The winner of the AD Design Award 2021 in the category “Preservation of Heritage” was the restoration project of the main masterpiece of the constructivist era in Moscow — the House of the People’s Commissariat of Finance.

Sofya Karpenko

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After numerous changes of owners, the era of creative clusters and yoga on the roof for the house of the People’s Commissariat of Finance, the time has finally come for a real restoration. It was taken up by the League of Rights company headed by Garegin Barsumyan and the architectural bureau of Alexei Ginzburg, the grandson of Moses Ginzburg.

House of the People’s Commissariat of Finance: the history of the building and the unique restoration process

The project was done in four years, and, as Alexey says, there was practically nothing but the People’s Commissariat of Finance in his life during these years. In order to carry out a restoration of this level and turn the house into an object of elite real estate, a team of architects and restorers needed to conduct a huge amount of research.

First of all, we took up Sergey Prokhorov’s engineering solutions and completely restored them according to the original plans. Alexey estimates this layer of work as the most difficult. Prokhorov was an absolute innovator for his time, he came up with “Prokhorov blocks” — voids in inter-apartment and inter-floor ceilings, in which sewer, drainage and ventilation channels were laid. The architects also managed to insist that the air conditioning system be hidden inside, and it does not spoil the appearance of the building.

The second most important layer of work was related to color schemes. They were developed by one of the masters of the Bauhaus school Hinnerk Scheper together with Ginzburg. Of course, all these colors — blue, yellow, green, red — were lost, and the restorers had an ambitious task to literally get to the truth: the walls were examined with a drill and layer by layer moved to the original color. The entire restoration process is documented, and the residents of the house and its visitors can study it right now.

The interiors of the cell apartments were also taken care of. Garegin Barsumyan and Alexey Ginzburg agreed that new residents should move into fully finished interiors, adding only furniture and decor to them. All apartments have modern kitchens, bathrooms with original Metlakh tiles, as well as a smart home system. History has looped around, and the elite house for a modern man, Moses Ginzburg, has become like this again — for a new generation of its inhabitants.

You can find out all the details of the restoration and see more photos (including archival pictures) here.

Photo: Photo: Olga Melekesseva; Fritz Von Der Schulenburg/archive AD; Archive of the House of the People’s Commissariat of Finance

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