The Melnikov House (the workshop house of the architect Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov) is a one-apartment residential house, a landmark building of the Soviet avant-garde. It was built in 1927–1929 in Krivoarbatsky Lane in Moscow by the outstanding Soviet architect Konstantin Melnikov for himself and his family.
The Workshop House is considered the pinnacle of Melnikov's work due to its innovative design features, original artistic image, and well-thought-out functional layout. This one-apartment residential mansion, located near the centre of Moscow, is a unique example of this type of construction during the Soviet era. It was completed before Melnikov was 40 and would be his last building.
In 2011, the Shchusev Museum of Architecture took over the management of the building, which is now displayed as a part of its branch, the Melnikov Museum, established in 2014.
In 2022, the interiors of the house were closed to the public due to restoration. However, visitors can still access the garden and inspect the exterior.
History of creation
Searching for an architectural and planning solution Konstantin Melnikov dreamed of having his own separate workshop house while studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Initially, he planned to purchase a pre-built house and renovate it. He searched for a suitable building in Moscow for a long time. The architect's plans for the reconstruction of one of Moscow's old stone houses in the neoclassical style, created in 1916–1917, have survived. The traditional layout and appearance of Melnikov's first sketches for his own house can be attributed to the influence of his former teacher, the architect Ivan Zholtovsky. Melnikov studied under Zholtovsky at the architectural department of the school and worked under his guidance from 1917 in the Architectural and Planning Workshop of the Construction Department of the Mossovet, which was the first state architectural workshop of the Soviet era.
However, in the early 1920s, Melnikov began working intensively on sketches for an innovative style house. The architect's personal archive contains various versions of his own house projects, all of which propose the construction of a workshop house that combines both domestic and working environments. Melnikov was so attached to his family that he could not imagine working in any other atmosphere but his home.Хан-Магомедов С. О. Дом-мастерская архитектора Константина Мельникова. – Moscow: Архитектура-С, 2006. – p. 80.
Unlike Melnikov's other buildings, the architect designed his own workshop house based solely on his personal taste and ideas about the housing and working environment. During the preparation of the house sketches, Melnikov acted in two roles simultaneously – as the client and the designer – and could afford maximum freedom of form-creation.
The initial known design for the new house is a two-storey square building with a large angled Russian stove in the centre of the first floor. Other sketches depict the house as a truncated pyramid, with small mezzanine rooms suspended in a single interior space. At the same time, in both the initial and subsequent versions of the house project, Melnikov focused more on the interior and layout of the premises than on the external appearance of the house. He aimed to create a space that would suit the needs of himself and his family.
Experiments with a circular plan first appeared in Melnikov's drawings in 1922. The architect sketched an oval and even an egg-shaped building, while continuing to develop the interior. The final version of the project, which combines two cylinders intersecting each other, is believed by researchers of Melnikov's workКонстантин Степанович Мельников: Архитектура моей жизни. Творческая концепция. Творческая практика / Сост. А. Стригалёв и И. Коккинаки. — Moscow: Искусство, 1985. — p. 311. to have originated from an unrealised project for the Zuev Club. In 1927, Melnikov participated in a competition to design this club. He described his design as 'a pipe organ of five cylinders'. Later, when the building was being constructed according to Ilya Golosov's design, Melnikov decided to incorporate at least some of his ideas into his own house. The house featured a series of vertical cylinders inscribed in each other.
+K. Melnikov's first sketches of his own house in the early 1920s.Sketches of a square workshop house, 1920–1921One of the "round" versions of the project, 1922 The curvilinear structure of the new house may have been influenced by the fact that the Melnikov family lived in a communal apartment for a long time (from 1918 to November 1929) before moving into their own house in Krivoarbatsky Lane. One of the rooms in the communal apartment had a plan in the shape of a quarter circle and overlooked five windows on the corner of Petrovka Street and Strastnoy Boulevard.Хан-Магомедов С. О. Константин Мельников. — Moscow: Архитектура-С, 2006. — p. 168. The architect took into account the type of family life formed in the flat on Petrovka when designing the mansion. The main furniture purchased for the flat became the basis for the furnishings of the workshop house.
Construction: structural features of walls and shells Melnikov's house is unique because, in the late 1920s, when the NEP was winding down in the USSR and the construction of communal houses began all over the country, one man was allowed to build a private house in the centre of the capital. Several explanations exist for this fact.
Melnikov's house was an officially recognised experimental building. The architect tested the idea of a round house here, which could later be used in other projects due to its cost-effectiveness and simplicity of construction, including the construction of communal houses.Based on the design of his own house, Konstantin Melnikov developed three housing projects: a communal house, a block house and a sectional house. However, these projects were never built.
