Two Houses: the Comeback

Staying within the client’s specifications, yet being meticulous about the details, Aleksey Ginsburg was able to give their original images back to the Dolgorukovykh-Bobrinskikh manor house on the Malaya Dmitrovka and the Sytin House on the Tverskaya Street. In this article, we are sharing what has been done, and how.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

20 November 2017

Object

The “Izvestia” city block next to the Pushkin Square is typically “Moscow”, even overly “Moscow”, in the sense that it represents all the main trends of the city’s architecture beginning from the mid-XIX century. This is a characteristic example of a melting pot of different styles and different epochs, but, luckily, this block nevertheless boasts architecture of decent quality, and there are no slums in it, either.

Aleksey Ginsburg has been working with this part of the city for about seven years already, trying to accurately restore all the architectural layers, and, wherever possible, resorting the historical justice – specifically, he uncovers and preserves the brickwork of the firewalls both for the tenement houses and for the “Izvestia” building, because these are historically correct. The result is colorful and fresh, very much “Moscow”, almost in the style of Lentulov: an exemplary restoration of a fragment of Moscow construction of days past; currently, four buildings of the first stage are complete. We already covered Bakhrin’s “Izvestia” building and Tyulyaeva’s tenement house. This article covers two other buildings: the Dolgorukovykh-Bobrinskikh manor house, built back in the 1850’s, and the building of Ivan Sytin’s newspaper “Russkoe Slovo” (“Russian Word”) built by the architect Adolph Erichson in 1904. These two are situated at two opposite corners of the city block, eastern and western, one opening up the Malaya Dmitrovka Street, and the other gazing down the Tverskaya.

The Dolgorukovykh-Bobrinskikh Estate

zooming — Restoration of the Dolgorukovykh-Bobrinskikh manor house on the Malaya Dmitrovka Street © Ginsburg Architects, photograph by Aleksey Knyazev

Rediscovered in 2007 as a cultural heritage site, this place has lots of local lore connotations to it, including Pushkin’s visit to it in 1832 (more about it in the Arkhnadzor blog post of 2013); at that time, the work was only in the planning stage. It includes the walls of the manor houses of the late XVIII – early XIX centuries, which is generally characteristic of the houses of Moscow’s center; the neighboring Tyulyaeva’s house on the Dmitrovka Street also contains fragments of a manor estate. Meanwhile, the two-story house that we are seeing belongs chiefly to 1853–1856. This building has many more lore “bookmarks” – this was the place where the Moscow archeological society of Count Uvarov would have its meetings, and in 1947-1964, it hosted the editorial office of “Novy Mir” (“New World”) magazine headed first by Konstantin Simonov, then Alexander Tvardovsky. Then in the corner between the house and one of its wings a pub established itself, to be replaced by a casino in the 1990’s. At that time, the building was occupied by numerous tenants: offices, shops and nightclubs. But then again, after the restoration, most likely, the building will be rented out to offices again.

As for the pub and the casino, it was decided that these would not be restored; what did get restored was the little garden and the fence that existed here during the “Novy Mir” time. The architects also retrieved the lost cast iron balcony that was there in the square side. Also restored were the window frames: the outside “cold” window frame replicates the pattern of the historical windows known by photographs and surviving fragments, while the inside warm insulated glazing is virtually invisible from the outside. The meandering railing at the edges was replaced with a simple steel one.

In the 1930’s, the right-hand part of the house got a third-floor buildup; generally, the whole house consisting of a great number of layers is described by Aleksey Ginsburg as a “jigsaw puzzle”: it has really a lot of layers in it, no two rooms being exactly alike. “The walls kept “sprawling out”, and, generally, the house looked more like a location setting for the “Kin-Dza-Dza” movie (a cult Soviet sci-fi comedy – translator’s note) than something that belonged in the center of Moscow” – the architect shares; the wooden intermediate floors were deformed, and were plainly visible from outside. Later on they had to be replaced with reinforced concrete ones.

As far as the historical interiors are concerned, the architects only restored those that had the protected status: the main staircase and part of the second floor; stone stairs, stone inserts on the pilasters, and the plasterwork. It was impossible to keep the wooden roof above the staircase but it was replaced with a new one, wooden again.

One of the most serious problems was the salt which permeated the porous white-stone basement floor and the brickwork as well. It took a long time to clear all the walls from salt; this work continued well into the summer. After the procedure was completed the brick walls in the yard – as we remember, trying to be as historically accurate as possible, Aleksey Ginsburg leaves them made of brick – were treated with a water repellent.

