The Red House in Bexleyheath, England. Architect Philip Webb. Construction time: 1859–1860© David Kemp / CC BY-SA 2.0

© Ethan Doyle White / CC BY-SA 3.0

Interior of the Red House in Bexleyheath, England. Architect Philip Webb. Construction time: 1859–1860© Tony Hisgett / CC BY 2.0

Interior of the Red House in Bexleyheath, England. Architect Philip Webb. Construction time: 1859–1860© Tony Hisgett / CC BY 2.0

William Morris is a famous English designer of the 19th century. It is customary to begin the history of modern design with him, or more precisely, with his company Morris & Co., which produced interior fabrics, as well as wallpaper, stained glass and furniture. At the same time, items from Morris & Co. have a distinctly “non-modern” appearance and are stylized to resemble the Middle Ages.

Morris and his friends - artists who collaborated with his company - are usually called Pre-Raphaelites Pre-Raphaelites- a direction in English poetry and painting in the second half of the 19th century. In 1848, artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Hallman Hunt founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The goal of the society's members was to combat the conventions of the Victorian era, academic traditions and senseless imitation of classical models., although this is not entirely accurate: the Pre-Phaelite Brotherhood disbanded before Morris founded his company, and not all of its employees were former members of the Brotherhood. Nevertheless, the aesthetic preferences of the first Pre-Raphaelite circle and the artists of Morris’s circle were common: they were in love with the art of the late Middle Ages. Items Morris & Co. - free stylization of motifs and ornaments of the 15th century.

William Morris's Red House - the debut of architect Philip Webb and the first building of the Old English style The new, although called old, style was contrasted by its creators with the imitation of Gothic, common in the 1840s. The basis was taken from English rural cottages, unprofessional, anonymous architecture, which slowly changed from century to century. It was not reproduced one-on-one, but its characteristic features were slightly exaggerated: fireplace chimneys were pulled high, roof slopes were lowered almost to the ground - and the houses took on a slightly fairy-tale appearance.. To furnish the house to his liking, Morris gathered like-minded artists around him and found craftsmen who were experts in old production techniques. This is how his company Morris & Co. appeared, and the house became a testing ground for it. During the few years during which the Morrises lived in the Red House, renovations were underway all the time: the walls were covered layer by layer with bright paintings on medieval subjects, the furniture was endlessly changed. But the modern interior of the house is deceptive: when, due to temporary difficulties, Morris sold the house, the furnishings and decoration were almost completely lost.

Architectural local historian and Moscow specialist Denis tells about where the intelligentsia of the south-west of the capital have lived since the 1950s, how Natalia Sats dreamed of a Gothic building for her theater and why the circus on Vernadsky Avenue is still one of the two most remarkable in the country. Romodin.

the site continues a series of materials based on the project “Street Lecture Hall. Local History" of the Museum of Moscow, which completed work at the end of August. Throughout the summer months, Moscow experts and architectural historians gathered listeners in courtyards in different parts of the city and talked about their secrets and riddles. The “street lecture” will resume next summer, but for now lectures about Khamovniki, Shabolovka, Ramenki and other areas are available in the form of notes.

On October 27 at 19:00 all lecturers will gather at the final meeting at the Museum of Moscow. Anyone can join it. Details.

House of Moscow State University teachers

Address: Lomonosovsky prospect, building 14

Years of construction: 1952-1955

This is one of the most important unofficial landmarks of the area, the first largest building after the main building of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. It, as the name suggests, was created so that employees of the student campus, which by that time was being built in full swing on the Lenin Hills, would live in it. In the late 1940s - early 1950s, architects were given the task, on the one hand, to make Stalinist-style architecture expressive, large-scale, expressing post-war triumph, and on the other, to gradually move to industrial methods of house construction and erect buildings with standard elements. The architects planned that this house would become a serial building - such buildings were to appear throughout Moscow in the future as local dominants, diluting the long ribbons of identical facades (a similar ribbon can be seen, for example, on Leningradsky Prospekt).

This building has two twins. One of them, the famous fifty-kopeck house, or, as it is also called, the house of retired leaders, was built on Frunzenskaya Embankment. The second also appeared in the Gagarinsky district, as if in a mirror image on the neighboring University Avenue - this is the house of employees of the Ministry of State Security. It was built later, under Khrushchev, when the country had already begun the fight against architectural excesses. As a result, all bright details were removed from the building: it is no longer faced with ceramics, but with brick, and has no decorative elements.

The house of Moscow State University teachers looks completely different, in which the Stalinist style was intricately combined with elements of Russian architecture of the 16th, 17th, early 18th centuries and the Naryshkin Baroque period. The latter appeared in the decorations of the turrets - they are similar to the turrets of the Novodevichy Convent. Some elements, such as shells, were taken from the decor of the Arkhangelsk and Annunciation Cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin.

In the nineties, the house of Moscow State University teachers became one of the elite in the area. And it remains so today, along with the red houses: there are very expensive apartments here.

Red houses

Address: Stroiteley Street, houses 4 and 6

Years of construction: 1952-1954

The red houses were supposed to become the basis of the area - it was assumed that the whole of Gagarinsky would look like them. But these plans were hindered by the start of the fight against excesses. Therefore, the red houses remained almost the only ones of their kind - there are replicas only on the streets of Sorge (a small wing of one house) and Boris Galushkin (one building).

The houses are called so because of the cladding - it is bright red ceramic with white concrete inserts. The architects were faced with the task of making a standard series of sectional buildings that could fit into different blocks without changing anything much except the cladding (each block had to have its own color). Red was chosen for the experimental series. Here, architects had already begun to introduce industrial methods, which were supposed to make construction easier in the future, and allowed themselves decor that was atypical for Soviet architecture. If you look closely at the white concrete elements, you can see Scandinavian motifs characteristic of northern modernity: cones, pine needles, oak branches, acorns.

The needs of motorists were taken into account during the design - at that time the government was developing the idea of ​​a people's car (which, unfortunately, was not realized). The houses have an underground garage, which is also an architectural dominant: the part facing Stroiteley Street resembles an ancient aqueduct. Another decoration of the street was a gazebo, which was located on the roof of the garage and was the center of attraction for the residents of both buildings.

Red houses were built for the creative and scientific intelligentsia; such a contingent remained here during the Soviet years and, in general, remains today. In them, forming a quarter, an active community lives - residents maintain pages on Facebook and Instagram, created their own, and organize events. The courtyards of houses are a special space, a garden city with alleys and fountains, in which the noise of big Moscow is not heard.

