Black and white photo of a young girl with braids and bows wearing a dress with an apron, standing next to a wooden table with turned legs, on a wooden floor.
A black and white classroom photo of a school class with 27 children and one adult female teacher, all posed in rows inside the classroom.

Moscow, 1965.

A group of people, including children, teenagers, and adults, gathered outdoors in front of a garden with trees and bushes for a photo.
A detailed architectural site plan of a residential campus with labeled areas including residential buildings, public program spaces, and public green areas.

Illustration of the “ideal” microrayon. Image © Kuba Snopek, redrawn from illustration found in L.N. Avdotin, Gradostroitelne Proyektirovaniye, Moskva Stroizdat 1989

Satellite view of Khovrino district along Likho­borka River, with green park areas, roads, and urban buildings in Moscow, Russia.
Construction site with a partially built high-rise building and a small yellow shop in the foreground. The shop has a red sign with white text and is located along a street with a cyclist and a motorcyclist passing by.
Cityscape with tall apartment buildings, a leafless tree, and construction site with temporary fencing, and a person walking along the sidewalk at dusk.
People walking on the street with parked cars in front of a tall apartment building during dusk.
A windowsill with three potted plants, with a view of trees and buildings outside through the window. The wall next to the window is painted half-white and half light blue. There is a small dark wooden drawer or cabinet under the windowsill.
City skyline at dusk with tall buildings, construction cranes, and industrial chimneys with red and white stripes in the background.
Satellite map of the Molzhaninovsky district in Moscow, Russia, showing green areas, roads, and infrastructure within the district boundaries.
A large, curved, pink wall in the foreground with graffiti on the left side, and a multi-story apartment building in the background with leafless trees and an overcast sky.
A tall, white, multi-story apartment building with numerous windows and balconies, seen behind a red brick wall and a small brick structure.
An outdoor sports court with a blue fence in front of a tall, beige residential apartment building.
A tall gray concrete apartment building with multiple balconies and windows, set against an overcast sky.
Satellite map of Yasenovo district outlined in red, showing green forested areas and surrounding urban infrastructure.
Two tall apartment buildings seen from a grassy park area on an overcast day.
View of several high-rise apartment buildings with electric wires overhead, on a cloudy day, with some trees and a street below.
City scene with modern multi-story buildings, people walking on a wet pavement, some pushing strollers, and cars parked near a building with a sign that reads "Якитория".
A foggy daytime scene with leafless trees in the foreground and tall white apartment buildings in the background.
A small, white, two-story building with a sign in Russian, surrounded by parked cars and a few people standing and talking outside. Tall, high-rise apartment buildings are in the background.

Yasenevo, 2019

Satellite map of the Severnoye Chertanovo district, showing streets, parks, and buildings outlined in red, with labels of nearby landmarks and transportation stations.
Urban scene with a parking lot filled with cars, a man walking past a blue gate, apartment buildings in the background, and a shopping center on the right.
A large apartment building with multiple balconies, a park with trees and children playing, and a white building in front.
Two high-rise apartment buildings with multiple balconies, set against a clear sky, with trees and a concrete ledge in the foreground.
A large residential apartment building under a clear sky, with multiple balconies and windows, and some trees at the bottom.
A person walking on a sidewalk between two white apartment buildings with leafless trees and parked cars.
People entering and exiting the Chertanovskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, with a digital clock displaying 21:04, and an architectural facade with a geometric pattern.
High-rise apartment buildings across a body of water with reflections, and a commercial storefront at the base, under a partly cloudy sky.

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

A satellite view of Moscow with Cheryomushki district outlined, indicating it as an experimental housing area established in 1965, with green areas and surrounding city infrastructure.
A woman walks across an empty lot next to a white brick building with signage in Russian, and a man crouches near a wall on the right, also with Russian signs.
A row of blue mailboxes numbered from 132 to 189, with three potted plants placed on top, mounted on a beige wall in a hallway with tiled floor.
A high-rise apartment building with multiple balconies and windows, partially obscured by an adjacent smaller building wrapped in green construction netting.
Aerial view of a city with tall residential buildings, parking lots, and a small commercial building in the foreground, alongside green spaces and playgrounds.
Satellite view of Konkovo district outlined in pink, showing streets, green spaces, and surrounding urban areas in Moscow, Russia.
A large, gray, multi-story residential apartment building with many balconies, surrounded by leafless trees and a parking lot with cars. A person walks on the sidewalk in the foreground on a cloudy day.
A tall apartment building on a foggy day, with multiple floors and windows, and power lines crossing in the foreground.
View of multiple tall, white residential apartment buildings on a cloudy, overcast day, with leafless trees in the foreground.
View of a cityscape seen through a chain-link fence, with a construction site, unfinished building, high-rise apartment buildings, a crane, and overcast sky in the background.
City street scene with a woman walking on wet sidewalk, three parked cars, and high-rise apartment buildings in the foggy background.