By the mid-1920s, Konstantin Melnikov was one of the most respected Soviet architects not only in the USSR, but in the world, as a Soviet architect. He grew to fame through building the USSR's pavilion for the World's Fair of Decorative Arts and Applied Arts in Paris.The extent of Melnikov's popularity in Paris is recorded in Ilya Ehrenburg's story "The Summer of 1925", where there is an episode that shows how "the fashion for Melnikov reached the widest strata of Parisians, who are susceptible to any novelty, became a sign of the times and a rumour of the street: a random passer-by calls out to her companion the most acute signs of modernity in her opinion – football, jazz, a pavilion built by Melnikov..." (see И. Эренбург, Лето 1925 года. Moscow, p. 205).
Thirdly, the architect built his workshop house in 1927–1929, when he had a large number of real orders and could allocate funds for construction from the family budget. The total amount of fees he had received for the Bakhmetievsky and Novo-Ryazansky workshop projects by the time the actual construction of the house began in September 1927 was 10,900 roubles.Архив Дома Мельникова. Op. 396/135, lett. 2–7, 9–13 It was this sum that the architect paid in 1927.Архив Дома Мельникова. Op. 1121/1, lett. 7 At the same time, the initial construction estimate was 25,140 rubles, which rose to 37,846 rubles by October 1929.Архив Дома Мельникова. Op. 196/178, lett. 116 The construction of the house was carried out by the building organisation of the Moscow Municipal Services, exclusively at the architect's expense. (After two years of correspondence and negotiations with the Moscow authorities, on 1 October 1929, when the construction of the house was actually completed, Konstantin Melnikov received a repair and construction loan of 27,000 roubles for 15 years). Due to the fact that the building under construction was considered a pilot construction, Melnikov was also exempted from the building tax and ground rent by the decision of the Presidium of the Moscow City Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council of 11 November 1933.See copy of extract from the minutes of the Presidium of the City Executive Committee of the Mossovet from (копия выписки из протокола Президиума Горисполкома Моссовета) 11 November 1933 Архив Дома Мельникова. Op. 396/181
Finally, there is the version that the architect received the land as a reward from the Soviet authorities for his work on Lenin's first sarcophagus in 1924.
Konstantin Melnikov himself described in his memoirs the process of deciding to build his own house in Krivoarbatsky pereulok:
+Approved project documentation (July 1927)Schematic plan of the site with coordinating captions and notes by K. MelnikovApproved construction project. Floor plans and building in sectionExplanatory note by K. Melnikov with a drawing of the building wall structure The version of the project approved for construction was dated 19 June 1927. The general volumetric and spatial composition of the workshop building was finally defined in this project. However, the details of the building's design were significantly refined by Melnikov during the construction process. Along with the project, the architect made a detachable model of the building, which made it possible to see the architectural composition and internal layout of the future workshop building. The model was needed to obtain a building plot and to explain the complex volumetric and spatial structure of the building to the builders.
The main differences between the original (1927) and the realised (1929) designs:П. Кузнецов. Дом Мельникова. Шедевр авангарда, жилой дом, архитектурный музей. Berlin, 2017, p. 75.
Both cylinders in the original project had a shared sloping roof, and their heights varied slightly from each other. This was due to the intended inclusion of a mezzanine floor with two rooms for children, instead of the balcony-terrace that was ultimately constructed. The original plan did not include a basement floor with a calorifier in order to save money. The stove was intended to be placed in the centre of the second floor, which greatly limited Melnikov's room layout options. However, during construction, the wall foundations of the previous pre-revolutionary house were discovered. During the construction process, a small cellar was incorporated under the front cylinder, which could accommodate a 14 m2 calorifier chamber. This allowed the architect to create a free plan for the first floor. Due to the presence of the stove on the first floor, the staircase that is located in the area where two cylinders intersect, is shifted towards the inside of the front cylinder, closer to the entrance of the house in the original design. The original project did not include the hexagonal windows, which have become the symbol of the house. Instead, Melnikov planned to have two narrow stained glass windows that would cut vertically through the entire rear cylinder and face west and east, respectively. To clarify, the hexagonal openings, referred to as "vents" (Russian "продухи") by Melnikov, were originally included in the construction to reduce the use of expensive and scarce bricks while also ensuring even distribution of loads. It was only during the construction process that the architect decided to repurpose some of these vents as window openings.
The workshop house's walls and floors feature original and technically innovative structures, some of which Melnikov attempted to patent but was unsuccessful.Отзывы из Комитета по делам изобретений ВСНХ СССР. Архив Дома Мельникова. Op. 1167, lett. 96–112