Cinema "Progress" (now - Theater under the direction of Armen Dzhigarkhanyan)

Address: Lomonosovsky prospect, building 17

Year of construction: 1958

This building is another interesting architectural experiment. During the years of struggle against excesses, architects were given the task of creating a simple modern cinema instead of heavy Stalinist structures - palaces of culture with columns. The first such project was implemented in the ninth quarter of New Cheryomushki (near the modern Akademicheskaya metro station). It was unsightly - a simple brick box with glazing, which was in no way suitable for the role of the cultural center of the area.

But in the southwest, the experiment was much more successful: young architects were invited to design a cinema, who undertook to create a spectacular building using minimalist means. Felix Novikov, Igor Pokrovsky and Viktor Egerev presented such a project - a simple building from the two types of bricks then available (yellow and red) with an impressive facade decoration, which repeated the grid from the facade of the Doge's Palace in Venice. To avoid boredom, they made the upper windows from water supply concrete rings - they created bright contrasting elements that were not excessive, so they easily passed all the commissions. An additional decoration of the facade was the screen space in which posters were placed: each new one actually changed the appearance of the cinema.

Inside, the audience was greeted by an orchestra for a long time. There was dancing before the show, and there was a buffet here. By the end of the 1980s, such cinema halls lost their relevance; theaters began to be moved into their buildings. In the early 1990s, it was decided that the Progress cinema would house a troupe led by Armen Dzhigarkhanyan. Thus began a new page in the history of this building and the cultural life of the Gagarinsky district.

Great Moscow State Circus

Address: Vernadsky Avenue, building 7

Years built: 1964-1971

There were plans to build a cinema or cultural center here, but Progress appeared on Lomonosovsky Prospekt, and the place remained vacant. At that time there were two circuses in Moscow - on Tsvetnoy Boulevard and on Triumfalnaya Square (then Mayakovsky Square). The second building was awaiting reconstruction and subsequent transfer to the Satire Theater. It was decided to move the other circus to the southwest and build a new building for it.

The project was taken on by architects Yakov Belopolsky, who was involved in construction in Belyaev and Cheryomushki, and Efim Vulykh, who at that time oversaw construction in the southwest. They designed a building that was very unusual for Moscow, not like a typical Soviet circus, with ribbon windows and an interesting folded roof design, reminiscent of a traditional circus tent. This building is a striking example of modernist architecture and one of the most interesting and recognizable circuses in the country, along, perhaps, only with the Yekaterinburg one.

The filling also turned out to be advanced for Moscow, and for the country as a whole. A system of interchangeable arenas was created here, which made it possible to avoid long intermissions.

Natalia Sats Theater

Address: Vernadsky Avenue, building 5

Years built: 1975-1979

Natalia Ilyinichna Sats was looking for a construction site for a very long time. Only in the 1960s did she manage to obtain permission to build a building for an already established children's theater in the southwest. She turned to the young architect Vladilen Krasilnikov with a request to create a project in the Gothic style. It was very difficult to build something Gothic in the Soviet period, however, Krasilnikov, in collaboration with Alexander Velikanov, designed a very interesting extended building that reflected the newest trend in Soviet architecture at that time - brutalism. The building contrasted with the neighboring circus building, but at the same time it was not heavy - decorative elements, in particular sculptures depicting fairy-tale characters, made it light.

The Kazakh sandstone that lined the theater building was not so easy to obtain. The connections of Natalia Sats, who was well acquainted with the highest ranks of Kazakhstan, helped: one letter was enough. And in order to somehow motivate the workers who were in no hurry to get to work, the troupe gave performances right at the construction site.

A very interesting idea was to create an open space around the theater that could become a summer stage. Unfortunately, after the death of Natalia Ilyinichna, this territory was not exploited. The theater building itself became one of the most unusual buildings in Moscow and a striking example of Soviet architectural modernism.

House-ship

St. Bolshaya Tulskaya, 2

This 14-story residential building is popularly called the “ship house” or “Titanic.” Built in 1981 in the brutalist style, this panel building stood out against the backdrop of the old low-rise buildings of the area. With its impressive dimensions (400 m in length and more than 50 m in height), as well as the upper rows of glazed balconies, it looked like a cruise liner. By the way, on the upper floors there are two-story apartments, which were conceived as elite.

Construction was carried out by order of the USSR Ministry of Atomic Industry. Hence another name for this Moscow house - “the house of nuclear scientists”, as well as the unique strength of the concrete walls, which is not inferior to Soviet nuclear reactors.

New house-ship
St. Kyiv, vl. 3-7.
2008

The Kitezh shopping and office center, built next to the Kyiv railway station, has a total area of ​​75 thousand square meters. The structure stands out for its unusual shape, similar to a ship. The creators of the house call it “Titanic”, and its second nickname is the iron house.

Beehive House

Krivoarbatsky lane, 6

The house-workshop of architect Konstantin Melnikov is called an “icon of constructivism” and in terms of its significance for Russian culture is compared with Kizhi and St. Basil’s Cathedral. In 1927, the brilliant architect designed a “figure eight” of cylinders cut into each other, creating in the center of Moscow not just a residential building for himself and his family, but a space the likes of which had never been seen in the world. The house, built without load-bearing supports and beams, survived a high-explosive bomb explosion, was restored after the war and was included in all textbooks on architecture.

Due to its simplicity and economy, they began to call it a beehive house. More recently, after much litigation and proceedings, the famous Melnikov house opened to the public. Guests are introduced to the architectural features of the monument, shown the signature hexagonal windows, a bedroom with Venetian plaster and a folding “centipede”, behind which the family of the world-famous architect gathered.

There was a separate post in the community about this house in Moscow.

House on legs

St. Begovaya, 34

This house was built in 1978 according to the design of Andrei Meerson as an experimental one. The main feature of the structure is twenty pairs of reinforced concrete “legs”-supports, thanks to which the house received popular nicknames “house on legs”, “centipede house”, “octopus house” and “hut on chicken legs”. These supports taper downward, which creates the effect of “unreliability” of the structure. The house itself seems to expand upward - each successive of the 13 floors overlaps above the bottom. The main accents on the facade were three oval-shaped smoke-free stairwells.

When developing the project, Andrei Meyerson was inspired by the ideas of Le Corbusier: as a result, his “House on Legs”, with its proportions and sloping supports, resembles the Marseille “Dwelling Unit”. Initially, the house was conceived as a hotel for participants in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, and as a result, apartments in the new building went to honored employees of the Znamya Truda plant, which produced Il-12, Il-14 and Il-18 aircraft. Hence its another name - “House of Aviators”.

