was paid quickly. The lightweight infill and the experimental finishes and roofs performed badly, and the building leaked and decayed faster than its age; the shortages of the first Five-Year Plan were the condition of its making. Within a few years Constructivism was set aside by decree, Soviet architecture turned to classicism, and the commune house became a reproach. Communal dining and services were given up within the 1930s. Residents rebuilt kitchens, the canteen closed, the columns were walled in for flats and the communal block passed to other uses. By the 2000s the block was decayed, partly empty, and on the World Monuments Fund’s watch lists.
The house was restored from 2017 to 2020 by Ginzburg Architects, led by Alexei Ginzburg, the architect’s grandson, for a private developer. The columns were reopened and the windows, plan and colour returned to the documented originals; much of the fabric was repaired or remade, to its documents but by later hands. The flats were sold as private apartments. The work scored is the building as restored, and it stands as a house of private flats bearing the form of a commune. Its history is its second disclosure: the commune contracted to the family, and the residents’ alterations, read by Victor Buchli in An Archaeology of Socialism (1999), are a record of how socialist domestic life was argued and undone.
Abroad the section went on. Le Corbusier knew Ginzburg and the Moscow work, and the Unité d’habitation at Marseille (8.6), with its interlocking section and interior street, descends from it; through the Unité it reached the streets in the air and the slab housing of the postwar decades. The Bauhaus at Dessau (8.3), of the same moment and doctrine, had the wider reach and the sounder fabric; the Rietveld Schröder House (8.2), another small house that argued a way of living, stands level. In the same city and the same years, Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (8.6) filmed the new way of life the building was made to house.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on plan, section and structure, under purpose and site. The section is the most compelled thing in the building. The type F exists because a corridor on every floor wastes a third of a block’s area; splitting the section so that one corridor serves three floors is economy turned into form, and the type K’s double-height room answers the same arithmetic for families. The bridge is required by the transitional idea: small kitchens in the flats, the dining room across the way. The columns free the garden slope, and the ribbon windows follow the frame. What resists the test: the communal block’s programme is lighter than its doctrine, the kindergarten was never built, and the penthouse on the roof is required by nothing in the scheme.
Score: 8.2 / 10
What can be stated, and holds: the form of a dwelling encodes a form of life, and changing the plan of the flat changes the household. The building states, in section, a proposition about the socialisation of domestic labour: cooking, laundry, childcare and exercise taken out of the flat into shared rooms, the private cell shrunk to sleep, work and a family’s evening, the passage between them made a street. It states its own tentativeness too, which is its honesty: a house of the transitional type, with kitchens kept in the K flats, a wager on gradual change. Held just below the gate because the second truth, the commune’s contraction to the family, is disclosed by the building’s life more than by its form.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation here is lightness and light, small in scale. It comes in the long white slab lifted over the garden on its columns, seen through trees from the slope; in the type K’s double-height room, where a wall of window rises the full two storeys and the sleeping gallery looks down into it; in the lit corridor running the length of the block; and on the roof terrace above the city’s trees. The route from corridor to cell to double-height room repeats the same small lift, so frequency is fair. Height is what holds the axis: the building has no grandeur and seeks none, its cells are tight and its F corridors low by design, and its first effect is of modesty and economy.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The archetypes present are built in part. The internal street is the most load-bearing: the oldest pattern of the city, the street as the place of common life, lifted into the building so that neighbours meet in passage. The ship, a long hull of cabins with a deck on top, is the second; here it is a section of cabins along a gangway, not ornament. The third is the commune, the house of a common table, built as the bridge to the dining room. What holds the axis: the myth built most fully is the period’s own, the new way of life and the new person it was to form, a myth of 1928 rather than an archetype; and the ship and the street are partly evoked by a type, not constructed afresh.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance: the Moscow apartment house of masonry, courtyards and corridors of rooms; the communal flat that the housing crisis had made of it; and the radical commune projects of the late 1920s, which would abolish the family flat outright. The departure is double. Against the old block, a frame lifted on columns, ribbon windows, a roof garden and a section of interlocking cells no housing had used; against the radicals, a transitional house that kept the family and offered the commune as a choice. The F cell is an invention in the section of housing, not a borrowed style. The stake was paid: the materials failed early, and within a few years the line the building stood for was condemned. Held below the top because frame and ribbon were received from Le Corbusier and the West.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The form changes how its purpose is lived at nearly every step. A resident walks a long lit corridor to a door, then steps up or down half a floor into a cell lit from both fronts: the passage is common, the room private, and the change of level marks the threshold. The K flat’s double-height room makes a small family flat feel generous and gives the household one shared vertical space. The bridge makes dinner a walk to a common room. Substitute a corridor block of identical flats with full kitchens and the building no longer knows what it argues. What holds the axis: the communal half of the form went unused within a decade, and the cells, made for a reformed life, were refitted for an ordinary one without much resistance.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence over promise: some ninety-five years of return, and a growing literature in the last forty. The building has yielded to architectural history, in Selim Khan-Magomedov’s studies of the Soviet avant-garde and Catherine Cooke’s work on Constructivist housing; to anthropology, in Victor Buchli’s An Archaeology of Socialism (1999), which read the residents’ alterations as a record of how socialist domestic life was argued and undone; to conservation, as a test case for restoring experimental modern fabric; and to politics, as a commune turned into private property. The questions stay open: utopia or compromise, model or failure, monument or dwelling. Held lower because much of the yield concerns its history and fate, and the section, once grasped, is clear.