After the restoration, the house was painted yellow instead of pink, probably because the style of its façades is sometimes defined as “late classicism”. It makes an excellent match to Tyulyaeva’s house on the Malaya Dmitrovka: yellow and salad green alternate with the bright terra cotta of the bricks. Yet another “neighbor” of the Dolgorukovykh-Bobrinskikh manor house is the Church of the Nativity on the opposite side of the street, one of the most ornate and famous churches of the XVII century. Although there is a 200 years’ difference between them, together they remind us of the low-rise Moscow, a city which after the construction boom of the late XIX – early XX century, and then the Stalin construction period, was changed almost beyond recognition.

From the opposite side, the manor house contrasts with the “Izvestia” building – just like old Moscow contrasts with new.

***

The building of the editorial office of “Russkoe Slovo” newspaper

While the manor house on the corner of the Malaya Dmitrovka street is a fine sample of the “old Moscow” part of this city block, low-rise, multilayered, yet cozy at the same time, the building of the editorial office, in which its founder Ivan Sytin lived and worked himself, quickly became the symbol of newness back in its days: from the sheer scale of the publishing business – by 1917, Sytin had bought out almost the entire city block, for the exception of Tyulyaeva’s house, shares Aleksey Ginsburg – to the Art Nouveau architecture with mascarons and a tile-decorated façade. The building started a new page of the history of Moscow, accounting for the “typographical” specialization of this part of the city. After the Great October Socialist Revolution, “Russkoe Slovo” was promptly shut down by the soviet power, even though it took the Bolsheviks a whole year to fully suppress it – until 1918 it kept fooling the Soviet authorities by being published under different names. Since 1921, the Sytin house hosted the “Trud” (“Labor”) newspaper.

In 1979 the Sytin house was relocated on 400 moving dollies, not for the purpose of widening the street but for increasing the area before the “Izvestia” building, built shortly before that time. Meaning – the building was moved not away from the Tverskaya Street and into the depth of the block but in the northwest direction: the two three-story tenements, between which in 1904 the editorial office of “Russkoe Slovo” was built, were already torn down by that time – in the 1960’s. The Sytin house was moved a whopping 33 meters over to the corner of the Nastasinsky Alley; in 1979 this procedure taking up not three months, as in the 1930’s, but mere three days and nights – hydraulic rams became much more powerful by then.

There was also a huge monolith slab that was placed under the building – it was discovered in the course of work later on – the building also got extra reinforcements of steel beams, the entire first floor was encased in a metal bandage, and then the house got up and rolling on the 400 dollies. The rear wall of the building stayed where it was to be dismantled later on. Then the Sytin house did get restored, but, alas, in a cheap and somewhat sloppy manner: the historical woodwork of the window sashes was replaced with new ones that looked nothing like the historically correct version. “On the other hand, the protected status was bestowed on a room with Soviet-time walls and ceiling that was mistaken for the former Sytin’s study – Aleksey Ginsburg shares – it most likely dates back to the 1950’s and definitely cannot have any connection to Sytin whatsoever”. In the course of the 1980’s restoration, both of the building’s firewalls, hitherto totally neutral, got decorative arches with mascarons – probably, this happened between 1982 and 1985.

“It was interesting for us to restore things that were lost in the course of the relocation of the building and even before that time” – the architect continues. Among other things, the architects restored decorative walls with oval openings that masked the roof at the building’s side walls. They also restored the mosaic frieze with flowers on a golden background. Then they decorated the first floor with beige-colored tiles – it is hard to say when exactly this happened but by 1960 it was already replaced by rock-face stucco; washed clean the tiles of the upper floors, after which it turned out that during the soviet restoration it was mended with tiles of a different color – and the façade ended up being mottled; the later soviet additions were covered with varnish that ensured the unity of tone. All the old tiles got conserved. The window frames were made from scratch by old photographs. The windows of the first floor were diminished in size; Aleksey Ginsburg returned them the original contours with glass going all the way down to the pavement, this decision having been born not without difficulties: the approval board suspected that the architect was not so much restoring the historically accurate shop windows as putting in new ones of his own design. But it did work out in the long run.

The metallic framework of the cornice and balconies was rusted through but the architects opted out of recreating them altogether from scratch – instead, they reinforced them with “spike” anchors, fearing that in this day and age they would not be able to accurately reconstruct the Art Nouveau plastique, and thus the cornice and balcony remained the true historical originals. From the opposite side, the decorative arches of the early 1980’s on the firewalls were kept intact.

The original staircase of Sytin’s “Russkoe Slovo” also got dismantled in the 1980's, when they were building, from the side of the Nastasinsky Alley, right next to the replaced building, the “Izvestia” concert hall which was later turned into “Kodak Kinomir” movie theater (closed down in 2012). In the period of 1980’s – 2000’s, the function of the grand entrance to the Sytin House was performed by “Kinomir” staircase. Now Aleksey Ginsburg and his team of architects have built inside a new staircase and a new set of utility lines instead of the one lost in the 1980’s.

The maintenance floor is hidden in the cold attic under a hipped roof that has in it “gills” slits for airing the space, which helped to keep the traditional silhouette of the building without violating it with the popping up “mushrooms” of the ventilation shafts, – Aleksey Ginsburg proudly explains.