This is not the only “house on legs” in Moscow: similar ones can be seen at the following addresses: Mira Avenue, 184/2 (opposite the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman monument), Smolensky Boulevard, 6/8, communal house on Ordzhonikidze Street, 8/9 .

"Recumbent skyscraper" on Varshavka

Varshavskoe highway, 125

To pass this house, you will need to travel three stops by public transport. The longest building in Moscow is occupied by the Scientific Research Center for Electronic Computing Technology (NICEVT).
The length of this “recumbent skyscraper” is almost 736 meters.

Elephant house

D. Ostrovtsy, 14th km of Novoryazanskoe highway.

Very close to Moscow, in the village of Ostrovtsy (Ramensky district), this is not the first year that a very unusual house has attracted the attention of everyone passing by.

The building is built in the shape of an Indian elephant in a bright red blanket, decorated with small diamond-shaped windows and painted with rich colors. Inside there are four floors connected by a spiral staircase. The author and owner of the house, Alexey Sorokin, is looking for buyers: “This is a huge domed room where you can realize any design fantasy. No walls, no support beams - nothing limits you."

Locomotive house

St. Novaya Basmannaya, 2/1, building 1

Looking at this constructivist building, reminiscent of a steam locomotive, one cannot even believe that its walls remember Napoleon. In the 17th century, the Sovereign Zhitny or Reserve Yard was located here - warehouses where grain and food supplies were stored. According to some reports, ice for the cellars of this palace was delivered from St. Petersburg itself. In the 1750-1760s, a complex in the form of a square of four long two-story buildings was built here. The Reserve Palace is perhaps the only government building in the capital that survived the fire of 1812.

In the 20th century, the Reserve Palace changed owners more than once and underwent reconstruction. In the 1900s, the building housed the Institute of Noble Maidens named after Alexander III: designed by architects N.V. Nikitin and A.F. Meisner, a third floor was added. After the revolution, the building was occupied by the People's Commissariat of Railways. In 1932-1933, the appearance of the building changed radically. Architect I.A. Fomin gave the Reserve Palace constructivist features: two more floors were added, the facades were leveled, the shapes of the window openings were changed, and at the corner of Novaya Basmannaya and Sadovaya-Chernogryazskaya streets a nine-story clock tower rose up, because of which the house was popularly nicknamed “The House with a Chimney” "

Egg house

st. Mashkova, 1

Mashkova Street, located near the Chistye Prudy metro station, has long been famous for its apartment buildings and buildings in the Art Nouveau style, the peak of which was built at the beginning of the 20th century. But despite this, today this street is better known for its modern building, namely the egg house.

The egg house appeared in 2002 and became not only a landmark that is shown to tourists, but also a symbol of all Luzhkov architecture. The egg house project was created by architect Sergei Tkachenko for a maternity hospital in Bethlehem, but they abandoned this idea. As a result, the egg house was erected on Mashkova Street as an extension to a new multi-storey building. The house has 4 floors and 5 rooms. On the ground floor there is an entrance hall, a hall and a sauna. On the second floor there is a kitchen with a dining room, a maid's room and a bathroom. On the third there is a living room. On the fourth there is a dome-shaped room.

Donut house

st. Nezhinskaya, 13 / st. Dovzhenko, 6

“Donut House” is the first round house in Moscow. It was built in 1972 in the Ochakovo-Matveevskoye district in the west of Moscow on the eve of the 1980 Olympics. The unusual shape of the house was developed by architect Evgeny Stamo and engineer Alexander Markelov. For construction, standard panels were used, which, in order to close the ring, were placed at an angle with a permissible error of 6 degrees. That is why the buildings turned out to be quite impressive. Finding the right one out of 26 entrances is not so easy.

According to the architects' idea, an Olympic village in the form of five ring houses was to appear in Moscow. However, the project proved to be expensive and in the end only two houses were built. Moreover, the twin brother of the first “donut house” appeared only seven years later, in 1979, a year before the 80 Olympics were held in the west of the capital - in the Ramenka area. At one time, outstanding theater and film actors lived in the house on Nezhinskaya - Honored Artist of the RSFSR Savely Kramarov and Honored Artist of Russia Galina Belyaeva, as well as film director, screenwriter and poet Emil Loteanu.

Morozov's mansion

st. Vozdvizhenka, 16

Arseny Morozov traveled a lot around the world. Most of all, he was impressed by the architecture of Spain and Portugal: he decided to build a building in the Moorish style in Moscow. But the merchant’s mother did not like this idea: she believed that the entire capital would laugh at her son. Despite persuasion, in 1894 he allocated money to build a house, which still remains one of the most impressive architectural structures in Belokamennaya. The house was designed by Viktor Mazyrin, a close friend of Morozov.

Fun Home

st. Novocheremushkinskaya, 60

The Avangard residential complex, known among local residents as the Fun House, was built in 2005 under the leadership of Sergei Kiselev. The twenty-story, almost circular building is painted in bright colors.

Airship

Profsoyuznaya street, 64 building 2

The Airship Residential Complex is located in the South-Western district of Moscow, a 7-minute walk from the New Cheryomushki metro station.

Center for Psychological, Medical and Social Support for Children and Adolescents

st. Kashenkin Meadow, 7

This institution is often called a school or rehabilitation center for children with autism. The building is unusual in every sense, as it is intended for unusual children. Architect Andrei Chernikhov tried to create a small world that would help autistic children adapt to the real world outside the walls of the rehabilitation center.

House-Sail

st. Grizodubova, 2

The twenty-three-story, five-entrance monolithic residential building was built in 2007.

This building has received many different names among the people - “ear house”, “drop house”, “whale house”, “wave”, “mountain”. The architects did not imagine that the house would have such an unusual shape. They began to build the house along the arc of the outskirts of Khodynskoye Field.

Initially, the longest house in Europe was built on Khodynskoye Field, but already during construction certain problems began to arise. The fact is that in the north of the building under construction there was a school site that needed light, and the huge building under construction created a huge shadow. This was the decisive reason for adjusting the project. At first it was supposed to cut the house into a ladder, but later the ladder was replaced by an arc, turning the building either into Van Gogh’s ear (in association with the artist’s famous self-portrait), or into a huge colossus slowly creeping forward.

