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Video: Why were houses on legs built in Soviet Moscow, and where can you find such buildings
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Houses on legs are a very unusual phenomenon in the Moscow architecture of the Soviet period. Such residential buildings in the capital can be counted, perhaps, on one hand, because most of the Soviet high-rise buildings were boxes of the same type. Each house "floating in the sky" immediately became an urban architectural sensation. Such buildings may seem ugly to some, but there are also many fans of such architecture. And living in such a house is great and unusual.
House on Novinsky Boulevard
Residential building on legs, which can be seen at Novinsky Boulevard, 25, bldg. 1, built in 1928-30. This is the first house on legs that appeared in Moscow during the years of the USSR. The authors of the project are Soviet architects Moisey Ginzburg and Ignatius Milinis.
Since the theme of the commune and the dormitory was popular in the 1920s and 1930s, the house on legs on Novinsky had an ideological component. To make the residents feel like “one big Soviet family,” the apartments in it were mostly small (not counting housing for the elite) and there was a separate building - a kitchen with dining rooms where the inhabitants of the house had to come to eat.
The building has a reinforced concrete frame and reinforced concrete round pillars. Ginzburg is considered to be the author of the idea to put this house on its feet.
Four years ago, the building of the People's Commissariat for Finance was renovated. It has somewhat retained its original appearance, moreover, the interior layout has also been preserved. However, the building now certainly looks more modern.
House on Mira Avenue
The official address of this grandiose house with staggered windows is Mira Avenue, 184, bldg. 2. At the same time, one end of the high-rise building faces Kasatkina Street, and the other - to Boris Galushkina Street.
The building stands opposite VDNKh and from those windows that overlook the avenue, a beautiful view opens up - in particular, the monument to the Worker and the Collective Farm Woman. By the way, you can admire the surrounding beauty from the first floor, because due to the fact that the house is on legs, the lowest floor is located very high - at the third level.
The style in which the building is designed can be called brutalism. The authors of the project are architect Viktor Andreev and engineer Trifon Zaikin. The house has more than 30 reinforced concrete "legs" - piles, 25 floors.
There used to be Finnish elevators in the house. Subsequently, due to old age, they were replaced by ordinary, modern ones.
House on Myasnitskaya
The Tsentrosoyuz House is a very extraordinary building, and I can't even believe that it was built in the mid-1930s. The authors of the project are the famous Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanneret and Nicholas Colly also helped him. In other words, this building is an example of fruitful cooperation between the specialists of the young Soviet country and their European colleagues.
When they began to build this building, the NEP flourished in the Soviet Union, and the house on Myasnitskaya was originally designed for offices. Speaking about "Legs", De Corbusier noted that he embodied the idea of "free circulation of air and people" in this project.
By the way, the building of the Ministry of Health and Education in Rio de Janeiro is very similar to this house, which is not surprising: Le Corbusier took part in the development of the Brazilian project.
House on Begovaya
When the Stalinist times ended, architects had the opportunity to fantasize and experiment without looking back at the opinion of the harsh leader, and then the Khrushchev period, which was difficult for architecture, ended. Very extravagant projects have appeared. The result of such a creative search (and, according to experts, quite successful) is the most famous of all houses on legs: the house of aviators at the intersection of Begovaya and Leningradka. This high-rise building was supposed to amaze foreigners who came to Moscow for the Olympics with the originality of Soviet architectural thought.
The house was nicknamed the centipede because it has exactly four dozen reinforced concrete supports. The author of the project is an adherent of brutalism architect Meerson.
The building has 13 floors, but if you add the "legs", it is a full-fledged 17-storey in height.
Reinforced concrete towers with staircases are not only functional. It is also a home decoration, its visiting card.
By the way, the window sashes in the apartments of the aviators' house initially did not open like in ordinary houses (moving horizontally), but up and down. Nowadays, most of the windows in this house are already modern.
Initially, it was planned to accommodate guests of the Olympics - 80, but in the end it turned out to be an ordinary residential building, where apartments were given to employees of an aviation plant (therefore, it is called the house of aviators). We advise you to read in more detail about the history of this extravagant high-rise building, the architecture of the house and about what did the new settlers think of him.
Why did they build houses on legs in Moscow? Of course, this decision was not intended solely to surprise passers-by. One of the reasons is to allow air to pass freely under the house between the support columns, preventing the accumulation of large amounts of exhaust gases in the area of the lower part of the building. The second reason is the possibility for local pedestrians, instead of making a detour around a long building, to go directly under the house.
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