Narkomfin Building

The Narkomfin Building on Moscow's Garden Ring is one of the most important works of Soviet Constructivism, designed by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis as an experimental residence for staff of the People's Commissariat of Finance. Built between 1928 and 1930, it was meant to architecturally prefigure a new collective way of life: two-storey F-type micro-flats of just 31 square metres, plus a communal floor with kitchen, kindergarten and gymnasium. Le Corbusier studied the design before his Unite d'Habitation. After Stalin's stylistic reversal the building decayed, was left to vandals for decades and came close to demolition. A full restoration was completed in 2020, and ICOMOS recommends the ensemble together with other Constructivist buildings for the World Heritage list. Today the apartments are inhabited again and the courtyard is intermittently open to the public.