Humpbacked House on the Yauza

Popov proezd, 4

Arco di Sole is an eight-section monolithic house of variable number of floors from 13 to 21 floors, built in 2009 by Inteko. The Arco di Sole basement is tiled with granite, and the residential floors with porcelain stoneware.

Openwork house

Leningradsky Prospekt, 27

The house was built in 1941 and is essentially a fairly typical building for that time. What sets him apart from the general mass of “Stalin” buildings are the openwork concrete gratings, which became his “face” and made him famous.

Material prepared by: Olga Fursova, Vera Monakhova, Daria Ishkaraeva, commentators on this post

Follow me, reader! - I wanted to exclaim, starting the story, to exclaim after Mikhail Bulgakov. I exclaimed and thought: why did I suddenly remember Mikhail Afanasyevich?

Perhaps because of these lines: “Don’t you really want to walk with your girlfriend during the day under the cherry trees that are beginning to bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert’s music? Wouldn't it be nice for you to write by candlelight with a quill pen? Don’t you really want, like Faust, to sit over the retort in the hope that you will be able to fashion a new homunculus? - this is Woland speaking.

But Margarita continues: “I can already see the Venetian window and climbing grapes, it rises to the very roof. This is your home, this is your eternal home. I know that in the evening those whom you love, whom you are interested in and who will not alarm you will come to you. They will play for you, they will sing to you, you will see the light in the room when the candles are burning. You will fall asleep, putting on your greasy and eternal cap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips.”

Many of us have probably dreamed of such an ideal home - where there is a place for walking and working, for friendly meetings and solitude, where comfort is combined with romance. Many people think about their dream home, but few dare to build it. However, this is exactly what the young English artist and designer William Morris did.

An Oxford graduate and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, he married model Jane Burden in 1859. Jane, the daughter of a groom and a maid, was noticed by the Pre-Raphaelite leader Rossetti when she and her friends came to the Drury Lane Theater. While working on the frescoes of a conference room in Oxford, Jane met Morris.

Jane Burden, who became Jane Morris, was one of the unusual and brilliant women of her era. Practically illiterate before marriage, after that she began to educate herself, studied foreign languages, learned to play the piano, and changed her manner of speech. There are suggestions that she became one of the prototypes for Eliza Dolittle in Shaw's Pygmalion (and in the musical My Fair Lady). But Jane’s fame was gained not by her education, but by her rare, unique beauty. It was painted by many Pre-Raphaelites, including her husband William Morris, who depicted his beloved in the image of Guinevere (one of the key images for the work of the Pre-Raphaelites).

But Jane was portrayed much more by Gabriel Dante Rossetti, the most prominent representative of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. In his works she appeared either as the Greek Proserpina, or as the Syrian Astarte, or as the heroine of the Victorian poet Tennyson.

Carried away by her love, Morris decided to build a special, unique home.

It was supposed to be not just a cozy nest for lovers, but also not a substantial Victorian mansion. It was to be a house that combined the aesthetic and social passions of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Morris conceived Red House as the embodiment of the medieval ideal of beauty and the modern idea of ​​​​comfort, coziness, open space and streams of light that the artist so desired. Together with architect Webb, the house was designed and built in a year. In 1860, the newlyweds moved to their castle.

Did Morris succeed in creating a piece of Utopia in his home? Perhaps yes. The Maurices were very generous hosts, and friends and colleagues often visited the house. The most frequent were Rossetti with his beloved Elizabeth Siddal and Burne-Jones with his wife Georgiana. Before lunch, the guests and their hosts worked on frescoes and tapestries, then it was time for lunch - Morris loved to eat delicious food. Work alternated with games of hide and seek, “apple battles,” and walks around the neighborhood.

Many drawings by Rossetti and Burne-Jones remain, which help to convey the atmosphere of this joyful, creative home, where jokes and fun were the norm.

Anyone who finds themselves in London can try to feel the atmosphere of the Red House. In half an hour the train will take you to Bexleyheath station, located in the center of the town of the same name. One day we, together with our London friends, decided to do this route. Another half hour on the road (counting the time for collecting fruits from a wild plum tree that we met along the way), and we pass to the fence of the house.

Red House is surrounded by a small garden, in the depths of which there is a ticket office and a tea room. You can take some tea and sit at the wooden tables, trying to immerse yourself in the past with your thoughts. The house itself will perhaps surprise those who know its reputation as an innovative building for its time with its “standard” nature. Tiled roof, red brick walls - this is the stereotype of an English country house!

The thing is that this stereotype arose thanks to the works of Morris and his followers from the Arts and Krafts movement. Before this, the typical country house was either a Tudor castle made of rough stone, or a classic mansion with columns at the entrance.

Not much of the original design remains inside the Red House. Although subsequent owners were attentive to the house, understanding its significance, some were sold, some were lost or changed. But still, the old fairy tale has not left the house - either Guinevere’s profile or Lancelot’s armor flashes on the doors of the wardrobe, then on the walls of the living room. Morris's workshop contains the original printing stones from which he printed wallpaper and fabrics. There is a printing press in the yard.

Morris's fate “after the Red House” is ambiguous and does not fit into the framework. On the one hand, I’m tempted to write about it in the vein of “destruction of utopia.” Plans to build a house nearby for Burne-Jones failed (his newborn son died and he became depressed). The relationship with his wife deteriorated - the addicted Jane became the mistress of Rossetti, his closest friend and comrade in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The growing design business required an increasingly frequent presence in London. In 1865, Morris abandoned Red House and moved away.

Is Utopia dead? Not really. Morris found the strength in himself to follow the principles he proclaimed in life. He and Rossetti share the Kelmscott Manor cottage in Oxfordshire, where the three of them live with Jane for some time. After a period of separation, when Jane lives alone with Rossetti for several months, she returns to Morris and remains with him until the end of his days.

In 1890, the novel “News from Nowhere” appeared, where Morris expressed his views on life in an expanded form: “This is a dream of a contemporary, very similar to Morris himself, about the future, a poem in prose. The author described the ideal that he himself had strived for all his life - this is a man who transformed the world with his work. There is no more hunger and coercion, the incentive to work is the thirst for creativity and every work of human hands is a work of art. Cities have turned into huge gardens, there is no more private property, classes, in love they follow their feelings, the institution of marriage, generated by self-interest, has disappeared.”

(It is curious that while Morris was planning Red House, another utopian, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, visited London. In his novel “What is to be done?” one can see a view of love and marriage that is in some ways very close to Morris’s).