The intermediate floors inside were designed by Vladimir Shukhov – the architect shares – and consisted of double-L beams with an increment of 1.2 meters and metallic membrane about 10 cm thick, covered by crushed brick. Seeking to avoid overloading the steel beams and thus putting them to a strength test, the architects introduced new monolith slabs that are situated slightly higher up, at the same time preserving the Shukhov structures and the surviving plasterwork in them. As for the plasterwork, the architects opted out of decomposing it – due to the fact that the owners are planning to rent out the premises without remodeling, the condition of the plasterwork remains on the tenants’ conscience. The two lower floors of the house are expected to be occupied by shops, the two upper ones – by restaurants.

***

I think that this story shows rather clearly how much Aleksey Ginsburg is into the idea of restoring old buildings and preserving both their historically accurate image and original elements. This recreation is, on the one hand, meticulous and painstaking, but, on the other hand, it is meant for life – these buildings will not be turned into museums; they will function and continue to serve people. This, however, entails a number of compromises: the architecture purists would probably suggest that the architects restore the publishing function of the Sytin house and completely recreate everything that was inside... As a matter of fact, one of the problems of our time is the struggle between perfectionism and pragmatism, and their inability to come to terms with each other. However – let’s use this term – “old Muscovites” ask too much, and the others, based on these grounds, studiously ignore their demands, doing just what they think to be the right thing. The hard work of Aleksey Ginsburg is the reverse example, a case of reasonable compromise, which I think, will do this city a lot of good.

20 November 2017

Headlines now

Object

The Angle of String Tension

The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.

Object

How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future

Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.

Object

St. Petersburg vs Rome

The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.

Object

On the Wave

The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.

Interview

Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”

The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.

Object

The Keystone

Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.

send.project

Perpetuum Mobile

The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.

Object

Water and Light

Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.

Object

Champions’ Cup

At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.

send.project

Semi-Digital Environment

In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.

Object

History never ends

The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.

Object

A Deep, Crystal Shine

A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.

Interview

Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”

Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.

Overview

A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists

Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.

Object

Perspective View

CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.

Object

Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech

The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.

Object

Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!

After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.

Object

Materialization of Airflows

The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.

Object

The City as a Narrative

Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.

A Garden of Hope for Freedom

In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.

Object

A Laconic Image of Time

The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.

Object

The Flower of the Lake

The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.

Object

Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue

The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.

Object

An Interior for a New Format of Education

The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.

Object

New Aeroflot Office: Lightness, Play, Comfort

Even if you have no plans to fly with Aeroflot anytime soon, their new office at 2A 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street is still worth a visit for its interior design alone.

Object

Penthouses and Kokoshniks

A new residential complex designed by ASADOV Architects for the Krasnaya Roza business district responds to its proximity to 17th-century landmarks – the chambers of the Hamovny Dvor and St. Nicholas Church – as well as to the need to preserve valuable façades of a historic rental house built in the Russian Revival style. The architects proposed a set of buildings of varying heights, whose façades reference ecclesiastical architecture. But we were also able to detect other associations.

Object

Centipede Town

The new school campus designed by ATRIUM Architects, located on the shores of a protected lake in the Imeretian Lowland Ornithological Reserve, represents an important and ambitious undertaking for the team: this is not just a school, but a Presidential Lyceum for the comprehensive development of gifted children – 2,500 students from age 3 through high school. At the same time, it is also envisioned as a new civic hub for the entire Sirius territory. In this article, we unpack the structure and architecture of this “lyceum town”.

Object

Warm Black and White

The second phase of “Quarter 31”, designed by KPLN and built in the Moscow suburb town of Pushkino, reveals a multifaceted character. At first glance, the complex appears to be defined by geometry and a monochrome palette. But a closer look reveals a number of “irregular” details: a gradient of glazing and flared window frames, a hierarchy of façades, volumetric brickwork, and even architectural references to natural phenomena. We explore all the rules – and exceptions – that we were able to discover here.

Object

Skylights and Staircase

Photos from March show the nearly completed headquarters of FSK Group on Shenogina Street. The building’s exterior is calm and minimalist; the interior is engaging and multi-layered. The conical skylights of the executive office, cast in raw concrete, and the sweeping spiral staircase leading to it, are particularly striking. In fact, there’s more than one spiral staircase here, and the first two floors effectively form a small shopping center. More below.

Object

The Whale of Future Identity

Or is it a veil? Or a snow-covered plain? Vera Butko, Anton Nadtochy, and the architects of ATRIUM faced a complex and momentous task: to propose a design for the “Russia” National Center. It had to be contemporary, yet firmly rooted in cultural codes. Unique, and yet subtly reminiscent of many things at once. It must be said – the task found the right authors. Let’s explore in detail the image they envisioned.