Konkovo, 2019

Konkovo, 2019

Konkovo, 2019

Konkovo, 2019

Konkovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Severnoye Chernatovo, 2019

Yasenevo, 2019

Yasenevo, 2019

Yasenevo, 2019

Yasenevo, 2019

Molzhaninovsky, 2019

Molzhaninovsky, 2019

Molzhaninovsky, 2019

Molzhaninovsky, 2019

Khovrino, 2019

Khovrino, 2019

Khovrino, 2019

Khovrino, 2019

Khovrino, 2019

Khamovniki, 1976

Khamovniki, 1966

From the 1920s to the 1990s, the development policy of residential building complexes in the USSR was the backbone of the Soviet economy Being in a mainly rural state, the country started to look towards global urbanization.

The mikrorayon, the residential complex, was organized basically around the traditional monoblocks (khrushchyovkas), and already in the 1950s the government planned districts of between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants. At that time, the immense part of the citizens coexisted in the so-called kommunalkas, apartments shared between several families, each occupied single room. From 1950 to 1970 the construction process was efficient, simple and massive. The khrushchyovka was the basic housing unit that is a five floor building without elevator that consists of 40-50 small apartments.

Buildings based on prefabricated concrete panels, with the windows and doors previously inserted, should be extremely simple and cheap. In the 1960s and 1970s, soviet factories relentlessly produced 400 million square meters of apartments, which started with 5 floor buildings (K-7) to be addressed later, under a prevailing limitation of space, buildings of 9 or 16 floors (called brezhnevki).

At that time, it was the largest public plan for mass housing construction launched in the human history.

In 1974, after an average of 2.2 million flats built per year, only thirty percent of the population resided in komunalkas. In 1980, the height of the houses was already projected in 22 floors.

In the 1990s, under a context of economic collapse, the government stopped the construction of housing, which is no longer the part of the centrally planned economy. At that time, 75 percent of all Soviet residences had industrialized origin.

The microrayon, within this plan, was the field of action of the soviet architects. Between 1950 and 1980, at the same time when buildings were standardized and mass produced in factories, revolutionary typological solutions, capable of accommodating and making functional the relationship between buildings, public spaces and state services. were devised.

The microrayon is a functional and primary urbanization, a basic unit within the rayons (districts) arranged on the outskirts of the city to settle an extremely centralized excess population. It contains green areas, school s, medical center and a circulation svstem. The structure is alwavs hierarchical and rational, and trom the sixties juxtaposes buildings of different heights to generate optimal light dynamics and maximize space. The space system, in general, was like the buildings and in view of the demands of the moment, rigorously executed The planning logic, in general, was identical in all rayons. The khrushchy ovkas occupy a relatively central space, and the most recent buildings of 16 and 22 floors were oriented on the periphery. The uniformity and redundancy of the structures and the enormous scale are differential aspects in respect to other types of European urbanizations. The standardized landscape extends repetitively from the center of the city in a ring shape (the height of the buildings changes according to the planning time of the microrayon). Its planning is based on a single original model. The microrayon is designed to be self-sufficient.

This project covers the industrialization process of Moscow under the look at the family and the common places that are part of their generational transit It approximates to the displacement of the traditional population from the center of the city to the dormitory districts, within the state plan of the largest industrialized housing construction in history.

How can we define the value of architecture that completely achs uniquaness‹ Kuba spones why Moscow's Massacre of oisss housing is a huge mistake?

Two maps of Moscow displaying district divisions. The left map shows the city division as of July 1, 2012, with 125 districts, and the right map shows the city after adding two new administrative districts, increased to 11 colonies/raions and 10 colonies/districts, making Moscow twice as large.