...It's time for us to leave Red House. A small photo session with friends, we finish our tea and head back. Perhaps I’ll have to stop by Tate Britain one of these days to see Jane Burden again...

Fatherland to us - Red Houses

AND the history of our native space - the Red Houses and the adjacent territories: green courtyards with fountains and alleys, platforms above garages (once with a gazebo), with stairs ascending to this site from Stroiteley Street, a quiet alley between the "courtyards - intercourt", "junior" street or even the outer courtyard stretching along the fences of the First and Eleventh schools - in a word, the history of these magical places began even before their own beginning. Not just before the first inhabitants began to move into our houses, but even before their first drawings appeared on paper.

We were promised a garden city: From concept to implementation

The history of our houses - and the Moscow South-West as a special architectural phenomenon in general, since our space is an organic part of it - can be counted at least from the time when, according to some evidence, Le Corbusier “suggested to the Soviet government not to destroy or rebuild old Moscow, leaving the city reserved. And immediately build a new socialist Moscow in the South-West, behind the Sparrow Hills, from scratch and according to your taste.” As we know, regarding old Moscow, the Soviet government did not listen too much to the opinion of the famous architect; but as for the second part of the advice, it turned out to be carried out with amazing accuracy, although not immediately. The idea of ​​a new Moscow beyond the Lenin Mountains had to wait more than ten years for implementation—the war got in the way—but then it was implemented consistently over the course of a whole decade. So the roots of the project go back to the ideas of the socialist reconstruction of Moscow in the mid-1930s.
Actually, we can name the exact date for the beginning of the prehistory of the Southwest: it is 1935. Its progenitor and source was the never realized Palace of the Soviets. It didn’t come true, but its very idea cast such a colossal shadow that we live in it to this day.

The master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, adopted that year, provided that the city's territory would be cut through by wide highways that would depart from the Palace of the Soviets, planned on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Two large avenues were supposed to lead from the center here, to us, through Luzhniki - then they were designated by the conventional names “Eastern Ray” and “Western Ray”. And yes, these roads were really paved - only a little later - and we know them under other names.
Active planning of the South-West began soon after the war, in the second half of the 1940s; The first plan of these unborn places, which the author of these lines happened to see, dates back to 1949. In any case, it was in 1949 that a decree on mass housing construction was adopted, which stipulated, among other things, that “the capital needs tall and beautiful houses, in no way inferior to Western models.” In this regard, in 1951, under the leadership of architect Dmitry Chechulin, a new plan for the reconstruction of the city was developed, which was in effect until 1960. This plan determined the appearance of our part of Moscow: the South-West became the area of ​​the first post-war mass development, and it was chosen for this purpose because the living conditions here were assessed as extremely favorable - “location<…>on the leeward side, on the high (over 80 m) bank of the Moscow River, an abundance of plantings, dry terrain.”

The peculiarity of these places is that the design took place not only at the level of individual houses: we are dealing here with holistic thinking (even with a worldview projected onto urban planning), with the design of the environment as a whole. That is why in every house, in every yard, this environment has left its tangible, still recognizable imprint. Streets intersecting almost at right angles, forming rectangular blocks, large houses with internal squares - almost St. Petersburg clarity and logic.

Using material from the South-West, post-war Moscow tried to show what it would like to be, what its builders saw as an ideal city - back in the mid-thirties. Our space arose as an embodied utopia. As befits utopian spaces, it was called upon to educate a new person.

Later they wrote that the South-West became “the pioneer of post-war urban planning transformations that determined the future of Moscow.”

This is one of those rare cases when utopia has come true... or almost.

“The south-west,” Alexey Rogachev wrote in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of our city tract (2002) in the magazine “Apartment, Dacha, Office,” “remained a unique area in the history of Moscow urban planning, in which the features of good old architecture were optimally combined with the gigantic scale of production house building. When looking at the plan of the South-West, what first attracts attention is the amazing clarity and clarity of the divisions and placement of houses, which is exceptional for stupid Moscow, which indicates that the city planners’ projects were not abandoned, as often happened, halfway, but were brought to their logical conclusion. »

“The quarters of the South-West,” he writes further, “are distinguished by their regular rectangular outlines. The streets are laid straight, regardless of the terrain. Then the South-West was unanimously scolded for this - they say that too much excavation work was required. But how elegant the straight streets look and how easy it is to navigate the clear grid of blocks - especially if you remember the tangled, curved alleys of old Moscow or the areas of new buildings of the 70-90s. Emphasized clarity, symmetry, and consistency are the distinctive features of the area's layout.<…>Houses placed along the boundaries of the block reliably separate the space within the block from the streets. The streets of the South-West look like grand corridors, and the courtyards are closed and cozy.”

The master plan for the development of our area was developed by employees of the Mosproekt workshop N3 under the leadership of the architect Alexander Vasilyevich Vlasov, who was its first director (1951-1955) and at the same time the chief architect of Moscow. A street named after him still exists nearby, behind Leninsky Prospekt and Vavilov Street.

“Such wonderful architects as Evgeniy Nikolaevich Mezentsev, Yakov Borisovich Stamo, Belopolsky and Dmitry Ivanovich Burdin worked in Vlasov’s studio. It was their collective creativity that was responsible for the development of most of the projects of “Stalinist” houses in the University area.” The features of Vlasov’s plan included consolidation of neighborhoods, “uniform distribution of the primary and regional network of cultural and public services” and “creation of free green spaces.” We were promised a garden city.

Construction of the University

The role of the formative center, instead of the Palace of Soviets - which by that time had finally become clear that it was not destined to take place - was taken over by the Main Building of Moscow State University, which just then began to be built on the Lenin Hills. This imperious, unconditionally dominant building was simply not capable of leaving the surrounding territory indifferent - by its very existence it required such an organization that it corresponded to it.

The decision to build a complex of new buildings for the University on the Lenin Hills, on the site of the vegetable gardens and orchards of the village of Vorobyovo, was made in 1947 - and immediately, under the leadership of the architect Vlasov, the planning of the area for it and - at the same time - for the development of the South-Western district.

It was here that the Eastern and Western rays, promised back in the thirties, crossed our spaces. Much later, on March 30, 1956, “Western Ray” will receive the name Michurinsky Prospect, and “Eastern Ray” - Vernadsky Avenue.

Conceived simultaneously with the other seven Moscow high-rise buildings (of which one, in Zaryadye, as we remember, never came to fruition) - in 1947 - the Main Building of the University, the pinnacle of the creativity of the architect Lev Rudnev, after all the preparatory work, began to be built only in 1949 -m. The next city buildings - and the first permanent residential ones - in these places, among the fields and villages, were our houses.

