Restoration of Melnikov House Will Last Four Years

In 2021, a multi-stage scientific restoration of a world-famous architectural monument -an experimental house and studio built by the architect K. S. Melnikov in 1927-1929 in Krivoarbatsky Lane — will begin. The work will be supervised by the Rozhdestvenka architectural bureau. Following the reconstruction, the preparation of a nomination dossier will begin for the building to be included into the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Owing to the financial support of LSR Group, the general partner in the restoration of Melnikov House, the work to save the architectural masterpiece is expected to be completed within four years. The result of the first stage this year will be the completion of a comprehensive survey of the building and the preparation of the restoration project for the monument. On its basis, all the necessary work will be carried out in 2022-2024.

In particular, it has been planned to strengthen the interfloor membrane structures that were damaged during the war, put in order the original wooden frames of the famous hexagonal windows and stained glass windows, and get rid of cement plaster on the facades. In addition, the original air heating system will be restored — now it is not fully functioning. At the same time, all pieces of furniture, household, creative archives will be preserved. A small garden near the house will come close to its original appearance.

As Pavel Kuznetsov, director of the Melnikov House museum specified, the most authentic materials will be used during the restoration in order to avoid a new-build. In addition to the Rozhdestvenka bureau (general designer), Russian and foreign experts who previously participated in the pre-restoration study of Melnikov House will take part in the project. One of them, for example, is Jean-Louis Cohen, a French architectural historian and professor at Princeton University, who personally met Melnikov in the mid-1970s.

However, the architects themselves call their task «revival» and not «restoration». The head of the Rozhdestvenka bureau Narine Tyutcheva noted that the Venice Charter clearly states that restoration is one of the extreme tools for preserving objects, which is not always necessary to resort to.

«Conservation has a much wider range of options and techniques, and we will choose them based on what else we can understand from further study of the house. I would like to note that we took part in that large-scale survey of the house, which was carried out two years ago, an absolutely enormous amount of work was done by the experts of the highest qualification, including foreign colleagues. Now we have to analyze all the work done, adding the results of the architectural field study that are yet to come. Let’s start by recording all possible fragments and components of the house and compare this with a number of historical documents, in particular, with the author’s diaries. Our task is to try to get into his idea, and this is probably the most exciting part of this project» — Narine Tyutcheva shared her plans, recalling that the bureau had already worked on updating the gate and fence near Melnikov House.

The development of design documentation will cost 16 million rubles. At the same time, the total amount of investments has not yet been announced. «As for the restoration work, it is impossible to define for sure its cost today, because a lot of work on deciding the methods and so on has yet to be determined [by the Rozhdestvenka architectural bureau]» — said Ivan Romanov, Deputy General Director of LSR Group.

Also, Director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture Elizaveta Likhacheva said that a methodological development for the restoration of monuments of early modernism is planned for release. In her opinion, this example will be used to polish a methodology for working with private investments in the restoration of iconic objects, which should be popularized as much as possible.

Besides, in December 2021, an exhibition project dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the architect Konstantin Melnikov will be launched. «Our task is to make a catalog with the main archive of Melnikov, which was discovered and processed in Melnikov’s house before its museumification. For the first time, we have established all the places where Melnikov could have been in archives at all, besides, we have a very solid pool of authors for the catalog» -concluded Elizaveta Likhacheva, noting that in a year and a half or two years it is planned to prepare a project about Konstantin Melnikov’s son, Viktor.

This is far from the first initiative regarding Melnikov House. In 2013, the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture held a competition for the concept of the Melnikov House museum, in which the winner was the project of the Citizenstudio & Nina Fedorova bureau with a conventional name «Tapki» (Slippers). Their idea was that the museum is ready as is, and nothing needs to be redone in it. An architectural monument must only be rescued from destruction and restored. «We only see for ourselves as architects one opportunity to participate in the house’s life — it lacks slippers» — the authors noted. Two years later, the guys made a project for the permanent exhibition «Life Line», which they told about in an interview with the portal.