History

Melnikov had dreamed of a workshop house since his student years at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Early sketches, shaped by his teacher Ivan Zholtovsky, imagined a conventional stone dwelling. Through the 1920s his drawings changed. Square plans gave way to pyramids, then ovals, then egg-like forms. By 1922 he was testing circles. The final scheme, two interlocking cylinders, grew partly from an unbuilt competition entry for the Zuev Club, which Melnikov once called “a pipe organ of five cylinders.” When Ilya Golosov’s rival design was built instead, Melnikov folded the cylindrical idea into his own house. He later wrote that architecture “came back to me in the brilliant duet of our house.” Construction began in September 1927 under the Moscow Municipal Services building organisation, funded from Melnikov’s own fees for the Bakhmetievsky and Novo-Ryazansky workshop projects. Costs rose from an estimate of 25,140 roubles to 37,846 by October 1929. The Presidium of the Moscow City Council later exempted the house from building tax, recognising it as an experimental pilot structure. Melnikov and his family, who had lived for over a decade in a shared communal flat, moved in that November.