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is Soviet housing and the collective dwelling of the twentieth century, and the European housing slab it fed. Intrinsic force is high: the first built statement of the interlocking split-section slab with internal streets, joining cell, corridor and communal service in one system, a real reorganisation of what a block of flats is. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: at home the line was cut off within five years, as Soviet architecture turned to classicism, though the Stroikom cells shaped housing of those years; abroad it reached through Le Corbusier, who knew Ginzburg and the Moscow work, into the Unité d’habitation, whose interlocking section and interior street descend from it, and through the Unité into the slab housing of the postwar decades. That reach is delayed and mediated, and it is discounted.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Weighed on form, use and fabric over some ninety-five years. Form: the governing idea survived as a model copied and answered, and now stands legible again, columns open, plan, section, bridge and colour returned; but for some sixty years it was obscured, the columns walled in and the communal block put to other uses. Use: dwelling has gone on since 1930, but the use that made the work, the transitional commune, ended within a decade and does not return; the restored flats are private property, so the building survives as a house of flats bearing the form of a commune. Fabric: the experimental infill and finishes failed early, decay by the 2000s was severe, and the restoration remade much, to its documents but by later hands.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged as command of building, structure and engineering included. The command of the section is of the first rank and load-bearing: the interlocking of F and K cells, the corridor serving three floors, the light reaching each cell from both fronts, the double-height room fitted within a slab of uniform frame, all resolved in one extrusion. The proportion of the long slab over its columns and ribbon windows is sure. The costs are the makers’ and they are real: the lightweight infill, the experimental finishes and the roofs performed badly, the building leaked and decayed faster than its age, and the low corridors and tight cells show economy pressing on comfort. The shortages of the first Five-Year Plan are a condition here, not an excuse.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the low F corridor, a passage sized for one person at a time, and the communal dining room, a glazed hall for the whole house. One is the smallest private approach and the other the largest common room, and they obey one law: the frame, the ribbon of glass, and the division of life into private cells and shared space joined by a lit passage. The same law runs through the K flat’s double-height room, the bridge, the gymnasium and the roof terrace; the house is one physics of economy and light. What bends it: the patron’s penthouse on the roof of a house built to shrink the private flat, and an ensemble never fully joined in use, lacking its kindergarten. The range is a household’s, not a world’s.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Orders held: the family, rebuilt in the K and F types as a smaller unit; labour, above all domestic labour, taken out of the flat into kitchen, laundry and dining room, and with it the place of women in the household; the state, as patron and as the commissariat whose staff it housed, with the commissar on the roof; class and hierarchy, in the gap between the K flat, the F cell and the penthouse; the body, in gymnasium and roof; the natural order, in the garden slope, light and air; the city, in the internal street. The section places each at its level, so they are integrated more than listed. What holds the axis: history appears only as the moment’s programme, the sacred and death are absent, and a single block holds a household’s world and its politics, not a city’s.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve at 8.8, The Living Form and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6, The Imperishable at 8.5 and The Unconcealment at 8.4. A section no housing had used, set against both the old block and the radical commune; a form that marks the threshold between common and private at every door; the first built statement of the interlocking slab with internal streets, carried abroad into the Unité; a governing idea that stands legible again after sixty years obscured; and a plain truth, that the plan of a dwelling is a form of life.
Limiting Dimension
The Sublime at 7.4: elevation comes often and in small measures, and the building has no grandeur and seeks none. Beside it, The Archetypal Deep and The Encompassed at 7.6: the myth built most fully is the period’s own, and a single block holds a household’s world and its politics, not a city’s. Then The Made at 8.0: a section of the first rank in a fabric that failed early.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Swerve at 8.8 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Imperishable meets it exactly at 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Sublime, 7.4, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.6. The aggregate of 8.2 stands below the summit in any case.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the Narkomfin Building, its published plans and sections, and its history; the building was not visited. Knowledge is surest on its section, its cell types and its history, thinner on its dimensions, its unit count and the detail of the restoration. The work scored is the building as restored in 2017 to 2020: the long dwelling block, with the penthouse added on its roof during building, and the communal block joined to it by a covered bridge, as they stand after the restoration by Ginzburg Architects, led by Alexei Ginzburg. What the restoration repaired or remade, the reopened columns, the windows, the render, the colour and the services, is weighed under The Imperishable and not credited or charged to the makers; the later walling-in of the columns and the conversions of the communal block are weighed there too. The penthouse, built in the original campaign for the patron, belongs to the one work and is charged to it, not to Ginzburg. The laundry block is context; the kindergarten, planned and never built, is not scored. The design is given under the names of Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis. The period’s terms, the social condenser, the house of the transitional type and the new way of life, are given as terms, not quoted. No words are quoted: none is held with the certainty quotation requires. Facts that could not be verified are not given: the structural engineer; the number of storeys and the length of the block; the number of flats; the floors on which the corridors run, and whether they were heated and glazed; the number of storeys of the communal block; the material of the infill blocks; the authorship of the original colour scheme; the later use of the communal block; and whether any flat is kept as a museum.