Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage rejected the project of restoration of the Melnikov House

The Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage has rejected a project to restore the House of Architect Konstantin Melnikov in Krivoarbatsky Lane. The department had a number of questions about the documentation. First, the project lacks a site plan. Secondly, it is necessary to clarify the materials that will be used to recreate the historical appearance of a unique monument. But due to sanctions, not all of these compounds can now be bought.

Finally, the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage requires the exact color shades of the interior walls to be specified in the documentation, but they can only be determined during the course of work. Despite all this, the director of the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Elizaveta Likhacheva, believes that the work will begin and end on time. And this means that the public can see the Melnikov House from the inside until the end of September.

The Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage was going to make a decision on the restoration project of the Melnikov House on August 26, but the discussion dragged on for a week and a half. Why? The director of the Museum of Architecture Elizaveta Likhacheva answers this question of MK within the walls of a unique architectural monument. She has been studying its history for a long time and herself conducts excursions for small groups.

The building, built according to the experimental project of Melnikov in 1927-1929, simply cannot withstand a large influx of visitors. Even after the completion of the upcoming restoration (which will take about 3 years), it will be possible to inspect the house from the inside in small groups. But you can walk around the building, built in the form of two combined cylinders, almost until the end of the year.

First, it is planned to free the house from all memorial items, which will be placed in the storage of the Shchusev Museum during the restoration. Then a construction site will be equipped – a temporary workshop will be built on a small area around the house. Real work is going to start in the spring of 2023. It is planned to complete them by the end of 2025, and reopen the house for visitors in 2026.

The fact that the building is in need of restoration for a long time is clear at first sight. Cracks are visible inside and outside. On the first floor in one of the rooms, the plaster on the ceiling has collapsed – this is the result of improper restoration in the 1990s. The twenty-meter stained-glass window on the second floor is rotten (however, this is not visible to the eye, but a scientific examination showed that dangerous processes are developing under the cracked paint).

A lot remains to be done, all the details were spelled out in the documentation, which was sent for approval to the Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow back in the spring. By the way, preparations for the long-awaited restoration began 8 years ago, and last year the results of the examination of the monument were made public. What is wrong with such a carefully crafted project?

– There is not enough plan for the construction site, which should indicate which buildings are being built on the territory, – says Elizaveta Likhacheva to MK. – Demand to clearly define all the stages of work and materials. The restoration project has guidelines for materials, but there were problems with some of them. Conditionally, we need to use Baumit plaster (manufacturer – Austria. – MM.), but now we do not have access to it. Let’s get out of this situation. The easiest option is to mix eggs and lime, as Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov did.

By the way, the very architectural solution of the master, which was included in all architecture textbooks, was dictated by economy. Melnikov had difficulty obtaining a plot and a permit to build a private house for his family, but he built it on credit. Saved every penny. Therefore, he came up with an original move, possible only in a round building.

All the brick walls of the house are in diamond-shaped honeycomb holes. Some of them have been turned into windows, while others have been blocked with construction debris. Thus, Konstantin Melnikov greatly saved on the purchase of bricks and made the construction site almost waste-free. The son of the architect, artist Viktor Melnikov, said that during construction not a single wheelbarrow with garbage was taken out of here, and it seems that this is so. By the way, the survey confirmed that Melnikov’s original solution allows you to keep the heat in the house much longer.

The Melnikov House is one of the few projects of the architect that has come down to us almost without changes and reconstructions. And yet it remained residential until 2014, during the lifetime of Viktor Melnikov (he died in 2006), in the 1990s, there was an attempt to carry out restoration, but it was unsuccessful. In particular, on the second floor in the living room and bedroom, the walls were repainted, but not with a natural composition, but with acrylic. The color is similar, but not the same. The walls in the bedroom should be a golden hue, but now they are a strange dirty yellowish color with a green tint. The living room was painted by Konstantin Melnikov to match the color of the large pink carpet that covers the floor. In the 1990s, the color was updated, and it does match the tone of the carpet, but not exactly.

– Regarding the second floor, we are now fiercely clashed with the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage, – says Elizaveta Likhacheva to MK. “They insist that we write down the colors of the walls in the restoration project. But we did not open them during the examination, we were going to do it during the work. Now it is impossible to accurately determine the shade.

Every detail here requires a careful approach. But we are not in a hurry – our task is to make a high-quality scientific restoration. They also found fault with the fact that we would be dismantling a 20-meter stained-glass window. They think it’s difficult, but it’s not. The stained-glass window is quite easy to dismantle: first, the inner part is removed, then the stained-glass window is completely unglazed, the carnations are carefully removed, the doors are removed, then everything else. I think that all issues can be resolved in the coming months, while the house is being prepared for restoration.

The estimate for the restoration is yet to be calculated. It is assumed that the work can cost about 200-250 million rubles.