Museum of the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant (AZLK)
Architect: Yu. A. Regents
Moscow, Volgogradsky prospect, 42
Design: 1975-1978
Completion of construction: 1980
Maria Serova, architect, co-founder of the Sovmod project:
“The automobile giant AZLK, now defunct, has grown from its opening in 1930 to the early 1980s to the scale of an imposing urban center. In the 1960s, the Tekstilshchiki metro station first opened near the plant, then the company acquired its own stadium, and in the 1970s other facilities for sports and leisure activities were added to it: an indoor skating rink, a swimming pool building with various sports sections and own palace of culture.
Such a rapid development of the territory of the plant - coupled with an almost maniacal Soviet attachment to round dates and anniversaries - pushed the administration to a decision to build a museum building for the 50th anniversary of AZLK. The building with the ambitious and extremely popular shape of a flying saucer in those years was designed by the architect Yuri Andreevich Regentov, and the museum was opened in 1980. The initial concept was closer to the exhibition complex for the demonstration of modern samples of the plant's products, but during the design process, the main emphasis was still on the historical component of the exposition. Despite the relatively modest size of the building itself, the exposition turned out to be quite impressive: historical models were exhibited here, starting with the very first cars produced at the plant - Ford A and Ford AA, and ending with the latest models of "Muscovites", as well as prototypes of cars that did not go into mass production. Cars were exhibited in a circle, bending around the central pillar of the building, and the main circular lamp was fixed in the center. Thanks to such absolute centricity, when looking at the exposition, there was a feeling of a special solemnity of what was happening in the exhibition hall, and the visitor, following in a circle, found himself involved in the whirlpool of automotive history.
In 1996, when the plant stood up for the first time, and the management officially announced its bankruptcy, the car museum was also closed. According to some reports, there were still rare excursions, but after a few years the exposition was almost completely transported to the museum of vintage cars on Rogozhsky Val, where old Fords, KIMs and Muscovites can still be viewed today. The history of the museum, with its reflection on past achievements and a hopeful look at the successes of the present, ended, in fact, never took place, and now only the futuristic shell of the "plate" and the sharp-nosed visor, looking out into a small square in front of Highway Street, remind of the once far-reaching plans for the automotive industry …
Today the AZLK complex is called Technopolis Moscow and is positioned as a platform for the development of high-tech industries. Whether the orphaned alien from the past will turn out to be technologically advanced enough for the new era is still a mystery: there is still no clear concept for incorporating the building into the new format of the factory's territory. We can only hope that the eloquent utterance of Soviet modernism will be tenacious enough to enter a new life in the old place."
