Archi.ru:
Why did you return to the project of restoration of the Narkomfin building? You threw him
Alexey Ginzburg:
- Not that I left him. I stopped doing it because I realized that nothing but conversations happens. Illegal repairs were carried out, the original elements were taken out of the house. We discussed some extensions of garages, fitness centers. Then I decided to distance myself as much as possible from all this.
And when and how did the new stage in the history of restoration begin?
- A new stage began at the end of 2015, when the owner, the Liga Prav company, appeared at the house. She managed to do what no one has been able to do for the last twenty years. She consolidated the property in the house - bought out at an auction for the full price of the area belonging to the city. Although these areas are not "sugar", they are corridors and the first floor, which should be mostly dismantled. And also a communal building, the upper level of which will also need to be dismantled. All this has nothing to do with beautiful materials. But otherwise, no steps related to the restoration were possible.
After a single owner appeared at the house, who can work with all its engineering systems, and can perform the functions of a customer and a developer from a legal point of view, an official permit for the work was obtained. I don’t want to give dates as it’s not up to me, but the implementation will start shortly. Of course, everything will happen gradually, starting with those parts of the house that are free of inhabitants.
And how many people live there now? Are all apartments occupied?
- So far, almost all apartments are rented out, as they were before. Now the first two cells have been vacated for us, but, of course, we will gradually deal with all the apartments.
How is the new restoration project different from what was before?
- The house is very complicated. In many of its places - in those that were bought - even I first got to only last year. And we also began to survey these zones last year. PF "Grado" was involved as surveyors and designers for building structures and engineering sections, and we - for restoration and adaptation in terms of architecture and interiors.
Together we completed and agreed on the restoration project and fittings, as well as working documentation, parts of which we are still producing. As well as we continue to conduct certain research. Some technological nuances are still being worked out, but the project has been made at a fundamentally different quality level. It is much more detailed.
In what sequence will the work be carried out? Do you already have a plan for this?
- First, there will be dismantling of those extensions and settings that appeared at a later time. This applies to the communal building and the first floor. Then it will be possible to work with the communal building completely and with the northern part of the house. We want to work piece by piece. I used to think that this is wrong and that you need to work with the whole house as a whole. But a deep comprehensive study of the building led to the understanding that it is better to start working with structures and engineering systems in a part of the house in order to test many of the techniques that we laid down in the project and working documentation. After all, to say that we were engaged in the architectural part of the project is to say nothing. We explained to the engineers how the engineering systems are arranged in the house, because without thinking them over, it is impossible to preserve the structure of the house. And we consider it very important to preserve it.
That is, the preservation of the entire engineering structure is included in the project? And what is the state of the engineering systems?
- The building of the People's Commissariat for Finance cannot be simply restored. In many other constructivist buildings, one might end up limiting himself to doing - keeping only the façade. But the specifics of the Narkomfin House are precisely in the internal structure. There is so much in it that if you allow some changes, you will destroy it all. Our task is to create an exemplary case, otherwise we will lose our home.
Most of the engineering systems need to be replaced. For example, the house has rotted steel water pipes. But the project contains solutions where everything corresponds to the exact historical tracing. And we insist on this. This historical trace is very difficult. It is contrary to modern standards and requirements.
For example, the sewerage system in the house was made as follows: between the third and fourth floors, horizontal sections were installed inside the precast-monolithic ceilings.
And why was it done this way?
- This is a riser that follows the structure of the house. Where apartments of type F passed into a larger spacing of type K cells, it was necessary to move horizontal sections simply because the lower apartments are larger.
In fact, the internal structure of a house is not easy to understand. For some, the first approach was: "And now we will make new risers and that's it!" And where will you make them? They will pass through the center of the apartment. It's impossible. Perhaps only in hollow blocks in the wall or again in the same floor.
Then I had to explain to the engineers that some of the columns of that built-up first floor were actually thick. Old photographs show this. Both the sewerage system and the water supply system passed through them. Nobody believed that this could be so - they wandered around the house, looking for a water supply, looking for a sewer. Unless we didn’t go with frames.
And how was the drainage of water from the roof arranged there?