Harmony of the new city. 1952

On the territory of Moscow State University, as evidenced by the first settlers of its residential buildings - University employees and members of their families - it was quite possible to live without leaving its borders. From the very beginning, there were shops, a laundry, a dry cleaner, a hairdresser, a swimming pool, a cinema, a concert hall, a library, canteens... The Red Houses were similar to this self-sufficient complex at the beginning - they were brought to life by the same urban planning thinking (and it’s not surprising - after all, there was nothing around except villages). None of the houses that were built in the vicinity of the Houses later were equipped with the minimum necessary set of shops, but in our Houses it was set up almost from the very beginning: a food store in 6 kor. 4, bakery in building 6, building 7, vegetable shop in building 4, building. 2 (in the same building, it seems, there was a hairdresser) and a department store in building 4, building. 4. As far as the author of these lines, born in 1965, knows from stories, these stores opened gradually - I don’t know exactly in what order. All of them (except for the bakery, which closed somewhere in the seventies, if not in the sixties - in any case, I no longer have any memory of it - it was replaced by a hunting society) lived happily until the end of Soviet power, and some of them lived for a long time survived it. The last to fall under the pressure of change was the department store, which apparently closed at the turn of the 2010s.

Mass construction in the Southwest began in 1952. At that time, the name “South-West” was borne by two rows of blocks planned on the left and right along the future Leninsky Prospect from the current Gagarin Square to Krupskaya and Garibaldi streets.

1956 Project layout of blocks (from right to left) ¦ 25, 2, 1, 13 and 14 of the South-Western district

“During the design process. - wrote Alexey Rogachev, - each quarter of the not yet existing South-West received its own number, and the numbering order was obviously a secret of the designers. So, a traveler moving from the center on the right side of Leninsky Prospekt will first encounter a block with number 25, then number 2 will go, followed by 1, and then blocks 13 and 14 will suddenly appear.”

So, our block - Red Houses - got number 13 (can we doubt that it was happy!).

And this despite the fact that it was built the very first.

World creation. Houses on the seven winds

Red Houses - according to their official name, series II-02 houses - “one of the most striking and classic ensembles of Soviet architecture of the mid-1950s”, were built according to the design of architects D. Burdin, M. Lisitsian, G. Melchuk, M. Rusanova , Yu. Umanskaya, engineers B. Lvov, A. Turchaninov, V. Telesnitsky, developed in workshop No. 3 of Mosproekt under the leadership of architect A.V. Vlasov, - in the same place where, as we remember, the master plan for the development of the entire South-West was developed. Type of house – panel-brick; The walls are brick, the floors are concrete - “circular hollow-core slabs on reinforced concrete crossbars.” Each has eight floors. The height of the residential premises is 3 m, the apartments are one-room, two-room and three-room. Distribution city: Moscow. That is, such houses were not built in other Soviet cities. These are Moscow “endemics”, local exotic plants.

Later, three younger twin brothers of our duo were built according to the same project. This is house 6, building 1-3 on Kuusinen Street, not far from the Polezhaevskaya metro station (1956-57, according to other sources - 1955), house number 17 on Boris Galushkin Street in the VDNH area (1956-57, then the street was called Kasyanov Street) and finally, no. 4 on Pyryeva Street (1960).

From the “Red Houses” series, our houses are not just the earliest (1952-54): in them the original project was most fully realized. There is only one house on Galushkina, on Kuusinen only the end part was built, facing the street, without an enclosed courtyard, on Pyryeva there was only one wing. And only we have two houses facing each other, symmetrical to each other, with clearly laid out courtyards, with internal alleys and fountains.

Why, in fact, red? In 1952, when houses began to be built, the production of ceramic tiles for cladding the facades of buildings was still at the experimental stage. Engineer A. Melius proposed one of the technologies for its production, which was used to make our red tiles - called, of course, Melia tiles. They covered the facades of the first fourteen residential buildings in the South-West with it - these were our houses, seven buildings in each. But the age of red tiles turned out to be very short-lived. Within a couple of years, they began to produce tiles only in pinkish-beige color, which dominates the expanses of the South-West.

So, the houses, which began to be built in 1952, were already inhabited in 1954.

“When we moved in, we could choose apartments,” recalls the author’s mother. (The decisive argument in the choice, as she said, was that she, ten years old at the time, liked the apartment number - it coincided with the apartment number of her best friend on Gorky Street.) “When we were given an “observation room” (well, word!), we arrived with the whole family and the biggest shock for me was the sink in the kitchen. With a tap. Two taps with water in the apartment! We have! And also a garbage chute.”

New Horizons

But there was nothing around. The nearest houses stood at the Kaluga outpost (today we know it as Gagarin Square). More precisely, further along the Kaluga Highway by the beginning of the 1950s there were several more capital structures - the buildings of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and institutes of the Academy of Sciences. But all this was, firstly, quite far away, and secondly, it was not too involved in the daily life of the first settlers of the Red Houses. They – which at the same time received the name “houses on the seven winds” in local speech – were surrounded by open spaces. Vacant lots, vegetable gardens...

The terrain was hilly, ravine, and swampy. They say that in front of the current house of Moscow State University teachers (Lomonosovsky, 14) a river flowed - most likely it was the Krovyanka River, which received its ominous name from the slaughterhouses located in rather distant surroundings (indeed, the toponym appears on old maps back in the 1930s “Zhivodernaya Sloboda”, dating back to the 19th century, in the area of ​​​​the current Gagarin Square), later it was removed into a chimney.

In place of the park in front of the Natalya Sats Children's Musical Theater there was - no matter how surprising it is now - a huge ravine. Here, the old-timers remember, in winter they went sledding and skiing, and in the spring the ravine was filled with water, and children swam on rafts. (Those who grew up later can only quietly envy this.)

On the site of the circus, built in 1971, in the early 1950s there were barracks for the construction workers of the University, a large canteen for them - and a plywood arrow pointer - towards Moscow State University and the Kievsky railway station - with the inscription: “The Road to Moscow”.

It seems that these places did not yet feel like real Moscow at that time.

And on the other side of what is now Leninsky Prospekt, which was then called Kaluga Highway, for a long, long time there stood the village of Semenovskoye (then Leninsky district of the Moscow region). It became part of Moscow only in 1958; in the 1950s and 1960s it began to merge with the construction of New Cheryomushki. It disappeared slowly. They say that back in the seventies, city residents bought milk from village residents; in the fifties, old-timers testify, peasants carried milk, potatoes and other fruits of rural labor to sell door to door. Semenovsky's last houses, in the Vorontsov Ponds area, were destroyed only before the 1980 Olympics. Many of us still remember them.

