Narkomfin Building

Narkomfin Building
The Narkomfin building in the 1930s
General information
Architectural style	Constructivism
Location	Moscow, Russia
Construction started	1928
Completed	1930
Design and construction
Architect	Moisei Ginzburg, Ignaty Milinis
Architecture firm	OSA Group

The Narkomfin Building is a block of flats at 25, Novinsky Boulevard, in the Central district of Moscow, Russia. It is a renowned example of Constructivist architecture and avant-garde interior planning.

Though a listed "Cultural Heritage Monument" on the Russian cultural heritage register, it is in a deteriorating state. Most units were vacated by residents years ago.

The project for four planned buildings was designed by Moisei Ginzburg with Ignaty Milinis in 1928. Only two were built, completed in 1932.

This apartment block, designed for high rank employees at the Commissariat of Finance (shortened to Narkomfin) was an opportunity for Ginzburg to try out many of the theories advanced by the Constructivist OSA group in the course of the 1920s on architectural form and communal living. The building is made from reinforced concrete and is set in a park. It originally consisted of a long block of apartments raised on pilotis (with a penthouse and roof garden), connected by an enclosed bridge to a smaller, glazed block of collective facilities.

As advertised by the architects, the apartments were to form an intervention into the everyday life (or byt) of the inhabitants. By offering Communal facilities such as kitchens, creches and laundry as part of the block, the tenants were encouraged into a more socialist and, by taking women out of their traditional roles, feminist way of life. The structure was thus to act as a 'social condenser' by including within it a library and gymnasium.

On the other hand, architects of the 1920s had to face the social reality of an overcrowded socialist city: any single-family apartment unit with more than one room would eventually be converted to a multi-family kommunalka. Apartments could retain the single-family status if, and only if, they were physically small and could not be partitioned to accommodate more than one family. Any single-level apartment could be partitioned; thus, the avant-garde community (notably, Ginzburg and Konstantin Melnikov) designed such model units, relying on vertical separation of bedroom (top level) and combined kitchen and living room (lower level). Ilya Golosov implemented these cells for his Collective House in Ivanovo, and Pavel Gofman for communal housing in Saratov). Ginzburg refined their cell design based on real-life experience.