- Internal drain. A completely modernist story. He was clogged, no one wanted to bother to clean it. We made some bypasses, they flowed, water got inside the house. The current state of the house is fully consistent with the level and culture of its service.
“But the outer walls, aren't they made of reeds?”
- Okay, so let's talk about the reeds. To entertain the masses, I had an idea to leave pieces of reed under the glass inside the building of the laundry, for which a permit for construction work has already been obtained and working documentation is ready - after restoration it will have a cafe. In fact, reeds are the forerunner of stone wool. The house has a lot of modern construction technologies. This is a big part of his innovation, not just in architecture, structure or organization of space. The reeds served as a heater for the end monolithic beams. Where they faced the facade close to the surface, these small areas were insulated with them.
Is there reeds only there?
- Only. The house is built from blocks that were cast from concrete at a construction site. The blocks were of two types. Some are "Prokhorov blocks", similar to those used in the construction of the Bauhaus. They are for interior walls and have two voids. It was in these voids that communications were laid.
Others were called "peasant type blocks". They were used for the masonry of the exterior walls. The combination was as follows: a block - backfilled with slag or something else as a heater - half a block - plaster - painting. This is how this first three-layer wall was arranged.
What will you do with the walls?
- This is one of the most controversial issues. Somewhere the walls are ruined, somewhere they have already been moved, somewhere in excellent condition. Basically, all damage is related to water. For example, the eastern facade looks more terrible than others. Flower girls walk along it, there were holes in them for water to pour out. At some point, most likely after the war, the holes were repaired. There were no pots inside, just soil and plants. From there, dirty water poured onto the facade, which fell into the cracks between the plaster and the blocks. But with the walls of the communal building or the western facade, everything is absolutely normal, and nothing needs to be done there. But there are southern and northern ends, there are these parts of the eastern facade, which will have to be partially relocated.
We indicated the percentage of losses rather approximately: only in the process, going from axis to axis and examining each axis, can we understand everything exactly. But the transfer will be carried out only with the same blocks. We will make copies of these blocks and restore the masonry. To everyone who instead offered foam blocks or hollow bricks, I explained in two hand-drawn sketches why, purely technically, and not even for restoration reasons, this should not be done.
So why not?
- Because each material has its own dimensions. Other dimensions change the interior space of the house, but everything is compact there, and one thing immediately clings to the other. Other materials have a different volumetric weight, for which the floors are not designed.
Will the facades be somehow reflected on the facades, according to the Venice Charter, where is the new part and where is the old one? Or is it too early to talk about it?
- I really like how, according to the charter,
restored by the Neues Museum in Berlin. This is one of my favorite buildings. But when I look at it, I understand that this is the story of a bombed-out museum rather than a restored one. The memory of the destroyed Berlin is an important part of the historical memory of the Germans.
Is it necessary in the case of the Narkomfin building to show that here we moved this square meter, but here we did not? That is, do we want the facade of the house to resemble a skin disease, some kind of psoriasis? This is a big question for me.
When I looked at the restored Bauhaus in Dessau, I did not notice anything of the kind. There, everything is the same in decoration, nowhere is it shown where they have new and where they have old. On the Izvestia building, I allowed myself not to do so so that one could see where the new stained-glass window is, and where the old one. Otherwise, the facade would have looked like a kaleidoscope, but I wanted the image of the building to be integral. For me, this is a very serious question - the choice of which way to go. I thought about it for a long time and still think about it.
You say that you managed to explore a lot for the first time. Have you discovered something new?
- There are things that have become a discovery for me. For example, a stained-glass window in a communal building. I always thought it was dark, just like on Izvestia. And he was light, almost white both outside and inside. By the way, the building itself was not white, as constructivist architecture is now depicted. This was not the case, we will definitely open the first color. We already have research and will continue to probe. We also found horizontal light pits, which were very trendy at the turn of the century. They are now overwhelmed, and we will, of course, preserve them.
– What happens to the interiors?
- I have a dream. I want to ensure that the apartments in this house are sold with interiors. If not furnished, then at least with kitchen and bathroom equipment. It is important for me to show that there were no random elements in the house, design for design's sake, architecture for architecture's sake. There, every detail had a very clear functional meaning. This even applies to painting the walls.