A place, by the way, with deep historical memory. The exact date of its first mention is known: 1453 (the spiritual charter of Grand Duchess Sophia Vitovtovna, who gave the village of Vorobyovo with Semyonovsky to her grandson Yuri, dates back to this year). Napoleon came to Moscow along the old Kaluga Highway - and then retreated from it. It is interesting that perhaps the last of the stone Orthodox churches that arose on the territory of modern Moscow under Soviet rule, Trinity, was built here in 1924. Until 1938, the temple remained operational, but overall its life was very short. It was turned into a toy factory, from the beginning of the Great Patriotic War until 1946 it became a warehouse, and finally, in the 1950s, during the development of the Semyonovsky territory, it was destroyed.

Surroundings

The mother of the author of this text recalls the following about the rural life of her childhood: “<…>we loved making forays into turnips. Behind the Red Houses there was still nothing and vast fields spread out with some kind of root crop growing on them. All this was guarded by a guy on a horse. I can’t imagine why we needed this root vegetable. Whether it was sugar beets or not, it was some kind of animal feed. And we, like real cattle, ate it and also found pleasure in it. The guy, seeing us, rushed towards us on this horse to catch us, and we ran from him like crazy. To say that it was from hunger would be a distortion of historical truth. No one went hungry in our communal apartments.”

“And all around,” recalls a resident of the house No. 18 on Lomonosovsky that appeared a little later, “there was a gigantic construction site and impenetrable dirt from it. My parents had to go to work, and I had to go to school, because the school year had not yet ended. In the morning we put on rubber boots, took shoes and boots in our bags and went out and home.” (The mother of the author of the text, who lived in red house No. 4, also remembers how they walked through the mud on boards, even in our courtyards. When a bakery opened in house No. 6, that is, very close by, that’s how we got to it.)

Trams at the Universitet metro station

The tram was launched in 1955 (the line was laid on the section of the future Lomonosovsky Avenue between the future Vavilov Street and the future Vernadsky Avenue, which was just being built up at that time - it was built mainly in 1955-1957), the trolleybus - in 1957. Before this, our region was connected with the big world by a single bus - No. 23, and it had a final stop near our houses. By the time the bus got to what is now Lomonosovsky, 18, it was already so packed that it was almost impossible to get on. He walked along the then Borovskoe highway to the Kievsky station - accordingly, the closest metro station to us was “Kyiv”. “The bus route,” recalls a resident of house No. 18, “passed along the route of bus No. 119, which currently runs. Along the way we passed several villages (in the area of ​​Druzhby Street and Mosfilmovskaya Street). Finally, having reached the Kievsky station, we changed into clean shoes and took the metro to our destination.”

The Luzhnetsky Bridge across the Moscow River with the Leninskie Gory station, now Vorobyovy, was opened in 1958, and our University station was opened on January 12, 1959.

Secondary school No. 11 was opened on September 1, 1955, its twin, school No. 1 (now it has No. 118) - in 1956. While they were away, the children from our houses went to study at the future Lomonosovsky Prospekt (then “Proezd No. 726”) at school No. 14 (women’s) and another, twin with it, men’s (which, in particular, the uncle of the author of the text graduated from) . When “our” schools were built, joint education just began. Our mother recalls: “We went to school in the 14th. We had to walk far. There was no asphalt and mud was knee-deep. It was 4th grade and we started studying with boys for the first time. And the next year we already built the 11th in front of the house. I switched to it, but Uncle Valya did not. He always did the opposite."

There was no Street of Builders either. Our houses were listed on Borovskoye Highway. Not even a house, but a building - instead of a house number - “block A and block B...” without a house number; The countdown began from the side of the current 6th house - and for some reason from number 12. The building where I am writing these lines was then the 25th - the last one, we lived on the edge of the Oikumene. The building numbers were written large on the walls in white paint. Back in the 80s, some of these numbers were visible.

Overgrowing with space. Cooling Down Difficulty

Lomonosovsky Prospekt

The South-West was built from the periphery to the center. Blocks 1 and 2 between Lomonosovsky and Universitetsky Avenues, considered the center of the South-West, began to be built later than the Red Houses. A year after the start of construction of the Houses, in 1953, when they were already gradually being occupied, construction began on the huge House of Moscow State University Teachers (architects Y. Belopolsky, E. Stamo, engineer G. Lvov), completed in 1955, the younger brother of the Moscow high-rise buildings, in many ways similar to them in internal layout and external design. Now this is house number 14 on Lomonosovsky Prospekt.

Our 13th quarter acquired the surrounding streets - and their names - very gradually. Lomonosovsky Avenue appeared on the city map in 1956. Part of it ran approximately along the route of the former Borovskoye Highway; until 1956 it bore the code name “Passage No. 726.” In 1961, Lomonosovsky Prospekt was built to Mosfilmovskaya Street and connected to Minskaya Street.

Leninsky Prospekt, built as an exemplary transport route, received its name by a decision of the Moscow City Council on December 13, 1957, in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution. It included Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street - from Kaluzhskaya Square to Kaluzhskaya Zastava, a newly built section from Kaluzhskaya Zastava to Borovskoye Highway and part of Kievskoye Highway - from Lomonosovsky Prospekt to the then city border.

Back in the late 1930s, a road to Vnukovo Airport ran from the Kaluga Highway along the highway of the future Leninsky, later called the Kyiv Highway. The section of the avenue from Kaluzhskaya Zastava (current Gagarin Square) to Lomonosovsky Prospect was built up by 1957, from Lomonosovsky Prospect to Kravchenko Street - in 1959. Then the avenue grew along with our generation: from Kravchenko Street to Lobachevsky it stretched in 1966, from Lobachevsky to Miklouho-Maclay - in 1969 and, finally, from Miklouho-Maclay to the Moscow Ring Road - in 2001.

Vernadsky Avenue, the former Eastern Ray, appeared on March 30, 1956. In 1958, the Luzhnetsky Bridge connected it with Komsomolsky Prospekt, and on the other side it was extended to the 4th Stroiteley Street, which we now know under the name Kravchenko.