All the repairs that took place there completely hammered the original finish. Now we have already taken 49 paint samples from the walls in the first two apartments. Different walls in the cells were painted in different colors. In the magazine "Contemporary Architecture" there was an article by Moisei Ginzburg about how to paint walls, there were two colors - cold and warm, and then there was Sheper's color chart. Now we will analyze these colors, compare them with the Sheper's table.
Does this mean that the color scale depended on the type of cell?
- I dont know. And no one will say that now. No information. We will not know anything if we do not walk with a scalpel and a drill, and the technologist does not examine the probes in the laboratory. We have already opened the first and second painting in the first two apartments. I myself am very interested in understanding whether all apartments were painted in different colors or in the same. I think this is such a "tasty" part. At least I am ready to make each apartment individually, but to find original colors.
The customer wants us to make wooden floors. It is clear that almost all residents have replaced the xylolite floors with wood and parquet floors, except, perhaps, Milyutin. He put carpets on this xylolite. I am ready to make the parquet, but I want to paint the walls in the original colors.
And how are things with Milyutin's apartment? Have you already dealt with his "villa"?
- But what kind of villa she is … I tell everyone how Milyutin's apartment appeared. I believe that the historical truth should not be lost. Let's start with the fact that Milyutin's apartment was not in the project. It appeared only because there was not enough money to buy a supply and exhaust ventilation. And there was already a ventilation chamber on the roof. And Milyutin decided to make himself an apartment there. They quarreled with Ginzburg, and Milyutin said that he would design an apartment for himself. I took a type K cell, tied it to this volume and painted it blue. I was there even before the renovation was done and the Simpsons were painted on the wall. Now they have already been painted over, but it's still monstrous. We will, of course, recreate the original painting in it. Everything will be done in the same way as in other apartments. For us, it is no different from other apartments. This is, in general, kunshtuk: the People's Commissar made himself a penthouse in a ventilation chamber next to the four rooms of the workers' dormitory. He had the right.
One of the last scandals before the change of ownership was related to the fact that carpentry was taken out of the corridors. Is there anything left there in the end?
- A little, but it remains. There is something to restore. We will try to restore a small percentage of the windows. But there are drawings, and it is clear how to do everything.
And the kitchen curtains, which we all know from textbooks, have anything survived from them?
- I suspect that they were not at all.
How was it not? But what about the drawing?
- This drawing is from the book "Dwelling", I myself love it very much. But I have not seen a single photograph anywhere. There is no confirmation, no. Not sure if they were implemented. When I went there as a child, in those places where, according to Ginzburg's project, there should have been kitchens, there were gas stoves in most apartments. In any case, in those in which I was. That is, the place of the kitchen element in the F cells was filled with something related to the kitchen. My dream is to make quicinette from sketches from the book "Housing" with the same accordion; but, of course, we will not have gas stoves.
What else is included in your restoration plans?
- We want to lower the ground level. There, the floor level was about 30 centimeters lower than the ground is now. This is a separate program of this kind, there has always been a lot of talk about the need to open the first floor. How much needs to be done to open it has not been particularly analyzed. And first of all, you need to understand where to put the water. The house is located in the lowlands. Now water flows under it even from the parking lot in front of Novinsky Passage. We made a project, master plan, agreed with UPDK(?), agreed with the American Embassy. The customer received technical specifications for connection to the storm sewer collector. It was only thanks to this that this whole story became possible. Now we are coordinating with the police. But, in addition to this, there are nets that, perhaps, will need to be lowered, deepened. This also requires obtaining technical specifications, performing work, and additional funds.
That is, the project provides for improvement?
- I want to make a single pedestrian area from the American embassy to the park with a passage under the house. It is clear that historically there was land there, and there was concrete under the house, but I suggested paving with granite according to the system that has already been adopted in Moscow, simply according to the principle of uniformity.
– Are you planning to create a museum in the building of the People's Commissariat for Finance?
- We are discussing this issue with the customer. We are convinced that the museification of one of the cells is very necessary.