Stroiteley Street

And only in 1958 did our street acquire its almost current name - Stroiteley Street, named in honor of the builders of the South-West. Just by this time, its odd side was almost completed. She was First then (and remained so until 1970). The Second Stroiteley Street would later (1963) become Krupskaya Street, the Third – Maria Ulyanova Street (1963), and the Fourth – Kravchenko Street (1960).

In general, our houses remained lonely for quite a long time.

Later, two buildings of house No. 8 arose, which were still residential within the earliest memory of our generation. (In the first building there is now Gazprom, in the second, which has changed many owners, there is not only the Investigative Committee, but also the wonderful library No. 183 named after Dante Alighieri.) House No. 9/10 on Vernadsky Avenue (still remembered as “Fish- Cooking", although neither "Fish" nor "Cooking" have been there for a long time) was built in 1957.

In the same year, the fifteenth and nineteenth houses appeared on Lomonosovsky Prospekt - also twin houses, like ours, it’s just less noticeable. They were built according to one standard project (our project was rather a piece, reproduced in Moscow a few times), modified by a team led by E. Stamo specifically for the South-West (this team also included I. Katkov and A. Ivyansky). The fifteenth was built for members of the USSR Writers' Union, the nineteenth for State Planning Committee employees.

Houses No. 70/11 and 72 on Leninsky are also, if not twins, then siblings: the same team of architects worked on them.

Cinema "Progress"

In 1958, at 17 Lomonosovsky Prospekt, the Cinema of Our Life was built: “Progress”, the very name of which was elastic, hot, young, promising hot impressions and, in general, the intensity of life. He has two younger twin brothers, built a little later: “Leningrad” on Novopeschanaya Street and “Rassvet” on Zoya and Alexander Kosmodemyansky Street. The authors of the project are architects E. Gelman, F. Novikova, I. Pokrovsky, engineer M. Krivitsky.

In Moscow at the end of the fifties, our Progress was a celebrity. It, as Alexey Rogachev wrote in the already mentioned article, became the first cinema in the city, built in a box form that was cutting-edge for that time. “Three elements helped make the building memorable: the oblique checkered cladding with red and yellow bricks, a huge niche above the entrance intended to place posters for films being shown, and a glass “undercut” from below, which created the impression that the main volume of the building was hanging above the void.”

For a short, but bright time, the South-West was the territory of an architectural breakthrough, bold, even daring (and, moreover, as we see in our houses, completely inscribed with traditions) architectural thinking.

1955 Building 72 under construction

The architectural development of the area can be described as a "cooling of complexity". Gradual simplification, the stages of which we can observe in the houses standing here. The “upper” point of the process is formed by the Red Houses, the next stage is houses 70 and 72 on Leninsky, then house number 9 on Vernadsky Avenue and numbers 15 and 19 on Lomonosovsky. These last ones, built in 1957, already have a feel of the sixties with their ascetic, lean forms: no stucco, no solemn arches.

Our houses were conceived and began to be built at the very end of the “Stalinist Empire” (more precisely, Soviet monumental classicism) - at, perhaps, its culminating point. They managed to embody all its characteristic features: slow pomp, large heaviness, detailed decorations. Each of them is a house-ceremony, a house-holiday, a house-collection of quotes from what was considered the most significant in world architecture. A bit of a house-palace.

Soviet monumental classicism. Kaluga Outpost (Gagarin Square)

Let us remind you that the distinctive features of the style are: ensemble development of streets and squares; synthesis of architecture, sculpture and painting; development of the traditions of Russian classicism (which in architecture is characterized by “symmetrical axial compositions” and a “regular system of city planning”); use of architectural orders; bas-reliefs with heraldic compositions and images of workers; the use of marble, bronze, valuable wood and stucco in the design of public interiors. We recognize much of this in the neighborhoods and houses of the Southwest.

When the Red Houses were still being occupied - in 1954 - a radical revolution began in Soviet architecture: overcoming the so-called “architectural excesses” (and with it, in fact, a radical change in the perception of space).

At the end of 1954, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR convened the so-called Conference on Construction (“All-Union Meeting of Builders, Architects and Workers in the Building Materials Industry, Construction and Road Engineering, Design and Research Organizations”), “at which they were subjected to harsh criticism of shortcomings in the field of construction and especially in the field of architecture and architectural science" (“deficiencies” - read, excesses: excesses). And on November 4, 1955, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers adopted a resolution in which they proclaimed “the fight against aesthetic formalism for a comprehensive understanding of architecture.” It is this date that is considered the official end of the Stalinist Empire style. It is now being replaced - and lasts until the end of Soviet power - by “functional standard Soviet architecture”.

But it’s too late: our houses were already standing.

In general, architectural thought, fortunately for us, has revealed a certain inertia - in the surrounding houses built in the second half of the fifties (Leninsky, 70 and 72; Lomonosovsky, 18) - we still clearly see reflections of Mediterranean architecture, Italian palazzos.

The end to all this was put only by the 3rd All-Union Construction Conference, held in April 1958. Before this, our surroundings had time to take shape in their main features.

Immediately after house No. 18 on Lomonosovsky Prospect (1957), houses No. 23 on Lomonosovsky and No. 9 on Universitetsky Prospekt were erected. All these houses are based on the same project, but the finishing of each subsequent one is becoming simpler and simpler.

For a very long time, part of the odd side of Lomonosovsky Prospekt between the Universitet metro station and Michurinsky Prospekt, opposite Moscow State University, remained undeveloped. For us, growing up in the seventies, it was a wild, unknown space, a piece of chaos in the clear urban space, exciting, frightening, and attractive. Crossing Vernadsky Avenue to the Other Side, one found oneself in another world and almost lost one’s bearings. We walked there with the dogs and on our own, transfixed by the audacity of our own imagination. The most reliable thing was to stomp along the edge of Vernadsky Avenue without going deeper, but I wanted to go deeper. Until 2002, there was a railway line from the Kyiv Railway, created during the construction of Moscow State University. There was a concrete plant here and further inland from the avenue there were garages, hangars... Romance.

And only in 2003 the construction of the avenue between Michurinsky and Vernadsky avenues began. The Shuvalovsky residential quarter began to grow, new buildings of Moscow State University appeared, and in 2005 a new university library building appeared. A few years later, a huge shopping center "Auchan" (in the beginning - "Ramstore") - "Capitol" appeared. The space took shape, matured, became alien and unfamiliar.

We will, of course, master it like this. Most likely, we will get used to it; and who knows, we’ll suddenly become friends with him. But then it became clear that childhood was over. And maybe, although it’s hard to believe, even forever.